From Curious Kid to Cybersecurity CEO: Dave's Journey of 20 Years in the Making - SYNAQ’s Origin Story

 

Some people discover their passion late in life. Dave found his at seven years old — and never looked back. Over two decades later, he leads one of South Africa's most enduring cybersecurity companies, SYNAQ. This is the story of how relentless curiosity, a willingness to take risks, and an unwavering belief in people shaped both a remarkable career and a business built to last.

A Seven-Year-Old's Obsession

Not many people can pinpoint the exact moment they fell in love with their life's work. Dave can. "I've loved technology since I was about seven years old," he recalls, "and I was very lucky to be that clear, that early on, about what I loved."

That early fascination only deepened with time. By the age of 13, he had discovered Linux and open-source software — a pivotal encounter that gave him his first real look under the hood of how computers truly work. "That was a big moment for me," he says.

 

His appetite for learning didn't come from classrooms alone. He spent hours helping others on Linux mailing lists, troubleshooting problems and sharing solutions. It was, he reflects, one of the most formative experiences of his development. "By helping others, I was actually learning the most — and at the same time giving back. That's something that has stayed with me."

 

"By helping others, I was actually learning the most — and at the same time giving back."

 

Learning Through Constraints

Coming of age in 1995, at the very dawn of the commercial internet, Dave found himself in the right place at the right time — and he made the most of it. "Everything was new, and there was so much to explore," he remembers.

But it wasn't just opportunity that shaped him. Necessity played its part too. Dial-up internet was expensive, and access wasn't a given. Rather than accept that limitation, he began looking for ways around it. "That led me down all sorts of paths where I learned a lot about systems, networking, and security," he says with a smile. "It was very hands-on, very practical learning, driven mostly by curiosity and the need to solve problems."

He was spending between four and eight hours a day on his computer — not for entertainment, but for the sheer joy of understanding. It was an unconventional education, but an extraordinarily effective one.

The Idea That Started It All

Long before "cloud" and "SaaS" became industry buzzwords, Dave was already building what would essentially be South Africa's first cloud-based email security platform. It was 2002, and he was working at a local ISP, helping grow the business from the ground up.

 

It was a school friend, Yossi, who saw the opportunity. "He heard about what I was doing and asked me to meet for coffee," Dave recalls. The conversation that followed would change everything. Yossi's pitch was simple: "Why don't we start a business around this?"

The vision was to combine Linux and open source managed services with the email security platform Dave had built. SYNAQ was born.

 

"We came very close to running out of cash — but those hard moments forced clarity."

 

The Pivot That Nearly Broke Them

Building a new kind of business in a market that didn't yet fully understand what you were selling is never easy. For SYNAQ, the road from managed Linux services to cloud-based email security was paved with hard lessons.

"We had to invest heavily," Dave explains. "We hired developers, brought in a product development manager, and spent far more than we initially expected. It also took much longer than we thought."

At the same time, they were still running their existing business. The market knew them as Linux experts, and walking away from that identity while simultaneously building something entirely new put enormous strain on the company. "We were effectively running two business models at once, and we came very close to running out of cash."

The turning point came with a majority acquisition by Internet Solutions, part of the Dimension Data group. It was a hard decision, but the right one. The investment stabilised the business and gave SYNAQ the runway it needed to become what it is today.

 

From CTO to Chief Psychiatrist

Two decades on, Dave's day-to-day looks very different from those early years of deep technical work. As CEO, the job has evolved — and so has his understanding of what real leadership requires.

"I often joke that I'm the chief psychiatrist," he says. "A big part of what I do is helping people work through problems, creating clarity, and making sure the team has the space and tools they need to perform at their best."

He hasn't lost his technical grounding — that curiosity which first sparked at age seven never left him. But he knows that the most important thing he can do now is enable the people around him.

As for the future? After twenty years of building deep expertise in the South African market, Dave's ambitions have grown to match: "The goal is to take that global."

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SYNAQ has been securing South African businesses since 2004.