If you were to map the centres of global economic innovation, you would conventionally stick in pins to mark places such as Silicon Valley, Shenzhen and London. You would almost certainly not mark a farm in East London, in SA’s Eastern Cape.
Yet it is from precisely such an unlikely origin that a quiet global innovation was orchestrated, one that holds an urgent lesson for a nation grappling with unemployment and economic stagnation.
The story of 27-year-old Jadon Moerdyk, co-founder of the Delaware-based marketing agency RemodelBoom, is more than a fascinating business tale. It is a case study in the transformative power of the digital economy.
Moerdyk’s firm, which helps American home improvement companies, including Renewal by Andersen and Re-Bath, convert dormant sales leads into booked appointments, operates on a simple, brutal and beautiful premise: it only gets paid when it generates revenue for its clients.
RemodelBoom’s performance-based model has driven “millions of dollars” in revenue for nearly 300 US clients since late 2022. Not bad for a company built from a laptop with no outside funding.
Moerdyk said his journey was fuelled by what he terms the “psychology of scarcity”. “When you don’t have access to capital or connections, you learn to build things that simply work,” he notes.
Scarcity breeds efficiency. The imperative to “do more with less” became the foundational DNA of his company: lean, remote-first and system-driven from day one.
This is where Moerdyk’s story should trigger a profound sense of urgency in our corridors of power. His enterprise is a living, breathing validation of the digital opportunity, yet it also highlights the systemic failures holding SA back.
Moerdyk built his company not because of a supportive local ecosystem, but despite its absence. The challenges he faced included a weak passport, limited access to venture capital and relative isolation from global tech hubs.
However, he said these disadvantages nurtured resilience that became RemodelBoom’s competitive edge. But how many potential Moerdyks is SA losing because the country hasn’t created the foundational conditions for them to thrive?
I would venture to say that RemodelBoom’s operational model is a blueprint for the future of work that SA desperately needs to adopt. It has a team of more than 30, deployed in SA, the UK, US and the Philippines. “Talent is global now,” Moerdyk said. “Our model proves you can build a US company from anywhere as long as you deliver exceptional results.”
Considering SA’s devastating youth unemployment rate, Moerdyk‘s statement should be a rallying cry. The digital economy is not a niche sector; it is a lifeline, a parallel economy that can connect our brightest minds to the world’s richest markets. Yet digital skills and infrastructure in SA are still seemingly considered a secondary concern, a “nice-to-have” rather than the core of our national economic strategy.
In SA resources continue to be poured into legacy industries while the real opportunity to create a generation of “digital exporters” that could sell services to the world is neglected. Moerdyk’s success demonstrates that a young person in East London can compete anywhere in the world.
The lesson here is not that every South African should start a US company. Rather, it is that we must systematically dismantle the barriers that prevent them from doing so.
Moerdyk is an outlier, but he doesn’t have to be. He is proof that the “raw material” for global success, intelligence, creativity and grit can also be found in SA.
His story is a challenge to our leaders and citizens alike. We can either continue to bemoan the country’s economic underperformance, held back by limitations of a physical world, or invest aggressively in digital infrastructure and skills that will empower a generation to build their own RemodelBooms.
The future of work is globally distributed, the economy is digital and the opportunity is vast. The only question is whether SA will finally choose to log on.
• Lourie is founder and editor of TechFinancials.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.