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From earned wage access to HR & communications on WhatsApp, the road to building Jem is a delightful and surprising one…

Simon Ellis didn’t start in the SA world of startups. Quite the opposite, in fact. He started his career at Deloitte in London, and finished his time there facilitating big, high-stakes private equity deals for companies raising money or listing on stock exchanges.

Perhaps that’s why, when a friend asked him if he wanted to invest in his early-stage startup in early 2016, Simon was intrigued. It was small. Just a £2’000 angel investment. In a startup called WorkMatch (now Inploi), solving blue-collar recruitment in UK restaurants and similar industries.

What mattered wasn’t the cheque size. It was what the investment unlocked: At the time, the UK had tax incentive schemes called SEIS and EIS (similar to SA’s old Section 12J) that allowed Simon to reclaim 50% of his investment from the government. 

So he used his first Deloitte bonus to invest £2’000, claiming back £1’000. And, almost instantly, Simon was hooked.

Learning the art of raising capital (by accident)

His second investment, Revolut, was his lucky break. Although a small ticket, Revolut has gone on to become the biggest FinTech in the UK, now worth over $75bn. Simon admits this was pure luck, but this kicked off a long labouring love for learning. And the little investments continued. 

Meanwhile, opportunities ballooned at Deloitte and in 2018, he was flown to Japan for one of the sexiest, most high-profile SoftBank-related deals imaginable. And it was in those flashing lights that he realised something quietly devastating: This was dull. He looked up at his partners and realised he didn’t want to become them. This “flashy” high life wasn’t what he really wanted to do with his life.

In mid 2018, some friends from SA had phoned to ask if he’d help them raise seed funding for a new student accommodation startup called DigsConnect, which sounded like much more fun, so he remembers sitting in Japan, writing in his diary the sentence that would set his life on an entirely new course: “I will leave Deloitte on 31st October 2018.”

He gave himself six months to finish what he needed to, build up a capital buffer, and, in the meantime, help his friends with the DigsConnect raise to keep his spirits up. And on 31 October 2018, Simon walked into the office, greeted everyone and… went to sit at his desk?

Yes, the 31st was a Wednesday, which didn’t feel right. So he stayed on till Friday, leaving on 2 November 2018, because it was just a cleaner break.

Build everything

By early 2019, with Simon’s help, DigsConnect had raised R12 million in its seed funding round. Others reached out for help, and quite quickly, Simon was raising money for a few other start-ups. He was now fully in the startup world, but it wasn’t long until he decided to stop raising money for others and start building something himself.

And like every good first-time founder, he didn’t start with one clear idea. He started with four.

From a marathon photography app (GoPhoto) to a hair-loss startup, a recommendation-driven concept Simon still believes is a great idea, and the fourth: SmartWage, an idea that came from a conversation with a friend at Balderton Capital in the UK about an earned wage access (EWA) startup called WageStream that had just gone through a Series A round that was six times oversubscribed.

The play was simple: Simon would rope in a friend, raise capital, and they’d replicate the UK model. So in February 2020, with no product or even a company bank account, using an extra SIM card in Simon’s phone, they pitched the concept of a payday advance to 3 employees at a friend’s parents' company.

Two accepted. The first transaction, paid out of Simon’s Standard Bank Student Achiever account, was to someone called Mr Mbali (there’s still a “Mbali Room” commemorating this in the Jem offices today). It was for R1’000. And guess what, Smartwage was “revenue generating”. What a time. A real business. It’s generous to call that a launch. But 21 February 2020 became the spiritual starting point of Jem (previously called SmartWage).

A near miss

Like many technical or product-first founders, the early SmartWage team assumed the hard part was building the product. So they approached dev houses and were quoted R6 million to build V1 of the platform. R6 million that Simon would likely have tried to raise, if Lessonspace founder Matt Henshall didn’t give him advice that probably saved the business:

“Do everything manually until you’re working until midnight for three weeks straight,” Matt told him. “Only then build.” 

The team listened. But it wasn’t just the advice, turns out Matt also ended up introducing Simon to his now co-founder, Caroline van der Merwe. That was a turning point. As Simon recalls: “We honestly made every mistake in the book. Wrong team, bad hires, poor tech, lack of customer understanding. The list goes on.” 

