As a former motorsport athlete turned founder, operator and investor, my career has been defined by a love for working with brilliant minds.

On LinkedIn, I usually share unfiltered thoughts on startups and investments - and what it actually takes to build. No fluff. No BS. Just straight talk from someone who's been on both sides of the table and seen the good and the bad.

I'm heading up different companies:

📈 Paaske & Co | My consulting firm specialized in building thought leadership within tech and investment. I work with executives, entrepreneurs, family offices, VCs and PE firms to build unique storytellings and execute organic content-led growth strategies that drives business results - backed by deep vertical knowledge.

🚀 Abeam | A curated global community for unicorn founders, top-investors and leading executives. We are removing the noise and facilitating real-life peer-to-peer connection for those at the top of their game. (Download the Abeam in App Store to apply for membership).

Maiken Paaske

First Sweden tried it. Then abolished it because the losses were bigger than the gains. Then Norway tried it and lost more than it gained. And now Denmark is about to try it too. The wealth tax 💸 

In 2022, Norway raised its wealth tax expecting DKK ~1 billion in extra revenue. The actual result? They lost DKK ~4 billion. Over 300 wealthy founders and investors left the country, taking capital, jobs, and future investment with them.

Sweden's story is older but identical. By the time they abolished their wealth tax in 2007, Swedish offshore assets had passed SEK 500 billion. IKEA's Kamprad left. Tetra Pak's Rausing left. H&M's ownership restructured to survive it. When they finally scrapped the tax, total revenue increased by SEK 260 billion over the following decade.

The historic economic learnings are SO clear. We have two case studies right next to us. Both say the same thing.

What makes Denmark's politicians think the math will be any different here? 🤔 

We’re literally implementing a competitive handicap for our business owners, backed by law.

Founder @ Abeam - The home for outliers | Former VC partner | Board member

CEO / Co-Founder @ Skywalk Innovations | Technical Innovation

I’m the CEO & Chief Innovation Architect at Skywalk Innovations, partnering with forward-thinking organizations to define their future desired state and build the bridge from today’s landscape to tomorrow’s breakthroughs.

With 10+ years at the helm of Skywalk, I’ve spearheaded 50+ innovation initiatives and launched 6 startups (5 still thriving, 50+ team members). I’m equally at home sketching high-level strategy or diving into GenAi use cases and business models, and I invest 20–30% of our revenue into R&D, so we’re always pushing the envelope on AI, CloudNative, Video-streaming, and beyond.

What I Do

Vision & Roadmapping: I lead Technology Radar workshops to spot white-space opportunities, then co-create a metrics-driven roadmap, complete with compliance by design.

Modular Architecture: Our modular-first approach lets you introduce new capabilities (LLMs, payment rails, IoT feeds) without costly rewrites, accelerating time-to-value.

Tiger Teams & Stage-Gate Sprints: We embed cross-disciplinary squads (engineers, product managers, domain experts) into your organization, running rapid prototyping cycles, customer co-creation workshops, and “innovation retrospectives” to continuously tighten the flywheel.

Ecosystem Orchestration: As proud AWS partners, and through alliances, we combine domain access with delivery excellence, de-risking complexity and expediting adoption.

How We’ve Delivered

Public Sector Digitization: Helped a government financial services division drive 40,000+ monthly user engagements through a new digital platform.

Professional-Services Modernization: Integrated our bespoke BPM engine into a facilities-management operation, automating resource allocation and approval workflows to reduce manual handoffs by 45% and accelerate service delivery.

Telecom Billing Re-Architecture: Rebuilt a telco’s core billing engine to support six distinct channels and daily product launches.

Global SaaS Expansion: Partnered with a U.S. enterprise to launch a new platform serving global customers alongside their legacy services.

PropTech Innovation: Designed a seamless home-buyer journey that facilitated 30,000 property sales.

Why Work With Us?
We don’t do one-off pilots, we build enduring innovation engines. If you’re ready to map your future state with crystal-clear metrics, assemble the right teams, and execute at velocity, let’s connect.

👉 Book a no-obligation strategy session:
https://outlook.office.com/bookwithme/user/415f8af9b5554ef384261c2804571094@skywalkinnovations.co.za/meetingtype/SVRwCe7HMUGxuT6WGxi68g2?anonymous

Tyrone Adams

I’m building an Africa-first, globally relevant company — on purpose.

Growing up, I struggled to find founders who looked like me, with my background, building world-class businesses. That gap gave me fear and fuel: fear because the path felt undefined, fuel because I refused to believe we don’t belong on the global stage.

