Andre Hoffman — My Techie, a brilliant concept like Uber for Technicians

David Watts on Mix 93.8. - My special guest in studio, we say a very warm welcome to Andre Hoffman from My Techy. Hello, Andre. - Good evening, David, and good evening to the listeners. - Listen, My Techy already sounds like the kind of thing I'm gonna need, but you might be able to explain to us a little differently as we go through. But first and foremost, I always like to ask my guest, tell me a little bit about Andre. - Who is Andre? Are you Joburg born and bred? You know, give me a little bit of background and what led up to My Techy. - Excellent. Well, I'm South African, born in Durban, Itequeni. - Okay. - Actually, in the union of South Africa, if you wouldn't believe that. (laughing) That gives away my age. So, moved up to Johannesburg in 2001 or thereabouts,

but mostly Durban boy, now in the lines country and spent the last 38 years of my life in telecommunications. - I have to just interrupt you there. So, have you stayed true to your Italian roots? - Absolutely, I'm a shock supporter. - Yes, okay. You can stay. - I do support the lines occasionally. - Oh. (laughing) - Against province. (laughing) Anyway, sorry to interrupt, carry on, Andre. So, 38 years in telecoms, joined the Department of Post and Telecommunications back in 1980 and this weather that we're having today reminds me of one of my discussions with a boss. It was a rainy day like today and we walk in there and we get their work and we say to him, listen boss, the weather is really not good. We can't guard. He says, what? Pulls an umbrella out from behind his chair and says, go and do the job. (laughing) - So. - Oh, the good old days when things worked differently. - They worked differently. - So, my background is telecommunications. The last job I had was with a company called Link Africa, which is big into the fiber to the home space. Well, basically building networks in cities, around cities and to homes and to businesses. So, that's my background. I'm a past president of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers.

- Okay, now just stop, let me, 'cause this is now for my edification into light. An electrical engineer. What does that mean? Because you very often hear the term bandied around and I've seen some people on TV who say they're electrical engineers, but I doubt it. So, tell me, I mean, what is the difference between an electrical engineer and your average guy that drives around in a buggy and comes and replaces light fixtures and fittings? - Okay, so, I just wanna put a disclaimer in there. I don't work for Eskim. (laughing) But the guy in the buggy probably knows more. (laughing) The electrical engineering discipline is quite broad. It covers everything from the lat current engineering, which is what I was involved in, telecommunications electronics, to the heavy current power engineering, which we understand when the lats go on and off and power generation. So, it's very broad and there's obviously a lots of disciplines, sub-disciplines within that. My specific focus was telecommunications. I did a national hire diploma in telecommunications back in the 1980s and through that I registered with the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers and with the Engineering Council of South Africa as a professional engineering technologist.

- Okay, so, when you talk telecommunications, this is, I mean, now when you think telecommunications, you mentioned that you worked for the company that installed sort of the fiber and everything. That is essentially telecommunications these days. - Absolutely, it's the foundation of the internet and in fact we're sitting in a studio tonight broadcasting out via telecommunications networks. - Yes. - Satellite networks, fiber networks, terrestrial microwave networks, all of those things are the industry that I'm involved in. - Okay, so we should've phoned you when we were putting this together. - No, no, your call is important to us. We'll call another 36,000 in the queue. - Okay, so you've most recently been employed, but now you decided this employment thing is not for you. It seems like there's more and more of, can I say people of our mature status that are starting their own businesses these days. Is it, 'cause this is a fairly recent thing, my take you, or is it something that you've been thinking about for a while? - You know, David, I've been cooking this for at least two years in my head, I suppose, retrenched a year ago, but I don't like that word retrenched. Let's call it repurposed.

(laughing)

You find yourself in a situation at times where you've got a lot of experience, and I believe I have a lot of experience, I've got a lot of network, I've got a lot of people that we know, I know, but I also, in my involvement with the Institute of Electrical Engineers, discovered that there were a lot of young people out there that couldn't find work. It's an anomaly that we face in a country which is deficient in jobs. There are people that are qualified with BTEC degrees, BEng degrees, diplomas, and they're struggling to find work. We retrenched last year, one third of our staff in the company that I worked for. The bigger companies like Talcom, Vodacom, MTN from time to time are retrenching hordes of staff. It's an anomaly that we face, and I don't think it's a South African one, it's a global problem. - Why is that? Why are we retrenching so many people? Is it because of an economy, an economic downturn, or is it because technology is making a lot of us redundant? - I think it's because of accountants, but anyway. - There'll be encounters. Every entrepreneur's favorite person. - No, no, look, it is technology. It's business, it's economics, it's hardcore economics. When it comes down to making a profit, sometimes the shareholders and the decision makers are looking at cost, and it's unfortunate that sometimes the very best resources in the team go, which businesses ultimately have to be sustainable.

