I’ve compiled some of the most powerful Koos Bekker quotes.
Koos Bekker was born on December 14, 1952. He is the chairman of the media giant Naspers and a South African billionaire businessman.
Naspers has operations in 130 countries and is listed on the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges. Outside of the United States, China, and India, it has the highest market capitalization of any media firm.
Bekker and a group of young colleagues founded M-Net and Multichoice, one of the first two pay-television services, which eventually expanded to 48 African countries.
He was a founding director of the mobile communication company MTN in the 1990s.
Koos Bekker’s net worth was projected to be $2.3 billion in April 2022.
10 Koos Bekker Quotes
1.”The CEO is the captain of the ship; he makes the executive decisions fast and with enough authority to sail the ship. A non-executive chairman is more… a strategic figure in the background.”
2. “Entrepreneurship is a little bit like farming when you start you do everything, you make a team, you do the Photostats machine and as the business grows, it diversifies but certainly, the improvisation of a farm is extremely useful in business.”
3. “The problem with corruption is it totally immobilises everyone. Just imagine you are a young [person finishing school and] you have to decide on a career. If you are in China you look up and you see who is making money, it is the entrepreneurs. They have an engineering degree . . . and are billionaires in dollars. That is the people they want to emulate. In many countries in Africa, you look up and you see no engineers, you just see people that play the political system and make money, and you are so discouraged, and you say, ‘Why should I study for five years to be an engineer, when there is no one making money this way?’ The way to make money is to go and study a BA for three years, go into politics and milk the system.”
4. “In business, one should never take anything for granted. Your fortune can change in five minutes.”
5. “For a group to be great, both good governance and excellent execution are required. It’s not one or the other.”
6. “Naspers has made huge investment in e-commerce during the last few years, some of which is still developing to its fullest potential.”
7. “The problem with corruption is it totally immobilises everyone.”
8. “The pace of technological change is still accelerating. Innovation never stops.”
9. “Currently, e-commerce is the segment of our internet business which is growing the fastest and it will remain that way for the foreseeable future.”
10. “I believe penetration of pay-TV will not rise too much in the future, as in its current form it is quite a mature industry. I don’t see that much further growth for satellite-based TV. However, DTT opens up completely new potential, for the viewer does not need to buy a dish, only a cheap antenna, and – once all TVs become digital – will not need a decoder. All of a sudden, for just one small investment in an antenna, everyone will have access to numerous free TV channels. This will provide great new opportunities for content creators. I expect content generation to become the most attractive sector inside the TV industry.”
My favorite Koos Bekker quotes are, “Entrepreneurship is a little bit like farming when you start you do everything, you make a team, you do the Photostats machine and as the business grows, it diversifies but certainly, the improvisation of a farm is extremely useful in business.” and “The problem with corruption is it totally immobilises everyone.”