Introducing Adriaan Van Wyk, Co-Founder and CEO of Jigx 

Sara:

I'm Sara Lindquist from Fuse. We're an early-stage venture firm based right here in the Pacific Northwest. And just like the founders in our portfolio, we are just getting started. We believe that founders deserve more: more urgency, more community, more expertise, more reliability, more of everything. And we aim to deliver. Join me as I introduce each of our portfolio companies in the Fuse family to date.

Today, you'll hear from seasoned entrepreneur, Adriaan Van Wyk, current Co-founder and CEO of Jigx. Prior to Jigx, Adriaan co-founded K2 Software, a global business headquartered right here in Seattle. Join us as Adriaan discusses the startup journey, the importance of team culture along the way, and how Jigx will shift the way businesses operate using their mobile devices.

Let's get started!

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Sara:

Adriaan, thank you for being here.

Adriaan:

Yeah, you're welcome, Sara.

Sara:

Well, I appreciate you taking the time, and I'm so excited for you to share a bit about your story and about Jigx. So, to dive in here, it'd be great if you could just share the quick overview of what Jigx is and the problem it's solving.

Adriaan:

It's really simple. We allow companies to build beautiful mobile applications that uses the native capabilities of the supercomputers you find in your pocket today - so your Android phones, and your iOS, or your iPhones - and really bring and bridge capabilities and functionality across those platforms to your customers and your employees. We want to make it really easy. If I think about some examples, we have Motul, who's one of the world's leading lubricant companies out of Germany who built a business-to-business application that integrates with SAP and lets their resellers place real-time orders through the mobile application. And they can send them the latest promotional material and communicate with them in real time.

In the UK, we have a financial services portfolio company that built a portfolio management solution. And in Australia, we have a company that runs lifesaving flight operations using Jigx for their pilots. So, it's quite a diverse set of use cases. But in all three of those, it wasn't possible before. Used to take years to build stuff like this. And now, it takes days. It's exciting.

Sara:

And Adriaan, what were customers like this doing before? Using Excel? What was that life like?

Adriaan:

Yeah, it's a good question. They didn't use to do this because it was just too expensive. Or they would try to use some of the native development tools that were provided by Apple and Google or some of the other platforms that's available now and try and develop these applications. And they were just ugly, and they weren't working well, and they were clunky, and it would take them years and millions of dollars spent. And now, it's literally, these applications can be built within weeks, if not, days. And they deploy it across these devices. It's actually pretty incredible. Once they've seen it, they can't unsee it.

Sara:

Yes, it's certainly one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it. I'm excited to use it! So, walk me back in time a little bit. Explain the moment or moments where you knew, okay, I got to build this.

Adriaan:

Yeah. I was fortunate in a previous life that I worked with a great team to build a company. And I took a break in 2018 when I moved on from that business. Mobility and what was happening with mobile devices and the power that existed in those mobile devices was always in the back of my head. In 2019, I read an article that said Apple's new processors and the chips that they were building themselves were getting very close in processing capabilities to the single-core processor capabilities that were in the new supercomputers that were being built. The Fugaku supercomputer was actually the one, at that point in time, that was getting close to completion. And yet, when I looked at mobile applications and what business-to-business applications and employee applications looked like, they were terrible. They looked ugly. They didn't work. They were clunky. They were difficult to build. So, when my co-founder took a break and we were thinking about his next step in his career in late 2019, we decided to do something about it.

Sara:

Got the band back together!

Adriaan:

Yeah, yeah. We went fishing in Alaska, and we talked about this, and we started looking at some examples, and I shared some plans I had with him, and we realized that this is just a massive opportunity. And this is what we wanted to do. If I look at it today, the iPhone 13 is now fourteen times faster than that Fugaku single core. So, it's actually incredible, the power you have in your pocket. And it's changing what our customers do with that power. So, it's exciting. It's been a fun two years.

Sara:

It's really exciting. And you've certainly assembled an incredible team around you, you're very gracious in describing that. You had an awesome tenure at K2, obviously, as the founder and leader of that company. And so, fast forwarding now to today, describe why your team is the team to do this.

Adriaan:

It's a good question. Look, I was in a fortunate position ten days ago where I actually met 90% of them for the first time in real life.

Sara:

Oh, fun!

Adriaan:

Even though we've been running the company for almost two years now.

Sara:

Ah, the reality of the COVID company world.