In year three, we landed our first global client. It wasn’t just revenue — it was proof. Proof that excellence travels. Proof that the stage is real. And proof that Africa doesn’t need permission.
Since then, my mission has stayed the same:
take Africa to the world — and make it undeniable. Africa 3.0.

What I do, in practical terms: I build and back teams thats focused on raising the bar — strengthening the operating rhythm, the standards, and the systems that allow a business to scale without losing its soul.

I’m looking to work with:
- Bold founders building serious, long-term companies (not quick flips).
- Leadership teams who want to operationalise strategy and raise the execution bar.
- Organisations ready to modernise how work gets done — with accountability and measurable outcomes.
- Partners and clients who believe in Africa’s potential and want to build globally from here.

If you’re building something that should be world-class — and you’re ready to match ambition with execution — let’s connect.

(And if you’re a young builder from Africa reading this: you don’t need to see many examples to become one. Sometimes you become an example.)

#AfricaTech #Founder #Leadership #Execution #Innovation #Scale #Operations

CEO @ Skywalk Innovations | Technical Innovation

If it was easy everyone would do it, I'm reminded daily of how gruelling business building can be.

I have to often remind myself of all the good we have done, and I don't mean awards, I mean things like:

- 13 years of paying vat, income and corporate taxes giving back to the economy 
- 13 years of performance appraisals, helping individuals grow their careers 
- 13 years of paying salaries that support families 
- 13 years of paying suppliers for work delivered for us
- 13 years of making money with partners 
- 13 years of internships to create entry level jobs
- 13 years of peer groups supporting each other
- 13 years of mentorship/coffee sessions with others, giving back whatever was given to me.

I have to remind myself that there is a bigger mission, there is an opportunity to create real impact and on top of it to build a business that lasts, something great, something to be proud of. This journey hardly gets easier, it just takes a different shape each time, with different demands, requiring of you to keep adapting. 

It's hard for a reason, no matter what the over night success builders or the AI agents will destroy your business tomorrow promoters say. Measure success in the way that makes sense to you, otherwise, you just set yourself up for disappointment.

Fall in love with the mission, as Bezos would say, be stubborn on the Vision and be flexible in the details.

#entrepreneurship #journey #reflection #13years

Last year, I told my team something very clearly:

This is the wave we cannot afford to miss. Since around 2023, it’s been obvious that something fundamental was changing.

At the same time, South Africa’s economy has been largely stagnant. GDP growth is low. Budgets are tight.

Corporations continue to spend on software, but most of that spending goes to a small handful of global players. Meanwhile, small and mid-sized businesses are trying to serve their customers better, faster, and more efficiently. Many of the tools available to them are priced in dollars and simply out of reach for the local market.

So we made a call at Skywalk.

Over time, we would transition from pure services into building our own platforms that can compete locally against global software providers.

Our mission from day one has always been the same: Build Africa 3.0. Show the world what happens when African talent focuses on a single direction to solve real problems.

That journey led us to what I call the Agency 2.0 model.

The idea is simple:

Give organisations, big or small, a platform that lets them harness the power of modern AI and LLMs in a way that is localised, affordable, and actually usable in their day-to-day operations. Not hype. Not demos.

But something that lets a team show up to a knife fight with a gun. We explored many directions along the way:
- wealth management workflows
- digital workers
- internal AI tools

But we kept coming back to the same core idea:

Businesses need a way to do more with less, in a way that fits how they already work.

That’s what led us to build FlowSync. Initially, it started as an internal platform.
We used it to handle operational work that we simply couldn’t hire more people to do. The launch was slow, to be honest.

We started with just two clients and quickly realised the platform needed more capabilities to support customer workflows truly, not just become another piece of software in the stack. So we kept building.

Fast forward a few months, and we’ve now closed three new pilot customers, each with the potential to expand significantly in scope. It’s still very early.
But one commitment I made to myself during this transition was to share the journey openly with others building in the same space.

So this is the 9-month update. More lessons to come as we keep building.
And I’m curious to hear from others, how are you approaching this wave?

#Africa #Technology #Skywalk #BuildInPublic #AI

“We’ll build it ourselves… unless it’s from an international company.”

Then suddenly the budget opens. 

I’ve been in sales for over 13 years, and what has always fascinated me is how enterprise buyers evaluate local solutions.

More often than not, Corporate SA would rather hire a local startup as contractors to build a solution for them than simply pay a license fee for that same solution.

But when an international company arrives? Even if the solution:
- is priced in dollars
- has a graveyard of failed deployments
- has no legal liability in South Africa
…they’re welcomed with open arms.