- I guess, yeah. - From time to time, they may make a decision to throw some furniture overboard so that the boat can still float. It's a tough decision, it's not an easy decision. I don't think boards and executives make those decisions lightly. But I think it's a global phenomenon, and it's to a certain degree due to automation, due to, as engineers, we make things easier. The reason why we can build stuff today is because there's machines that can do a lot of the heavy lifting. So we, as humans, have to adapt to that. We have to think of different ways to make ourselves economically viable, and that's where the MyTekki concept comes about. - All right, well, when we come back, we'll find out exactly what MyTekki is, my guest in studio, founder of MyTekki, Andre Hoffman. - David Watts on Mix 93.8. - MyTekki is what's involved, my guest in studio, Andre Hoffman, founder. Is that the correct term, founder of MyTekki? - Yes, founder and CEO. - Founder, CEO, chief cook, bottle washer. - Oh, God, everything. - As I understand it, it's a startup. So let me get into this, because when I originally heard about you, and I heard MyTekki, the first thing was these nerds on wheels that'll come and help you fix your printer or your computer if it's broken.

So I was kind of expecting that right up until I chatted to you, and then I was like, okay, this is just a little more. So take me through what is MyTekki? - David, the analogy I like to use is Airbnb. People kind of understand it, or Uber, they kind of understand it. Airbnb is a situation on the one side where people have accommodation, different sizes, different feature sets in different towns at different times at different prices. On the other side of Airbnb, you've got travelers, say like yourself or myself, who want to go to Cape Town on the 15th, 16th of May. We look on Airbnb, we find a suitable accommodation. We like it, so we book it. What does Airbnb do? Airbnb takes that information and it goes to the owner and it books it. It says Andre wants to go to Cape Town on the 15th, 16th, and 17th of May. Please make sure your room is available for him. TikTok, we come along to the 15th of May. I arrive in Cape Town, I knock on the door, I get the key of my apartment. I have access to the apartment for the two or three days that I'm at a conference there. And what does Airbnb do? Airbnb then has to really take in my money and then pays the money to the owner of the accommodation and keeps its share.

So my techie, you can think of like that. You could call it air techie if you like. What it has on the one side is technicians who have skills, lots of different technicians in the RCT environment, information, communications, and technology environment. We're focusing to start with on telecommunications, but we're going to move very quickly into RT as well. So we match four things. The skill of the technician with the need of the customer in a proximity at a specific time, obviously at a specific price 'cause the technicians are independent contractor, they set their pricing for what they do. In my industry, there's an explosion of fiber to the home and fiber to the business around South Africa. And there's a lot of work to be done, but we see that as just the beginning of the tsunami of technology. You've heard of the internet of things. - Indeed we have. - So what is happening is once you get that broadband connection at a home or business, that's not the end of it. That's just the beginning. You have to put down, first of all, you have to get that fiber installed. You put down a piece of equipment at the end of it called an optical network terminal. You then put a router on the end of that which generates a wifi signal which gives you another internet.

And then you can start connect devices. I like to think of it as spreading the broadband butter into a building and into an office. So we are taking technicians and we're converting them into tech entrepreneurs. And what Martecki does is gives them an opportunity to be their own boss. - All right, so give me an example now. I am, give me a sort of company and a technician type

and walk me through that. - Okay, so let's use a common example. Telcom is the biggest company in South Africa at the moment as far as telecommunications is concerned. They have a big fiber business and they have a big copper base on ADSL which is the older technology and they're converting that into fiber based. So what they do is they go to their customer base and they try and sell a fiber service. And if they do sell a fiber service which they do to many of their customers, they then dispatch a technician to go and install that optical fiber at your house or my house. Recently, I had the privilege of having fiber and remember it's a privilege. Fiber is not available to everyone in South Africa yet. - Don't even get me started 'cause where I stay, I'll tell you about what, and then I'll use myself as an example, but carry on. Fiber is a privilege. - So we managed to get fiber. I'm not in a Telcom footprint, I'm actually in a Vomitel footprint. So we can use that as an example. Vomitel is a similar company to OpenServe Telcom. They also build fiber networks and then they use technicians to actually deliver it at your house. So what happens is you place an order with you, usually you place an order as a subscriber with an internet service provider, like Mweb or Afrihost or any one of the hundreds of internet cool ideas type of internet service provider.

