It’s holiday time {{ FIRSTNAME }}! 🏖️ So instead of sending daily, we’ve reduced to just 2 sends per week (Tuesdays and Fridays) from now until 12 January and hope you enjoy the special holiday content we prepared for you…

While most providers score poorly on Hellopeter: MTN (1.14), Vodacom (1.18), Cell C (1.28), Telkom (1.13), MVNO Melon Mobile outshines them all with a 4.5-star customer experience according to SA users – it wasn’t easy to build, here’s the juice…

When Calvin Collett walked out of a meeting one Tuesday in 2021, the board had turned down his “digitising SA mobile” plan for the last time. Three years he’d been trying to show them that the mobile landscape was changing. So he did that founder thing that makes sense only a few years after you’ve done it.

He resigned his executive position at MTN.

Corporate detour: The problem he couldn’t unsee

Calvin never planned to end up in a corporate. In 2017, he exited the ISP business he’d founded, iConnect, and was three weeks into a “bit of a sabbatical” when MTN called. They’d just bought an ISP called Smart Village, rated “the worst ISP in 2017”. Could he come and help out?

And within a year, he’d flipped it to a top-rated ISP, building his credibility inside MTN and spurring him to start looking for the next build.

It was then that he noticed EU and US mobile network operators all launching digital sub-brands: wholly owned (MVNO) telco businesses designed to behave like startups, with simpler products and app-first onboarding. Calvin saw it as inevitable that SA telcos would need this too, so he built the business case for MTN to be the first.

He’d just presented it when COVID hit, and capital budgets were cut. And to his credit, he’d kept reproposing it until the end of 2021, but it became clear the timing just wasn’t right within a large incumbent. Calvin decided to leave and explore whether the idea could exist independently, while still running on existing network infrastructure.

They negotiated. Agreed. Calvin resigned in October 2021, waited out his six-month restraint of trade and began building Melon Mobile on 1 April 2022.

The insight: Building the “Netflix of Telco”

It wasn’t that anything was wrong with mobile infrastructure – the big boys had that down. What Calvin saw was SA’s changing behaviour: South Africans were living on their phones, building businesses and running their lives through their phones. Yet getting a SIM card still felt like applying for a home loan.

Paperwork. Waiting. Branch visits. The friction of getting a contract is like a journey built for a different decade. And it’s not due to legal requirements, as you would assume…

Calvin had analysed the friction in the mobile space well. “95% of the time, if you trace corporate’s SOPs, you’ll find it’s all internal,” he explains. “Many of their requirements are just baggage that got added to the process over time.”

In fact, telco tech was never built to be that flexible. The system itself won't allow much movement in bundle structure.

So what Calvin did was completely reimagine the journey of getting a SIM card in SA. By stripping away all the bureaucratic nonsense, he arrived at a pitch that won him the attention of his first team members: “A SIM card in 10 minutes”.

The hardest part of building

By April 2022, Calvin had won over a team of 8 people to build the Melon platform (essentially redesigning the user journey for mobile) on the side with him. But within 6 months, four had to come in full-time.

And Calvin had been bootstrapping until then. So it was time to raise funding, easily the “hardest part of building a startup” for him. Calvin approached around 70 different funders, from High-Net-Worth individuals, VCs, private equity, to family offices, and the answer was always the same: It looked like a slide deck.

A great idea on paper, but with no physical product to show, how would a better journey stand up against the moat of MTN and Vodacom’s lock-in?

Eventually, a single HNW investor came on board, and the team could build the platform, launching the Melon Mobile journey on 23 May 2023.

Now, it was just a case of getting South Africans to experience it…

When launch is easy compared to trust

From day one, it was clear the experience formula worked: When someone signed on, they loved it. Churn is super low, and ARPU is between 3-10x that of Vodacom and MTN.

The problem: Trust. They’d started with the standard acquisition playbook: Ads on Meta, Google and TikTok. But quickly learned the drawback of digital-only is reach and conversion at scale. There are so many scams in the mobile space, it’s hard for people to trust you on digital alone.

And mobile isn’t a casual purchase. It’s the number tied to your banking, your work, your family, your entire daily operating system. So, even if you’re changing the world, getting people to believe and recognise you is a whole new ball game.

So they did something totally counterintuitive for an app-first business: They went physical.

Most drivers in Gauteng would have seen Melon Mobile’s “we don’t do X” billboards, an idea born from deep dives into user behaviour: “We realised that everyone is frustrated with their mobile provider, you just have to catch them when they’re peeved off enough to want to take action – and then show them Melon green.”

Their billboards play on the idea of cutting clutter, deliberately borrowing familiar brand cues to earn a second look: “We don’t buy cars because we’re a mobile network” and We don’t put pineapple on things because we’re a mobile network.”

The point is not being subtle. It’s all about recall – giving a digital product a reason to live in your mind.

Summer’s best deals

And, so far, it’s working. Calvin says they’re getting consistent signups, with some external estimates saying they’re set to grow by 400% a year now, going fully into the scale-up phase.

They’ve even collaborated with Plato Coffee (putting their digital product in a daily-use, physical space again) and are exploring a potential Melon-Plato summer drink concept.

If you haven’t checked them out yet, now’s a good time:

Melon Mobile didn’t win by inventing new technology. It won by asking the uncomfortable questions. Proving the biggest disruption isn’t always a new network.

Sometimes, it’s a better journey.

The holidays are a time to relax, but your wallet doesn’t have to take a vacation.

Avoid impulsive purchases: Pause before you buy: ask yourself if it’s truly needed or just holiday FOMO.

Use a simple spending rule: Give yourself a daily or weekly holiday spending limit. Stick to it and enjoy the season without overspending.

Plan for January expenses: Know what’s coming next: school fees, insurance, subscriptions, or planned trips. Account for them now so you won’t be surprised later.

Prioritise rest to protect your finances: When you’re well-rested, you’re less likely to make rash money decisions. Treat sleep as a financial tool too.

A little planning now keeps the season joyful and your financial peace intact.

After retiring from pro rugby, Bob Skinstad was juggling multiple roles as an entrepreneur, investor and public speaker. But, while he is a legend in person, getting the same digital traction on LinkedIn isn’t something he enjoys, so it always lags.

But then he met the guys at FDC, and they took full ownership of his LinkedIn presence, updating his brand, posting and engaging on his behalf.

The results? In 3 years, Bob’s LinkedIn unlocked 33.5 million impressions, 797’000+ engagements and 70’000+ new followers, driving 72 direct business leads. It went from nothing to bringing in at least 2 high-quality new leads every month.

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If your business has a February year-end, the clock is already ticking. The second provisional tax return for the 2026 year of assessment is due, and income tax returns for the 2025 year must be filed. For many founders, this is the point where admin catches up fast.

Finvoke exists for exactly this moment. They act as an outsourced finance team for service-based businesses (from agencies and consultancies to software firms), handling bookkeeping, payroll, SARS and CIPC compliance, financial statements, and advisory support.

✅ Provisional tax returns done properly
✅ Income tax submissions without last-minute panic
✅ Clear numbers so you know where you actually stand

Jan–Feb is when most businesses realise they need help. The smart ones get ahead of it.

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