Executive Team

Pieter De VilliersCEO

Founder and CEO of Clickatell, Pieter de Villiers is responsible for establishing Clickatell as the world’s leading mobile messaging provider, enabling tens of thousands of enterprises and millions of consumers to interact, communicate and benefit greatly via their mobile phone. De Villiers has led the company and its employees through a decade of robust growth and innovation by providing high value, application-to-person (A2P) SMS services to banks and other financial services providers, governments, social communities, and a myriad of mobile developers in several additional vertical markets.

Early in his successful optometry career, de Villiers made a radical shift by accepting an opportunity to join Micrologix, where he was responsible for identifying innovative e-commerce opportunities in the healthcare sector, a market still in its infancy in 1999. Quickly realizing the potential of the internet and its intersection with mobility, specifically text messaging, De Villiers had the foresight to understand the need for a global web to mobile messaging gateway.

Based on the insight that text messaging would ultimately be used by businesses and organizations to reach consumers, de Villiers co-founded Clickatell in 2000 and began developing what is now considered to be the largest global mobile messaging platform in operation on the web today. Having 10,000+ customers, serving 220+ countries, and connecting through 819 networks, Clickatell provides mobile services for many of the top Fortune 1000.

Member: GSM Association (www.gsm.org), Wireless Internet Caucus (www.ctia.org), Open Mobile Alliance (www.openmobilealliance.org), Wireless Application Service Provider Association (www.waspa.org.za), Mobile Data Association (www.mda-mobiledata.org), Mobile Marketing Association (www. mmaglobal.com)

Past Speaking: CTIA Wireless; Mobile World Congress, Wireless Influencers; and other regional conference throughout the world.

Personal Award Recognition: Mobile Star, Visionary of the Year in Wireless, 2009 & 2010; Visiongain’s MCA’s Industry Personality of the Year, 2009 (Clickatell industry awards: www.clickatell.com/press/industry_recognition.php)

Johan de LangeEVP Mobile Messaging

Johan has expertise on building, marketing and commissioning e-business,

e-commerce, payment platform and Internet businesses. He has innovative product development and start up expertise and is skilled at managing international teams as well as large contract and tender negotiations.

Johan spent the last 15 years as a senior manager and executive consultant on hardware/software network, e-business development, e-commerce and Internet related projects and issues. He has successfully started and developed a number of financial services companies and initiatives on three continents.

Some of the previous positions Johan held was that of CEO of Transsmart Holdings Limited and Kwikpay BJP LLC. He was also COO of Kwikpay and Client Director of ICL South Africa.

Marlize van der WesthuizenFinancial Director

Marlize earned her honours in B Compt at the University of South Africa and become a member of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants in 2003, with all her studies being on a part- time basis.
Marlize joined Clickatell in March 2012 as Financial Director, and has the responsibility for all the financial, fiscal management and legal aspects of the business in providing leadership, strategy insight, process design and management expertise to ensure that the company execute on its operating plan and meets its objectives, working closely with the group CEO.

She has gained her more than 17 years post- article experience in mainly the technology driven industry within the Naspers / Media24 group’s internet division know as 24.com at the time (from 2001 to 2008). Prior to joining Clickatell she was the CFO for the South African newly formed Harsco Infrastructure South Africa (Pty) Ltd, part of the US listed global Harsco Corporation. Her experience also includes involvement in a large FMCG group in her earlier career.

Marlize has been responsible throughout her career for various implementations, setups and management of financial departments, procedures and controls within the various entities she has been involved in, varying from established but fast growing industries to new entities as part of a group global growth strategy.

Bill WolfeEVP Small & Medium Business / Chief Strategy Officer

Bill Wolfe, a senior executive with an excellent track record in managing business cycles, business planning, product innovation, development, marketing and sales, was appointed as Executive Vice President of Small & Medium Business / Chief Strategy Officer.

Wolfe is responsible for the engineering, systems operations, and support for Clickatell’s world wide operations as well as internal systems including IT and facilities. Wolfe joined Clickatell from Verisign where he was the executive in charge of Verisign’s Communications Business Unit. Prior to Verisign, Wolfe was CTO at Openwave Systems as well holding responsibility for M&A, Strategic Alliances, and Integration. Wolfe holds a number of patents.

