I do yes, and to be honest MXit was my idea - but I don't want R47m for it.
Let me share my story.
It started in October 2001 when I joined the parent company SWiST which supplied mission critical systems to VodaCom. One Friday this casual looking guy came down and noticed I was new, he asked me what I wanted to do one day and I said all I want to do be a developer. He replied that so did he at my age, but now he is an entrepreneur and wants to be retired in the next 15 years after making it big. I thought to myself "yeah right", but he did. That was Herman Heunis, the CEO. I still see him on the mountain bike trails sometimes.
SWiST (or Somerset-West Idiots Stand Together) was a cool place to work, I recall many a Friday when Herman said lets go to Gino's (back then next to Die Boord Spar) and everyone ate and drank and had a good time on the company. I was appointed fulltime and was working mainly as a front-end developer. There was also the R&D division that came up with some pretty cool stuff such as Alaya which was a massive mobile multiplayer game you could play via SMS or USSD. It was one of many attempts to make that killer app, but all were ahead of their time.
When MIDP Java apps became a thing on phones the R&D division shifted to making mobile games. They did moderately well and soon they were spun off into Clockspeed. Fun fact I still have a photo after someone stole the L from the Clockspeed logo. They moved into a different building in the office park but still made use of the SWiST boardroom. Since I was young and did enjoy lots of Java games on my phone I would sometimes be called in to brainstorm session where they tried to figure out what games to make next, a fun process that I was happy to be a part of.
At the time I had a Nokia 7250i and my girlfriend upgraded to a 6610i. I was looking for a way other than SMS to chat to her and found a Java app called "Colibiri" on getjar.com (
http://docshare02.docshare.tips/files/3275/32753661.pdf) which required a Jabber server and account. There were 3 jabber server in SA at the the, so I picked one and made accounts for her and me, loaded the app and set it up and we could chat via GPRS.
After one of these Clockspeed brain storm sessions I remember clearly how I was walking down the stairs with Herman and checked Colibri on my phone to see if I had any messages. I said to Herman "Hey you know what you could try that is not a game?" I showed him the app and explained how cumbersome it was to find jabber servers, register on them, and then use that information to setup the app on the phone. "Why don't you make a clone that does the whole user account thing as part of the initial setup". Herman dismissed that and said there was enough chat apps and no one was using them.
But he must have slept on it because a couple of weeks later one of the Clockspeed guys asked if I could come and try to connect to a fresh jabber server he installed on their side. We messed around and eventually I could connect. I pulled the app off my phone (infrared and Oxygen phone manager for Nokia) and loaded it to the other guys phone so he could play around with it even further. After they got the server part working they had some of their developers work on a client for it. My 7250i spent many a day over in the Clockspeed offices as it was one of the first MIDP 1.0 devices to support sockets. A big hurdled for them was the whole polling VS sockets thing I recall.
Eventually the app was done and they even had staff take flyers and hand it out at the entrances to shopping malls just to get people to use it. Getting that critical mass took a while I recall.
So that is how I planted the idea for MXit.
Later on I used their bot API and created a quiz game called TRIVit and then they rolled out their new API some years ago I added another game called CALCit - but that is a story for another time.
Some years after MXit made it big I was on business trip to Microsoft in Sandton and the evening at the hotel I was having drinks with the head of our IT/Security division. I think the guy was called Bartho Saaiman, anyways, he told me if I knew that of all the employees at SWiST that made a handsome sum in the shares payout when MXit went solo it was only him and me that got nothing. He was clearly upset about it but I told him for me it was just cool that I had an idea and they made it happen.
Sorry I did not put more links to things - but you are welcome to google it or use the wayback machine if you are interested in some of the thing I mentioned. Also feel free to ask me anything.
