About Launchworks

I spent most of my career in the corporate world. Strategy roles in the creative sector, a mix of marketing and commercial work, the kind of career where you are surrounded by smart people and interesting problems but someone else owns the business.

Then the company I was leading was acquired, and overnight I went from running the business to being an expensive resource. I never wanted to have to justify my worth to people who could decide my future, so I decided to do it for myself.

I wish I had done it earlier. What held me back was fear. I was never sure how much of my credibility was tied to the corporate brand I worked for, and whether I could build something without it. I suspect most people considering this move have the same question sitting somewhere in their head.

In the three years since, I have started and co-founded two businesses in advertising and strategy. But those are not the only businesses I have built.

Over the years I have started, bought, and sold businesses across a range of models. A digital marketing agency targeting small businesses. Affiliate and cashback businesses where I learned what happens when a platform you depend on changes its terms overnight. A product dropshipped from China into the South African security market. A spirits brand launched through a contract packer, which taught me how much capital it takes to build an FMCG brand from scratch. Two Wimpy franchise restaurants, which taught me the trade-off between the support a franchise gives you and the control it takes away. And a bakery I bought as a single outlet, built a central manufacturing facility for, expanded to 10 locations, grew to R30 million a month in turnover, and eventually sold.

Some of these worked. Some did not. I learned more from the ones that did not.

What all of it taught me is that the type of business matters as much as the idea. A franchise is a fundamentally different life to a consulting practice. A product business has different capital demands to a digital one. A retail operation asks different things of you than a service business. Most of the advice available to new entrepreneurs in South Africa does not make this distinction. It treats “starting a business” as one thing. It is not.

Launchworks is the tool I wish I had before my first business. It asks the questions I had to learn to ask myself, and it is honest about what the answers mean.

Adam McKeon

Durban, South Africa

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