{"id":622031,"date":"2025-12-19T12:58:03","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=622031"},"modified":"2025-12-19T12:58:51","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:58:51","slug":"the-two-guys-who-built-south-africas-biggest-independent-app-over-a-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/622031-the-two-guys-who-built-south-africas-biggest-independent-app-over-a-weekend.html","title":{"rendered":"The two guys who built South Africa’s biggest independent app over a weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Computer scientist Dan Southwood-Wells and software engineer Herman Maritz founded South Africa’s largest independent app, EskomSePush (ESP), as a side project 11 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Southwood-Wells is an alumnus of Rhodes University, where he obtained his master’s degree in computer science in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His first job after studying was at Telkom, where he worked for two years as a technical product development specialist in Belville, Cape Town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maritz obtained his master’s degree in electronic engineering from Stellenbosch University. He worked as a DSP Lab Linux admin at the university for two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August 2010, he joined financial authentication company Entersekt as a software engineer. Southwood-Wells took up a position as systems and product architect at the company two years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maritz told MyBroadband that he recommends first-time employees take a job at a fresh startup, as it provides the best learning opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He explained that one of these opportunities came when he desperately wanted a Mac computer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The company was still new and couldn’t just buy expensive MacBooks, so whoever had the one Mac Mini had to develop the iOS app,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I wanted that computer, so I learnt Objective-C. And then more and more. That environment gave me a lot. That ‘let’s figure it out’ attitude is still exactly what ESP is about.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time Southwood-Wells joined Entersekt, Eskom had not implemented load-shedding for about five years after first implementing rotational power cuts in 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Load-shedding cuts re-emerged in 2013, but only became a frequent issue in late 2014. This was when the pair started thinking about a solution to help them navigate Eskom’s complex schedules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They initially began using a service called PushBullet to send themselves notifications when load-shedding began. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After sharing the service with friends and family members, they coded their first version of ESP over a weekend in December 2014 to enable them to plan their holidays without fear of unexpected power cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From 100,000 active users to more than 3 million<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Herman Maritz (left) and Dan Southwood-Wells (right)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Winning MTN’s Business App of the year in 2015<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

ESP’s name came from combining a popular Afrikaans swear phrase with “push notifications” used in mobile apps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We sat in a lot of conference calls talking about ‘push notifications’ and how these messages can be used to send users banking updates,” Maritz previously explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Some of these meetings had folks with Afrikaans accents, and the word ‘Push’ always made our day.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six weeks after releasing the app to the public in early 2015, ESP had over 100,000 active users. In its initial years, it reached a peak of 250,000 before load-shedding was kept at bay until 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the success, the pair only worked on ESP as a personal passion project rather than a serious business prospect that could make money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both left Entersekt in 2015 and took jobs in the e-commerce sector. Maritz joined OLX as the head of engineering and was later promoted to director of engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Southwood-Wells worked at Takealot as engineering manager and director before being promoted to chief technology officer at Superbalist, where he remained until 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The severely intensified load-shedding that started in 2019 changed their approach. In 2021, Maritz became ESP’s first full-time employee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The extra time with the app allowed him to make significant improvements and add many new capabilities and features. By 2022, Southwood-Wells joined in full-time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2023, South Africa’s worst year of load-shedding to date, ESP surged past 12 million downloads across the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During stage 6 load-shedding, daily active users exceeded 3.2 million. However, the pair did not want to hedge their bets on load-shedding being around forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also did not want their app’s success and continued relevance to be linked to the country’s energy misfortunes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That number puts ESP within the same league as Takealot and several major banks’ apps when it comes to download numbers, made all the more impressive by the fact that it is still a two-man operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite significantly reduced load-shedding in the past year, ESP continues to record healthy usage, with roughly 300,000 active users on quiet days, increasing to 500,000 with severe service delivery issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The app has evolved into an interactive community notice board where people in the same neighbourhoods can share and receive information on locally relevant topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes reports and updates of water outages, load reduction and unplanned power cuts, lost and found pets, and crime and safety issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What started as a personal weekend side project to help two guys fresh out of university plan their lives around Eskom’s power cuts has evolved into a useful app for improving communities’ handling of broader service delivery headaches. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":622087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[81859,13771,81857,68562,8487,54555],"class_list":["post-622031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-dan-southwood-wells","tag-entersekt","tag-eskomsepush-esp","tag-herman-maritz","tag-load-shedding","tag-service-delivery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622031"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622031"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":623539,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622031\/revisions\/623539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}