Part 76
The other day I was thinking about anyone with serious money I could approach, who may be interested in investing in ExoBrain. It occurred to me that I was at school with at least two future billionaires (in US dollars) and did some filming for a third. Sadly, one of them died at 53 years old but I may as well let the other two know about ExoBrain.
People who become billionaires come in all shapes and sizes. So, who were these wealthy individuals?
Robert Holmes à Court was a year behind me at school. He was the great-great-grandson of William Holmes à Court, the 2nd Baron of Heytesbury. He was bright, earning good marks at school and was not much of a sportsman. It was curious in a way that most of my best friends at school were not into sport. Initially, I was not very talented in the pursuit of games but emerged in my final two years at school as part of the starting line-up of the Rugby team and played one game as a starter for the field hockey team when I was still under 16. I was also the school’s heavyweight boxing champion in my final year.
Rob was a dreamy sort of fellow. He and I enjoyed discussing all kinds of subjects such as science fiction and ideas for the future. After leaving school, I spent a year in Namibia with my parents; then travelled to Britain and after a succession of odd jobs found myself in television.
Returning to South Africa at the end of 1959, I discovered that there was no prospect of television in the immediate future. The Nationalist Government, in line with their Apartheid philosophy, had decided that television was too dangerous as a vehicle to enlighten the general public about what was happening in the rest of the world. They only gave in under increasing pressure and established television in South Africa in 1976.
I was still hoping to make documentaries for a London company, so was not unduly distressed, and decided to leave Cape Town for Johannesburg where there was a sizable film industry.
Before I left, I heard that Rob owned a restaurant in Claremont, a suburb of Cape Town, and went to see him. He was pleased to see me and asked me to stay the night, so we could chat after he closed at about midnight. I did so and we caught up on what we had both done since leaving school. I was rather surprised that Rob was running a small restaurant. I had expected him to be more adventurous.
I challenged him on this and he admitted that he was selling the place and leaving for Australia where he felt there were greater opportunities than South Africa, because of the world’s opposition to Apartheid. He went on to say that he had an idea about making big money. It was something to do with taking over struggling companies, turning their fortunes around and then selling them at a profit. I didn’t really take it all in, as I had never been interested in business as such. I wished him well and the following morning left wondering just how well Rob, this still rather dreamy character, would make out in the cutthroat world of business. It seems as though he embraced it with open arms and was soon regarded as one of the world’s most fearsome corporate raiders in the 1980s. In 1987 his fortune was estimated at $2 billion Australian. Three years later he was dead from a heart attack — a heavy smoker and a diabetic, he lived life on the edge and finally fell over it.
The other fellow at school with me was Dick Enthoven. His father Robert was a Hollander who ran a very successful insurance company, Hollard Insurance. Dick was born in South Africa and was also at school with me at Michaelhouse. I’ve never established how well Rob Holmes à Court and Dick Enthoven knew each other but I was friendly with both of them. Like Rob, Dick was not much of a sportsman, although he did play a good game of tennis.
I spent a long weekend with Dick and his parents in Durban. Part of the deal was that they should drive me to play in a rugby match at Kearsney School some miles outside Durban. Michaelhouse was unbeaten in the province of Natal that year and it was unthinkable that I should not play.
Dick’s father Robert was a charming man but had absolutely no concept of the “importance” of schoolboy rugby. He was very casual about getting there and in the event I arrived as the teams were running onto the field. Frantically putting on my boots in the car, leaping out as we stopped, I arrived breathlessly as the last man on the field, with our coach looking on disapprovingly.
I managed to play a decent game and was forgiven by the coach before being bundled back into the Enthoven’s car and returned to enjoy the rest of the long weekend with them.
A number of years later, probably in the 1980s when I was first starting to seek finance for movies I had written, I heard that Dick, who had joined his father’s insurance company, had financed a couple of local (South African) pictures. I hadn’t spoken with him since leaving school but managed to get through to him and asked if he would look at one of my screenplays and consider financing the picture. I got a firm “no.” Dick said that his foray into movies had not been successful and he was not prepared to try again.
Dick had spent some years in politics, initially in the United Party in opposition to the ruling Nationalist party, the authors of the infamous Apartheid policy. In the early 1970s Dick was expelled from the United Party (UP) and was part of the so-called Young Turks, who had felt that the UP were not decisive enough in their opposition to the Nationalists. These young men then joined the Progressive Party, which changed its name to the Progressive Reform Party (PRP).
I’m not sure when Dick left politics to join his father and younger brother Patrick in Hollard Insurance but the company had grown to become the largest insurance company of its type in South Africa. Dick clearly also had an entrepreneurial spirit as he became involved in other activities as well. One of these activities was his purchase of once-rundown Spier wine farm built in 1692, outside Stellenbosch, which he developed both for its production of fine wines and as an excellent hotel and wedding venue.
It’s incredible how many times I’ve had some kind of link to the lives of others who are far better known then me. In this instance, apart from having been at school with Dick, I discovered when visiting Spier one day that it was the exact place on the banks of the Eerste river where my Dad and I would go trout fishing when I was a kid. The farm was almost derelict then and wasn’t being worked at the time, about 1949. The farmer was happy to allow trout fishermen to fish on his stretch of water.
Only in the past few months did I discover that in 1987 Dick had invested in two businessmen, Fernando Duarte, originally from Mozambique, and Robert Brozin who had bought a takeaway business in the Johannesburg suburb of Rosettenville with a large Portuguese community. The business, originally called Chickenland, was renamed after Fernando’s son, nicknamed Nando. Guess what: that little business expanded rapidly, with branches of Nando’s springing up all over South Africa. It was a unique take on traditional Portuguese Peri-Peri chicken with additional African flavor from Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony.
It was so successful that the brand was exported to Britain and other countries. At some point Dick became directly involved and opened up Nando’s in Britain. In 1993, Dick’s son Robert was put in charge of the first two Nando’s in London. Dick wasn’t certain that the brand was going to work in Britain. But Robert had some great new ideas, changing Nando’s from a purely takeaway business to a mixed-service establishment that combined counter orders with table service. The result was astonishing and today Nando’s has over 400 stores in Britain alone, with over 1,000 worldwide.
It seems to me that the combined business empire of Nando’s, Hollard Insurance and Spier is very much a family business. Perhaps the billionaire label should be given to the family collectively. At any rate, Dick, my one-time school friend, is a remarkable person and businessman.
I like to think of the growing team of ExoBrain members as more than a group and rather an ExoBrain family. We all share a common goal which includes the betterment of communication for all of mankind. We aim to clean up the current messy, convoluted and often misleading world of the Internet and social media. It surely needs it!
Next week I’ll feature the third billionaire I have known. They are a fascinating species!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.