From A Garage In Claremont To A Global Brand And A Thriving South African Distributor

From A Garage In Claremont To A Global Brand And A Thriving South African Distributor, Carey Van Vlaanderen Walks Us Through Her Journey As ESET CEO.

Carey van Vlaanderen’s journey with ESET began before it even reached South Africa. Back in 2002 her and the business’ co-founder Justin Stanford ran 4D Digital Security out of a garage in Claremont, Cape Town. They primarily did pen testing, with Justin working as a white hat hacker. Carey’s husband and father-in-law simultaneously ran a fruit exporting business out of another garage, which helped fund the start-up Carey and Justin ran. Together, they would set out in Justin’s Tazz looking for clients to whom they could offer vulnerability assessments. ESET was the chosen anti-virus software, and so their journey with ESET began and the small team set up an ESET distributor in South Africa.

Over the following years, ESET South Africa grew from a team of two, to a team of three, until they moved from office space to office space to accommodate the growing crew.

Now with 40 employees and strong tech experts backing them, ESET South Africa boasts more revenue than ever before; a rewarding and promising milestone for a CEO who was there from the start in a garage.

Having nurtured the business in a hands-on manner for so long, dealing with the company’s growth and being able to step back was a challenge for Carey, but a rewarding opportunity she said, in a recent interview. “As you grow, one of my biggest difficulties was moving away from operational detail. I’m a strict perfectionist so stepping away and trusting people was one of my biggest hurdles, but it’s such a lovely feeling on the other side.” Carey attributed overcoming the challenge of stepping away to her trustworthy and highly skilled managers and team. “I absolutely trust all the managers and they’ve got so much passion in each department. The best thing you can do as a leader is set yourself up with people around you that are way better than you and then it’s amazing and it’s worth it,” she says.

Another difficulty as time went on was to establish the company culture. “As you grow your culture grows with you,” she explains. “If you don’t put it down from the beginning, or as you go, there is this big milestone for other people to understand you.” After a lot of time working on the culture that felt right, ESET South Africa was able to say with confidence and in a meaningful way ‘this is who we are’.

At the core of her philosophy on leading and running a business is an unequivocal passion for people. “I love the people that work in cybersecurity and love being able to grow people, so that’s really where the passion is.” This love and urge to nurture people and grow them has proven immeasurably helpful through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the course of the last year and a half, Carey has had to face the emotional difficulties that her team has gone through in their own personal lives and has had the mammoth task of trying to manage it with sensitivity and authenticity. While difficult, she attributes overcoming the hurdle to getting to know each team member’s motivational core.

Getting in touch with this helped her to notice when team members were feeling burnt out or needing a little extra motivation, and how to help them through what they were enduring. She says that there is a lot of power in being a female leader and tapping into empathy on this level.

On the topic of women at work, Carey understands her duty to represent and inspire other women as a female CEO, but for her it’s more about the person she is. Growing up, her family never put emphasis on gender roles; it was about who you are as a person and what you want to achieve in your life, and she believes that has made its way into her everyday mindset. Include a grandmother who started her own business, and you have all the makings of an entrepreneurial little girl who turned into a woman with big vision.

That little girl grew up to be CEO of a digital security company, mom of two, and sportswoman. All these aspects of her life have people asking how she manages it all and she says, she is able to manage because she has them in her life. Exercise through team sport helps her to de-stress and balance her life, and she needs to manage her job and her family, so although the balance tips from time to time, she always finds a way to bring it back.

Carey lives a holistic life, but beyond that she’s the CEO of a company that went from garage to global; she lives to nurture people through difficult times and has overcome some herself, but the remarkable thing about Carey van Vlaanderen is that she does it all with a smile.

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We took a look at CEO Carey van Vlaanderen’s journey at ESET, the hurdles she’s faced, and how she balances being a mom, SportsWoman, and people-centred leader. “I love the people that work in cybersecurity and love being able to grow people,” she says. Read more about this inspiring woman here: [link]

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We took a look at CEO Carey van Vlaanderen’s journey at ESET, the hurdles she’s faced, and how she balances being a mom, Sportswoman, and people-centred boss. Read more about this inspiring woman here: [link]