Mervyn GoliathEVP of Engineering and Operations

Mervyn Goliath has over 25 years of experience in the telecommunications, mobile banking, payment and transaction services industries and has held and excelled in executive roles at leading outfits, including ABSA (part of Barclays), MWeb (part of MIH) and Telkom.

Most recently, Mervyn was the Chief Operating Officer of Digital Banking Services for ABSA one of the largest financial services providers on the African continent, where his primary responsibility focused on transforming the bank’s digital channels. Before ABSA, Goliath served as CTO and General Manager of Technology and Operations at MWEB and as Group Head in National Telematics and Data Services at Telkom.

Pieter De VilliersCEO

Pieter is the CEO and one of the four co-founders of Clickatell. Starting his career in 1997 in the optometry field; Pieter has over 9 years of sales, new business management and product development experience under his belt. During this time, he took a radical shift in his career and accepted the opportunity for a partnership offer and moved into the IT sector. He joined Micrologix in 1999, whereby his primary responsibilities included the identifying of internet-related opportunities and the management of its e-commerce strategy.

Pieter recognized early in the game the need for a single point of entry for global text delivery was essential for market penetration and adoption of this new mobile technology. So in February 2000, Pieter made the decision to invest in developing mobile communication strategies and became a founding member and CEO of Clickatell. Today, Clickatell is recognized as a worldwide leader in mobile messaging providing ‘any message, anywhere’ services to over 8,000 global enterprises.

Pieter participates in various forums and interest groups including but not limited to the GSM Association (www.gsm.org), Wireless Internet Caucus (www.ctia.org), Open Mobile Alliance (www.openmobilealliance.org), Wireless Application Service Provider Association (www.waspa.org.za) and the Mobile Data Association (www.mda-mobiledata.org).

Concise details of previous speaking experience

Apart from his participation in various forums and interests groups, Pieter de Villiers has presented, on numerous occasions, his thoughts on the mobile messaging value chain at a number of mobile conferences in the US, Europe and Africa. His most recent event, being the CTIA Wireless in the US this year.

Michael GoguenSequoia Capital

Michael Goguen focuses on cleantech, semiconductor and systems investments. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1996, Michael spent 10 years in various engineering, research, and product management roles at DEC, SynOptics and Centillion, and was a director of Engineering at Bay Networks (NT). Michael was also a Technical Chairman of the ATM Forum. Michael has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Nicholas K. Pianim (Managing Director)DAG Ventures

Prior to joining DAG Ventures in 2007, Nick was Vice President of Corporate Development at Juniper Networks where he was responsible for acquisitions, commercial transactions and venture investments. Previously he was CFO for Ensemble Communications where he oversaw corporate development, and CEO of iAsiaWorks, a NASDAQ listed datacenter and managed services company. He also worked with Enterprise Partners Venture Capital on a variety of development and investment assignments and with Morgan Stanley International. Nick received a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Tufts University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Samantha Pokroy Bossenger, PrincipalEthos Private Equity

Samantha Pokroy Bossenger joined Ethos as a Principal in 2006. She has played a leading role in a number of Ethos Technology Fund transactions, including the buyout of CQS and the complex internationalisation and follow-on financing at Clickatell. Samantha has gained widespread experience and skills across all aspects of the private equity value chain and is now involved in the broader buyout business. Samantha currently serves on the boards of ATIO Corporation, Clickatell and CQS Technology.Prior to joining Ethos, Samantha was a Vice President at Kipp, Reese, Koldyke & Co. (now Winona Capital Management), a Chicago-based private equity firm focusing on middle market consumer-driven growth companies. Previously, she worked in New York in the Financial Sponsors Investment Banking Group at JPMorgan Chase and as a consultant with Stern Stewart & Co.Samantha holds an MBA with Honours from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Bachelor of Commerce degree and a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in Industrial Psychology from the University of the Witwatersrand. Samantha is also a CFA Charter Holder.

Deon van Heerden

Deon Van Heerden is an accomplished management consultant and successful entrepreneur with 12 years experience in a wide variety of large-scale strategic business transformation consulting programs, general management and operations. Previously, van Heerden held the position of senior manager with Accenture and The Berkeley Partnership. He also founded a successful private healthcare company in the UK.