Those are the people that actually give you the service that you want, but that works on an underlying infrastructure called optical fiber, usually provided by a Telcom OpenServe or a Vomitel type of company. What is happening in our industry is it's breaking up into these wholesale retail little things. Nevertheless, a technician is dispatched by one of these companies to your house, usually a team of two or three technicians in a bucky. They have a roll of cable and they knock on your door and they say, "We're here to install your fiber." They then route that cable either aerial or underground, depending on what's available in your particular situation. And then they terminate it in your house at an appropriate place, usually at the closest wall that they can come to, which isn't necessarily the best place to put a router, but they just-- - Mine was in my kitchen when I lived here in Madrid. - So remember they're working for a company and they're governed by their own standards and costs. So they're instructed to put this device as cheaply as possible because customers like ourselves don't want to pay too much. In fact, we try to get as much as possible for as little as possible. Sometimes there's a once off charge, sometimes there isn't, or it gets built into a contract.

Anyway, they come along, they install this thing, and that's just the physical layer one foundation. It's like the road. They've just built the driveway into your house and now you've got a garage at the end of it or a place to park your car, but you still need the technology to deliver internet. So they then convert that optical fiber, which is an optical signal, obviously, it's called optical fiber, they convert that optical signal into an electrical signal, which gives you an ethernet connection that you can connect a router to. So that's all done by usually the same team, but it may not be the internet service provider. So in my case, for example, Voomitel installed the optical fiber and the optical network terminal, but M-Web had to come along and install the router, which was another truck roll on another day with a different technician. - Okay, and so what you're saying then is those technicians may not work full time for the company. They may be employed on a contractual basis. - Well, in most cases, there are contractors to those company anyway. - Okay. - Through intermediary, bigger contractors. What we are doing with Mar-Techie is offering them a direct opportunity to work for themselves.

They have a skill. We will empower them with other technical and soft skills and we'll build an ecosystem so they can have access to test equipment. They can have access to vehicles. They can have access to even things like medical aid. We're going to try and create the opportunity for them to be sustainable middle-class members of our society. But they are, in any case, working either directly as contractors to those companies or as subcontractors to other contractors. But we are giving them a vehicle now to work on a white label basis for any service provider in South Africa in any town or city in South Africa. - And at a later stage for individuals as well. - Correct. So to start with, we're B2B, business to business, but the next phase will be business to consumer. So you will have your smart TV, but you don't know how to connect it up. You're not quite sure how to interface it with your surround sound system or maybe you want to connect it up to a security camera. So the technician is going to be empowered with different skills to be able to offer those. Let's call it, we call it opportunity density so that they can help you consume technology in your private spaces. - Okay. It sounds like I'm going to need you guys later because I know I live on a plot, which is apparently outside of anybody's, anybody's vaguest idea of where we're going to have fiber in the next hundred and plenty years.

- Well, we can offer you satellite. - And they keep telling me, they keep, when I asked them, they keep looking at me and then everybody shakes head and goes, it's that last mile, last mile. And I'm like, don't do miles. So we have a radio frequency, literally. So we've got, and I went from mid-rand, one of the many reasons I love mid-rand, sort of 50 meg, 100 meg fiber line to a 10 meg radio. - Okay. - And as soon as the clouds come rolling in, it all goes to hell in the hand basket. But now that, I would then be able to go, so will MyTiki be a website, an app? How does it, will I be able to phone up MyTiki and go, hey, I need a techie? - Well, normally you would, you can do that in the future, but normally you would order your internet from your internet service provider who would have a relationship with MyTiki and they have a portal, which is basically the backend of our website, and they would dispatch a MyTiki to your house. But in future, you'll be able to call MyTiki like you call an Uber or like you book an Airbnb, should you need it. But they are, remember, MyTiki is not a service provider. They can't give you fiber in the rural suburban areas because they just simply work for service providers.

