In February 1996, I saw a magazine cover that literally changed the course of my life. It was the February 19th edition of TIME Magazine, and on the cover was a young man sitting barefoot on a golden throne — Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape. He looked like a technology rebel. He looked like he couldn’t care what you thought he of him. He looked iconic. He was changing the world, as we knew it, through the Internet!

Marc was 24 years old at the time and already worth an estimated US$56 million following the Netscape IPO in August 1995. The article was titled “The Golden Geeks” — celebrating the youthful inventors of the nascent Internet age. You can read it here:

https://time.com/archive/6728589/high-stakes-winners

I was around the same age as Marc at the time. But unlike him, I had just dropped out of University due to financial reasons. I was at a crossroads, uncertain of what the future held. But that TIME Magazine cover — and Marc’s story — stirred something deep inside me.

It reminded me of the seeds planted much earlier in my life:

• Growing up, my father had bought us a Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer around 1985. That was my gateway to technology and learning to code games in BASIC and in the process learned how computers worked from a software perspective.
• In high school, I spent countless hours in the computer lab — feeding a growing fascination with technology.
• My late father, a civil and structural engineer, had another computer in the late 80s or early 90s for his engineering software. He even enrolled me in a computer college as a teenager where I learned Lotus 123, MS DOS, DBase 3 & 4, and the original Microsoft Office. I was the learning next to much older professionals like Accountants and other Business Leaders. It was quite frankly unreal and they all looked at me wondering what the heck this kid was doing there learning this computer stuff as there was no real world application of the same for someone of my age at the time 🙂 My father was unconventional for sure.

That early exposure made all the difference.

By 1995, I had an idea to start an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Mombasa — where none existed at the time. I scraped together some money and traveled to Nairobi, networking at technology events like AITEC and visiting early ISPs like ARCC (where I experienced the web for the first time using Netscape Navigator), Africa Online, and Form-Net. I even tried to launch the first ISP in Mombasa called ‘CoastNet’ with a Kenyan computer scientist based in the US. It never took off — but it was a start.

Eventually, when Africa Online and Form-Net opened local operations in Mombasa, I applied for jobs. A small but serendipitous twist of fate helped me: the local partner at Form-Net had gone to school with my sister, saw my name on the application, and gave me a chance.

That chance became my first Internet job — doing installations and sales, helping people get online with analogue modems and the required Internet software. You can’t imagine what it was like to work in the office everyday (yes, Sundays too) and have the Internet available on at 24 X 7 X 365 basis to do whatever you wanted online – I was in digital heaven! As it turned out, I thrived in the role, leveraging my local networks and passion for technology. Soon after, I was offered a sales job at Africa Online. The rest, you could say, is history, to where I am today.

And that — was the beginning of what has now been a nearly 30-year career on the Internet, working with leading Kenyan, African, and global Internet companies as well as my own Internet-focussed start-up, Dotsavvy, arguably Kenya’s oldest digital agency having been around since 2002.

But it all started with that one image. That one story. That one spark.

The TIME Magazine cover with Marc Andreessen.

Looking back now, it’s clear: sometimes, it just takes one defining moment to change everything.