But it all started to turn when they began to make the right hires. Their first big hire was Chris Hellmann, who joined as Head of Sales in early 2021. Chris was an ex-Deloitte and was looking to return to SA after a three-year stint in Belgium. After being rejected by Caroline the first time he went through the process, Chris went out on his own and made three sales. 

Like any good salesman, he persisted, and eventually Caroline and Simon changed their minds. Thank goodness they did. This was an important decision because, as they would soon discover, selling Earned Wage Access (EWA) was going to be way harder than they thought. 

Four years on, Chris is now Commercial Director and has been instrumental in building Jem to where it is today.

Hard lesson: PMF is nothing without a business model

Throughout 2021, the team had to start facing hard facts: The product is great, every employee wants it, but they weren’t the customers. No one had been speaking to businesses (the buyers) to learn what they wanted.

So they had to go back to basics: Jobs-to-be-done. Pain points. Actual conversations with real SA businesses. And that’s when the breakthrough came: Employers didn’t necessarily want EWA; they wanted a better way to communicate with their employees.

By 2022, SmartWage had rebranded to Jem, short for Djembe, an old African drum and the continent’s oldest form of communication. With their new insights and clear change in understanding of their customer, Jem began to find product-market fit. It really hit home when a small customer was so desperate to be able to send payslips via WhatsApp, they fast-tracked their usual months-long procurement process into an afternoon, just so that Jem could help them do that.

And so, Jem’s famous WhatsApp-based play was born.

The real pivot

Jem had found a solid foot in the door by offering businesses a WhatsApp-based HR tool that could help them digitise their HR workflows. Sales took off, and customers were eager to use the product. The problem was, selling payslips for R5 a pop was not a good business. They need to find better ways to monetise.

A drastic change was needed, so the team went back to the business model and, in a moment of clarity, they switched gears, increasing their HR tools pricing from R5 to R25 (expensive, on purpose), but made it 100% free for anyone who took their new and updated employee benefits products (Savings, EAP, EWA, Mobile Phones, Data, Airtime, Electricity and more).

The results were immediate: The benefits adoption jumped from 20% to 95% and Jem today is well positioned to grow enormously in South Africa before, undoubtedly, taking their unique approach to the rest of the world.

There are almost 13 million deskless workers in SA (75% of the workforce), and even with great traction, there are many more workers and companies to reach.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on this team in 2026 and beyond.

Setting financial goals is easy. Sticking to them? That’s the hard part.

Here’s how to make it last:

Talk openly about money: Face your fears, acknowledge past mistakes, and get clear on what matters most.

Focus on outcomes, not products: Decide what 2026 should feel like: less stress, more freedom, stronger savings. Let tools support your plan, not define it.

Get consistent support: Consider a different way to pay for financial advice. Flat-fee advisors act like personal trainers for your finances: keeping you accountable, adjusting as life changes, and helping you progress steadily, without the sales agenda.

With clarity, structure and ongoing guidance, 2026 can be the year your money finally works for you.

Disclaimer: This content is for educational purposes only and should not be considered personalised financial, investment, tax, or legal advice.

If you’ve ever heard that question around a braai, this guide’s for you.

Running your hustle through your personal account might feel easier until tax season hits, funding gets denied, or a client asks for your business details. That’s when it gets real.

Govchain’s new guide breaks it down simply:

✅ Why keeping business and personal money separate matters
✅ Your best banking options: whether you’re a sole trader or registered business
✅ How to pick between old-school banks or digital players like Lula.

It’s everything a South African founder needs to know before choosing their first business account.

When you share, we give you cool free stuff.

Marketing might help you get a few sales right now, but a strong brand secures recurring new sales for the future. Understanding that distinction is vital when scaling your business.

As Stellenbosch-born investment and hedge fund Sonic Fund found out when they did the tech thing and built a trading platform, Sonic Trader.

The problem: Sonic Fund serves institutional and high-net-worth investors. Sonic Trader gives access to retail investors. Those customers are worlds apart, so it caused much confusion, threatening the goodwill the brand had built up to then.

That’s why they brought in brand specialists DoubleShift to help bring some clarity.

Kurt and the team rebuilt Sonic Fund’s brand to signal institutional credibility, stability and long-term conviction. Then created a completely distinct identity for Sonic Trader, so that each has its own tone, narrative and design system.

The result? Two high-performing SA brands with sharply defined positioning, global relevance and zero dilution. One speaks to long-horizon capital. The other is built for scale and adoption.

That’s how you build brands for growth.

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