But what they can do is help you maximize the capacity of your radio link to make sure that it's the most efficient and that you can get the most out of it. And then ultimately, we'll be able to also tell service providers where there's a demand because ultimately it comes down to a business case. So we will be able to help them understand that because the MyTiki is also going to be a salesperson. They will be technicians which we're hoping live and work in the area. So they should be people living in the east of Pretoria where you live and they'll know you and they'll have bras with you and they'll play soccer with your kids. And they will say, hey, we need to get fiber in this area. So, and then they'll be able to pre-sell it so that it gets not only sold and they will get the orders to put it in. - But this is, okay. So now this is where the whole Uber thing comes in because it'll be closest to and even for the corporates. It'll be the techies that are closest to whatever. So it's a proximity-based thing. - I call it the village technician. When I was starting out in the apprentice days, we had what we called outdoor techs. And they were the most important people in those outside town areas because they knew everything about how everything had to work and how to think, okay, they probably also knew about all the scandal as well.

But they really did happen to get things done in the small towns. And then we've got to get back to that kind of artisanal apprenticeship, that kind of artisanal skill set and that kind of pride in the technical side of our country and our businesses. - Which I think is lacking. We'll get back to that because you've got another great initiative as well. - David Watts on the mix, 93.8. - My guest in studio tonight, founder of MyTekky, Andre Hoffman. And I wanted to find out about all the other bits and pieces that you're doing there. But this might lead into where we're going with MyTekky and what you're hoping to achieve here. Somebody's just messaged us. I have a FiberFox Mini 6S Splicer. Did I get that right? And assorted tools for sale that one of your guests guys might like to buy. Maybe there's a website where I can post details. So there we go. We're even turning into like an auto trader for technical things. - No, absolutely. We have a website. It's mytekkysa.co.za and there's an info at mytekkysa.ca. So their email is also [email protected] and you can talk to us about that. - We're very particular about test equipment. It's very important that we use the right test equipment.

It's calibrated and it's not gray. But you know, there's lots of gray equipment out there that's falling off the back of a bucky. The quality is in the DNA of our organization. And we make sure our technicians are credible. They're trained, they're certified and they're using the right test equipment. They have the right processes. But we do have a lot of development guys who need help. So the technician needs to be independent. So there's many guys that do need, like this guy that's text in about his equipment that he might have might be very helpful to a newly qualified technician that's got all the skills now, but now needs the kit, needs the tools. And we try to facilitate that. - Okay, now I said we were gonna move on. I need to go back again. So the idea as well behind mytekkyan as you roll out is, and this is important. You said quality is in your DNA. There's accountability. And you mentioned it to being like an Airbnb or an Uber, for example. So would the customer then get to rate the techie? - Absolutely, the technician will get rated twice, once by the person paying for it, which is usually the telecom or the service provider type of customer. They'll get a rating based on the completion that they've submitted with all the test results.

Then they'll also get a rating from the consumer, or the subscriber, whose house or business they're working in, as to whether they were polite. They cleaned up afterwards. They were professional. So they get two ratings. And these ratings will be visible to anyone that wants to use them on the app or on the website portal. So they will be rated out of five, just the same as an Uber or anyone else. And you'll find that the technicians that are successful are the ones that are getting fours and fives consistently. We're not saying that some technicians might not make a mistake from time to time. They'll be given mentorship. There is guidance. There is team leaders. They will have lots of training available to them. We'll use technology like Webexes and the internet to train them. So they're gonna get support. They're gonna get support. And we're here to develop as many of these technicians as possible. We're hoping also to have, with every qualified technician out there coming into your house, one or two apprentices. In my day, we call them apprentices. Let's call them technical assistants. That is learning. - The days of the app years, they've long gone, hey? That's sad. It's kinda sad.

