Two tech-savvy brothers began hustling at school; now they have bought SA’s biggest online ad website and are marketing to millions.
Sean and Donovan Bergsma, the new owners of Gumtree SA, the country’s biggest online classified advertisement website, launched their first tech start-up as twenty-somethings from a bedroom in their parents’ home.Impresa Capital. Through this they hold a majority of the shares in the Ignition Group of companies, also based in the city, and bought Gumtree SA. The sum they paid for it has not been disclosed.
Sean, 42, and Donovan, 38, speak of a “humble home” in their teenage years as pupils of Hillcrest High. They hustled, selling sweets, and by catching, packing and selling sardines to local supermarkets during the province’s famous sardine runs. They used the profits to pay for school trips and tennis tournaments.
The brothers always had an interest in technology and both obtained a BCom in informatics from Unisa. “Our dad came out of a tech background,” says Sean. “He was in industrial technology and we were lucky to have computers in the house in the early days. I couldn’t see myself doing anything in the BCom landscape, so I chose something that was tech driven.” It was also the time of the dot-com and e-commerce boom.
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