Three partners.
No delivery pyramid.

Chartered management accountant who moved from institutional fund accounting into commercial intelligence and growth systems.

Jacques spent his early career in fund accounting in London, running the accounting function across property and investment funds with gross asset values in the billions — including consolidations spanning entities in France, the UK, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy and Austria.

He returned to South Africa into senior finance roles, serving as Group Finance Manager at a management consultancy, Head of Finance at a water infrastructure business, and Financial Director at Rise-Up Investments.

He is Director of Strategy, Brand and Innovation at Debt Solutions 4U, where he leads market positioning, digital ecosystems, AI and automation integration, and client acquisition systems — the engagement that produced the DS4U results published on this site.

At FrictionZero he leads commercial intelligence: reading trade and market data for the commercial signal inside it, and translating that into where a client should actually be selling.

• ACMA, CGMA — Chartered Institute of Management Accountants
• BCom Honours, Financial Accountancy — North-West University
• Fund accounting across multi-billion GAV structures, London
• Financial Director, Rise-Up Investments

Product strategist and CTO who has been building and scaling technology companies since the 1990s.

Arno has spent three decades in technology product development, spanning telecommunications, mobile platforms, advertising technology and data systems.

He founded and led MoBC, a mobile advertising platform delivering sponsored data rewards in emerging markets, building partnerships with banks and mobile operators and serving millions of users. He has served as Managing Director at ONEdotCOM, a voice and data provider to large South African retail and call-centre operations.

Through Octivate he has spent over a decade helping companies build, validate and scale technology products — focused on product-market fit and investment readiness. He holds a CTO and product strategy role at Reson18 Holdings in the Netherlands, and is Chief Technology Officer at Debt Solutions 4U.

At FrictionZero he builds the systems: API integrations, automation architecture, data pipelines and the platform infrastructure that turns intelligence into something a sales team can actually use.

• BEng Electronic Engineering — Stellenbosch University
• CTO, Reson18 Holdings B.V. (Netherlands)
• Founder & MD, MoBC mobile advertising platform
• Product strategy consultant, Octivate — 15 years

Head of Global Sales at an export business selling certified organic product into international markets.

Rowan has spent over fifteen years in international sales at Ezinqoleni Essential Oils, a KwaZulu-Natal producer operating a direct farm-to-market export model.

The business works with more than 550 independent partner farmers, running nursery propagation, cultivation, harvest and distillation, with full batch traceability and Kiwa BCS Oeko-Garantie organic certification. Rather than buying and reselling partner farmers’ oils, the model sells alongside them — giving smallholders direct access to international markets.

That is the practical experience behind FrictionZero’s export work: identifying which markets import a product, who the real buyers are, what they pay, and how to open a conversation with a procurement decision-maker on the other side of the world.

At FrictionZero he leads commercial relationships, introductions and the closing end of the business.

• Head of Global Sales, Ezinqoleni Essential Oils — 15+ years
• Import/export operations and international key accounts
• Direct farm-to-market export model across 550+ partner farmers
• Certified organic supply chains (Kiwa BCS Oeko-Garantie)