- I'm the fruit of exactly that training. I did three, actually four years of apprenticeship, three years of apprenticeship until I was considered to be a technician in those days, able to work independently on shift. I did an extra year to get the higher diploma. But in those days, we, I must honestly say, despite all the privileged background I have, I've got excellent training. And I'm now here to give it back. I'm here to invest this back and to try and create an opportunity for our young South Africans of all colors to take advantage of the skills that we have and to build a new South Africa with the new middle class and people that can actually make a difference. - You know what? And let's, 'cause that's such a nice segue to move into what we're going to talk about next. But I've gotta tell you, the idea, and a lot of people pull their noses up. But I mean, I've said it before and I'm probably gonna say it a whole lot more. South Africa, what we need is a vibrant and thriving middle class. And we need to uplift people to get into that middle class. You know, yeah, the upper class is fantastic, but a strong middle class. That's gonna keep everything in line and gonna keep this country ticking over.

That's my belief. - Well, we have to avoid the word class 'cause it creates a lot of different things in people's minds. But let's just call it economically viable to be able. You know, so many people, almost all day, I get people coming through to me. Andre, have you got a job for me? Have you got a job for me? Any work, I'll be, I'll work in your garden, I'll work in your house. And we're actually not offering jobs. We're offering opportunities. We're offering you an opportunity or technicians an opportunity to create jobs for other people. You become an employer. The opportunity here in the fourth Industrial Revolution is not that we're going to get the jobs like I had, you know, 30, 40 years ago when I qualified in 1980. My father told me, Andre, go learn Afrikaans, join the debating society and get a job in government. And fortunately, I was able to do that, although I struggled in certain respects. But the kids today, they all try to do that and they all go to university. If you think about it, those that get them a trick, they stand outside the universities in long queues. They go get these degrees for three, four years. They come out of these degrees, their parents have spent, I don't know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of rent, and then they can't find work.

No one's employing people.

They maybe employ 10% of them. And that's the sad reality. So we need to create opportunities for them to use that skill, get experience, work alongside an experienced person and start to replicate little businesses, small businesses in towns and in cities. - Well, this is one of the things that I want to get onto now, because one of the things I always ask potential guests is, what are you doing? 'Cause I'm a big fan of conscious capitalism. In other words, what are you giving back? What are you doing in order to progress our country? So you've got something that you've launched as well, called the Make a Difference Foundation. Can we talk about that a little bit? - Yeah, absolutely. I follow a number of people that inspire me. Obviously, people follow them on YouTube, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. And a particular guy that I follow is a guy called Strive Masayewa. He's a Zimbabwean born entrepreneur, multi-billionaire, telecommunications man. And what inspired me about what he said was, when you start your business, start your foundation at the same time. Why not? So my foundation is called the Make a Difference Foundation. You'll see on my hat here, the hashtag is #MAD, which means make a difference, or if you're in government, it means make a decision.

We intend to make a difference, whether people like it or not. We intend to make a difference. And what that is, the foundation is, is it's aimed at youth development, in electronics to start with, robotics, artificial intelligence, software, basically trying to get the youth into preparing them for the fourth industrial revolution. - We need it, I mean, it's coming at us so quickly. - I'm expecting my techie and the other brands, which we're launching in parallel with that in the future, to generate significant profit, which I intend, through capitalism with a conscience, to invest back into making a difference, so that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren and everyone else's grandchildren and children can have a future, not just in South Africa, but in Africa. This my techie thing is actually gonna be launched into six countries in Africa before the end of this year. We are taking this thing, and we're going to push it as hard as we can, because we want to leave a legacy. I don't want people to, you know, what happens in the telecoms industry is these guys with the big money come and they build big infrastructure, and then they run away. We need to leave a legacy. Technicians that need to live and work and become part of the community, take ownership for it and be developed and become what we've called the middle class, but let's call it economically viable so that they can educate their own children, they can educate themselves, and they can feed themselves.

- I'm gonna care if somebody calls me middle class, really. Seriously, don't have a problem with it, but I know what you're saying. So economically viable people. So talk to me and talk me through this as we wind down this evening. So I've now, I've studied, I've got a diploma or whatever, or I've been working for one of these ICT companies, these telecoms companies, I've been retrenched, I've lost my job, I'm now sitting at home and I'm listening to this broadcast. Do I then get hold of you? And once I get hold of you, what then happens? What is the process? Are you looking for people? You must be, you said you were. - Yes, we're definitely loading up in the startup phase. We're launching on the 31st of May, the application, and there's a specific reason I'll tell you why the 31st of May. But if you are a technician, a qualified technician in the telecoms or IT space, and either you are under or unemployed or retrenched and you're looking for an opportunity, there's no cost. You can go to the website, martechisa.co.ca, and you'll see the process there. There's an email that you will send your CV to. We vet you and we check your qualifications out. And if you're successful, once the app is launched, you will be able to download the app.

