Nathan Jeffery

Technology strategist, business enthusiast, coffee aficionado and remote worker. I invest in and consult for technology startups on product development and infrastructure. I'm focused on results.

📍 George, South Africa

Avoid cheap work

Cheap work is undervalued and seldom appreciated by the client. Cheap clients tend to be excessively demanding and disorganised. They often make you wait for information and input, and require regular follow ups when it comes to payment. In addition to the time and revenue lost while trying to complete

Pay for good contracts and use them

My team was poached several years back by our biggest client at the time. I didn’t have any agreements in place with any of our clients or staff back then so I didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. I knew contracts were important and had them

Hire a boutique accounting firm

Since the inception of MyEcommerce we’ve made an effort to keep our accounting and statutory records in order. I started off doing the books myself but as soon as we hired staff, we outsourced our bookkeeping and payroll to a ‘big name’ firm. We ended up dealing with a

Focus and Commit

If you're launching a business or embarking on a new career, it may be tempting to work a second job for a sense of security. What you really need to do is commit, decide what you want to do and focus on it. You need to give it your full

Take Ownership

Whether you’re a business owner, a team leader or starting your career, you need to put passion, energy and pride into everything you do. Taking ownership, to me, is more than taking responsibility and being accountable for your actions or lack thereof. You need to constantly be learning and

Do what you love

You spend most of your adult life working so it's only obvious that you should do what you love and get satisfaction from your career. You should love what you do so much that, if it wasn’t for needing to eat, you’d do it for free. Doing something

Micro Failure

Failure is not an achievement and it's certainly nothing to be proud of. When you fail in business you lose money and often wreck the lives of your employees. The current flippant and arrogant approach to failure is disrespectful to everyone who works with and depends on you for their

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

It's amazing how so many people feel entitled to an opinion about what someone else does with their own money. The way I see it, there are only two people in this world who can possibly have the right to say anything about what Mark and Priscilla do with their

Don’t be fucking mediocre

Do more and do it better. Good quality at a reasonable price is hard to come by. The world is a very small place and people talk. Good word gets around but it takes a bit longer to spread than negativity. Be a legend and make history.

Hire slow, fire slower

Selecting the right candidates is tricky and many factors come into play. Academia doesn’t prepare candidates for real world software development so you can’t rely on a degree as an indicator of ability. I usually ask general knowledge questions in interviews as it gives me a sense of

Engage your clients carefully

We’ve lost millions in turn over due to scope creep and clients simply not paying us. Make sure your documentation is clear, avoid over committing and if you’re taking on a big project make sure you get a deposit up front. If a client isn’t willing to

Don’t stress about shit

When you’re in shit is the worst time to stress about being in shit. Don’t focus on how bad things are, focus on solving problems, getting work done and earning more money. Hustle harder.

Imposter syndrome and failure

In a world where people like Elon Musk are literally building rockets and cars that run on energy from the sun it’s easy to look at your own life as an entrepreneur and feel like a bit of a failure or be totally dismissive when people acknowledge your success

No one gives a shit, unless you broke it

Software development is an 18+ hour a day job. Clients pay for solved problems and don’t have much patience, some problems are difficult to solve, some are easy. Clients don’t appreciate the work you do, you need to be driven internally. You need to get enough kicks out

Client acquisition and sales is a full time job

Client acquisition is a strange thing. We’ve had cases where we’ve identified the lead, quoted, did the work, invoiced and were paid within less than 24 hours and then we’ve had clients we’ve engaged with for years before ever seeing any real work come out of

Choose partners carefully

It’s easier to go the long distance with a team than it is on your own but don’t just go out looking for a partner and don’t let the lack of a partner prevent you from starting. Partners seem to find each other. It’s all about

Goals are important but the journey is too

I started working at age twelve because I wanted an expensive bicycle. It ended up taking me between two and three years to build the bike up. I bought the parts as I could afford them. I kept the parts in my room so I could see the progress(or

Want to make money? Disrupt an industry…

If you’re young and still deciding what career to get into, consider accounting, law or even the medical profession. You may be thinking those are pretty old school career moves so why should you consider pursuing one of them. Well, the trick is, enter those professions and become known

Changing social habits

I used to keep every social network, I have an account with, open in a tab. This way I could quickly flip between social networks and catch up on all of my feeds. Earlier this year I made a decision to focus on better quality content and try to read

Stop wishing your life away

Every week, I see people posting the same shit online, how they can't wait until the week is over or it's almost the weekend. Every day you wish away is one less day you have to live and to be alive. One day you're going to be on your death

Remote work

In April this year we decided to close our office in town and implement a distributed work model. We set up a small office at home for some of the team and the rest of the team would work remotely. It was quite a change as our previous office was

No more out of office replies

It's the year 2014. Mobile phones are portable computers with built in modems. If you don't have email on your phone then you are doing something wrong. Out of office replies are the height of nuisance. No one cares if you're out of the office for the day or if

Are mailing lists good, bad or ugly?

It’s not uncommon for website or business owners, looking to increase traffic to their website or promote a specific product or campaign to consider sending out bulk emails or bulk SMS as a means of reaching a greater audience. One of our clients was even approached by someone who

Launching a Website

Business is online. Whether you like it or not, we’re living in a connected society and consumers are more enabled to do product and company research than ever before. The average household or business is operating with a limited budget and needs to get the best value for money

Launching an App

We often engage with clients who would like to launch an app or software solution. We feel it is our responsibility to make our clients aware of some of the issues pertaining to the success of launching a digital product and gaining any worthwhile traction. Here are a few points