I’ve heard this same story from countless founders across different industries. Many choose to sell offshore first, build credibility internationally, and then come back to South Africa.

And even then, they still have to jump through hoops to prove themselves. Yet at the same time, I’ve seen executives sign off on R100m+ multi-year contracts for international solutions that could have been sourced locally for a fraction of the price.

So why am I sharing this?

Because I committed to building in public, and that means sharing the highs and the lows. A few weeks ago, I managed to get time with a senior executive at a large corporation.

I walked him through:
1. What we’re building
2. How we could help
3. Our credentials
4. and what the estimated cost would look like.

After the presentation, he said something that stuck with me. They were planning to build it internally, but they wanted to see what we were doing.

I won’t lie, it felt like a bit of a gut punch.

Not because of the rejection, but because when I did the napkin math afterwards, it became clear that cost or value weren’t really the deciding factors. There’s almost no way they could build it cheaper.

But in many of my outbound conversations after that, I kept hearing the same response:

“We’re planning to do this in-house.”

Still, this is part of the journey. As founders, we can’t throw in the towel every time we hear no. If anything, moments like this force you to rethink your approach and sharpen your strategy.

I’m a pretty determined person.

So I’ll keep knocking on doors.

Because somewhere in the hundreds of rejections is the yes that changes everything.

#Founders #BuildingInPublic #Africa #Startups

“The workflow has collapsed… but the collapse has created more friction than ever.”

For the past two years, we’ve been on a journey at Skywalk to become more AI-native in how we deliver work for clients.

It’s been a constant process of iteration.

Every few months, the underlying technology changes —> new models, new tooling, new capabilities, and we’ve had to continuously rethink how our core workflow should operate.

In January, we made a big decision. We decided to completely overhaul how we design and build software products.

Specifically, we merged what used to be separate design and development workflows into a new unified model.

For many AI-native startups, this might seem obvious. But if you’ve built a professional services company around clearly defined stages like:

• analysis
• design
• development
• testing
• operations

…then you’ve also built an entire business model around those boundaries.

Not just a process. A structure. Each division becomes its own mini-organisation with:

- its own KPIs
- its own delivery methodology
- its own tooling
- its own way of working.

And suddenly we threw that model out the window. Almost overnight. We essentially said:

“From now on, these boundaries don’t exist anymore.”

Everyone now has to operate closer together, iterate faster, and design systems with AI in the loop from the start. It’s messy.

This is exactly why companies exist purely for change management, helping organizations transition into new ways of working.

But in typical startup fashion… We ripped the cord and let the pieces fall where they may. And here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Transitioning a traditional professional services business into an AI-native operating model is much harder than people think.

Adding tools like ChatGPT or Claude into your workflow is the easy part. The real challenge is something deeper:

Redesigning the entire operating model of the company.

Not just the engineering teams. But also the functions around them:

- sales
- delivery
- project management
- support
- operations

Because once AI compresses the workflow, the organisation itself has to reshape around it. We’ve had plenty of heated debates internally during this transition. But I can also see something new starting to emerge, both in how our team works and how we deliver outcomes for clients.

Change is uncomfortable. But it’s necessary for the world we’re moving into.

#Founders #BuildingInPublic #Africa #Startups

I think, like most people, we are all trying to figure out what our strategy will be to leverage this GenAi wave to our benefit. 

Listening to a few podcasts and conversations I have held, there are many that are either all in and looking to Ctrl+Alt+Delete their old operating model, and then there are others that are playing the wait-and-see game. I thought I would share some questions or perspectives I have used when thinking about what this means to me:

1. Top-level questions

- Is this core technology a disruption to my business model?
- Is this core technology a disruption to my capabilities?
- Is this core technology able to open up new markets I never considered exploring before because of cost/capacity or other reasons?
- Does this technology change the engagement model? 
- Are customers meeting delivery teams or working with agent capabilities?

2. Tactical questions

- Does this give me a gun that I can take to knife fights?
- What are the offerings I removed in the past that seem more viable now?
- Can I further decouple parts of my delivery/capability/business model to create a new productised offering?
- How do I create value for customers without getting them on a call?
- Should I build/buy or partner for new capability/offerings?
- Can I use this to unlock non-traditional deals, like capability for equity?
- What are the byproducts of what we do that can be monetised?
- If I had to relaunch an offering in two weeks what would I do?
- What can now be done in 2 weeks to create value instead of 1 to 2 months?
- What does a software-defined agency look like?

These are just some ideas and questions I have been asking myself as we navigate this current wave. I am curious to hear what others are asking themselves while navigating this journey.

#Africa #Technology #Business #GenAi

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