Adriaan:

Exactly. And so, we started the business in January of 2020. And we finally managed to get everybody together in the Czech Republic two weeks ago. It was just incredible. If you look at that group of people, they're super intelligent, and they're just really talented, both the developers as well as the innovators that we have. These guys are really good at solving very complex problems very efficiently and in very simple ways. And I think that's one of the things that will set them apart. It's also a little bit of reality that we live by every single day is - we want to build high quality user experiences, and we need to solve very complex problems, and we want to do it in the simplest way possible.

And then, we have the term that we live by, called "GSD", and it stands for "get shit done". So, we wake up every single morning, and that's what we do. We measure our progress by what we accomplish every day and not by the hours we work every week. So, it really is a team that's super focused, highly talented, and knows exactly what it is that we need to do. And we are working towards that outcome. It's just an incredible group of people to work with.

Sara:

That's awesome. I love that. I was going to say, would you say that sums up the culture, a GSD culture?

Adriaan:

I think it's a GSD culture very much. I think there's GSD, and there's also a lot of having fun while we do that in the process as well. Riding scooters at three o'clock in the morning, and Bruno certainly gave me some insight into what these people do!

Sara:

Oh, man. I need to hear that story. We can take that offline! Oh, that's great. Well, having fun and getting it done is a key combination. I love that. Thanks, Adriaan. 

So, this is not your first rodeo starting, and leading, and growing a company. And now, you're doing it with Jigx. And it's hard work, and I'm certain there's challenges along the way that you've known and faced. So, Adriaan, what keeps you going? Especially in moments where many others would've just thrown in the towel?

Adriaan:

Quitting is just not an option for us. I've said this before multiple times, but we unapologetically want to win. It's very much building that into the culture of the business. Takes brilliant people and very, very hard work to win. And we've got both of those things going for us at this point. And it's simple. Although I don't agree with all the choices he made, the guy I'm about to quote, I do think was right when he said, "Pain is temporary, and quitting, lasts forever." So, people tend to overreact to the short term and under-react to the long-term opportunities. And you need to realize that problems are short-term typically, and success is a longer-term thing. So, don't overreact to the short-term, don't overreact to the short-term challenges, and keep your eye on the ball because we know where we are going and we know we'll have to solve some problems. So, we think it's just not an option for us. And like I said, I'm fortunate that I'm working with a group of people who share that belief. It's just been great.

Sara:

Yeah. That is some sage wisdom right there. Thank you. Perspective that we all need, right? It's the long game. And doing the little things day by day, step by step to amount to the big picture. So, appreciate that, Adriaan. Okay. So, in closing here, one last question for you. What, right now, do you need more of? How can any individuals tuning in from the world wide web, how can they help or get involved?

Adriaan:

We need hours in the day. So, if you can give us some more of those, I'd appreciate it.

Sara:

Ah yes, that'd be nice. We could use some of that too.

Adriaan:

We're hiring. We're definitely growing the talent pool. We're hiring in the Czech Republic right now. It's where the core engineering team is. So, we're building a great team. I want to build a very diverse team, so people feel they can add value to this team. That's definitely something, people that we're looking for. I'm also looking for people, energetic people in marketing, in the go-to-market side, the demand generation side. That's really an important phase for us now that we're in for the business. And so, that's definitely a talent pool we want to tap in. And then, in April of next year, we'll, although the first customers are going live on the platform now, in April of next year, we'll be opening up the platform widely. And at that point, we'd love people to just go, and get a hold of it, and have fun, build some stuff, and use it. I think that's what the next six months look like for us.

Sara:

Totally. Love it. Well, I know we, at Fuse, are certainly eager to build our own Fuse app and do all of our work and operations through that. So, it'll be great! And how should people get in touch, Adriaan? What's the best way to get connected?

Adriaan:

We'll launch a brand new website at jigx.com within the next four weeks.

Sara:

Oh, nice.

Adriaan:

And there'll be an option there to get hold of us. Or just email me at adriaan@jigx, J-I-G-X dot com, Adriaan. And I will definitely get back to you as soon as possible.

Sara:

Perfect. Adriaan, thank you so much. This was a great conversation, and I appreciate you taking the time and sharing your story.

Adriaan:

Yeah, thanks, Sara. I appreciate it as well.

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Sara:

If you're interested in joining a stellar team and working under a great leader, be sure to check out current job openings on the Jigx website, or of course, on the Fuse website in the career or portfolio sections. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you on the next one.