And then we will also be onboarding service providers like those people that I mentioned, the OpenServes and telecoms and all the other comms. There's lots of smaller guys that have got an enormous amount of work. They're very excited because they don't actually want to employ a lot of technicians, but they do want to have the skill available on demand. - So you literally, you basically, it is, it's Uber. Your model makes so much sense. So you're putting providers along with the guys that are able to do the job, and you then, out of that, you take off a very small percentage in terms of your running costs, et cetera. - Yeah, we do have a small fee to sign up, but that gets taken off the first job. So there's no, initially, we said you have to pay five on a rent to sign up, but we've dropped all that. We're not taking any money from you. Get involved, get your first job. And 'cause we, there is cost incurred in validating the person and getting all that done. - Yeah, I can imagine. - And then there's a cost for me to run the app. But yeah, we keep a small percentage. 80% of the money is going to the technician. My philosophy is stakeholder optimization. That means the customer, the employee, the agent technician, and the supplier, and the shareholder must all get a fair deal here.

We're not here to look for the best price and screw everyone to the bottom of the barrel. We have to make sure there's a fair distribution of the cookie all the way across. - I don't even want to know. I mean, just talking about what that app has cost to develop so far. I do not want to know, 'cause I think we'd fall over. 'Cause app development is not the cheapest thing. But you mentioned training, and you mentioned access to equipment. Is that part of the rollout? - It's part of the rollout. So to start off with, qualified technicians will have some skills and qualifications. But like anything, when I was qualified back in 1984, I was obsolete the very next day. You have to keep up to date. So we will have continued professional development. Every time there's a new technology that comes out in this field, we will have little micro courses available either from suppliers, usually from suppliers, and we can try to make those available as easily as possible. We don't want people to drive all the way from Rustenburg to come to a course in Santon necessarily. We'll use the internet. So we create this opportunity density for technicians. If they've got five skills in their quiver, and we look around them and see, well, there's another 15 things that you could do that would earn cash for you.

If you do these additional 10 courses over the next whatever period of time, we set a calendar. They can then do them. Some of them might be at cost. Some of them will be for free. It depends on what the supply. We're not here to make any money out of people's training courses. We make the training courses available. We ask all the training providers to get validated by our preferred professional association like the SAE or the Institute of RCT Professionals of South Africa so that the course is validated and is a proper course. We can't afford people to have flabana training. Like I said, quality is built into the DNA. When a customer places an order with Marteki, it's a guaranteed order. They must understand that the money that they're leaving with us and trusting with us for that work to be done, the work will be done to their satisfaction or the money will not be paid through to the technician so the customer gets a guaranteed service. - I can't wait for this to be rolled out to the public instead of just B2B because I think it's a fantastic idea. And one more time, just in case anybody's missed it, if somebody's listening, they know somebody that is a technician or they are themselves technicians, where do we start this process?

- The website, Martekisa.co.za is your first port of call. - Okay, that's T-E-C-C-H-I-E. - Correct, we have a Facebook page. We have a Twitter, we have a LinkedIn page as well but many of the guys, if they want to find us on Facebook or directly on the website, they can also email me directly. It's my name, [email protected]. - Okay. - But if they want to sign up, [email protected] is the email address and like I said, we've got a lot of interest on the Facebook, Martekisa page as well where a lot of people are following us and this is a new thing and people don't really understand it. They do understand Uber to some degree, some of them understand Airbnb to some degree but I'm finding a lot of people don't understand this concept. - Well, I was one of them because I also needed to be drawn out in pictures for me like I was six but it's phenomenal. So on Facebook, a lot of people on Facebook just look for my techie. - Correct, it's there. - Fantastic stuff. Andre Hoffman, thank you so much for coming in tonight. We wish you all the best, every success. As soon as we switch the microphones off now, I'm gonna be bending his ear about getting my internet sorted out. You have yourselves a wonderful evening.

Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back again next Monday between six and eight. David Watts on Mix 93.8.