As ITWeb marks its 30th anniversary this month, executive chairman and founder Jovan Regasek reflects on the company’s journey since launching in March 1996.
In a candid look back, he celebrates the milestones that shaped the tech media pioneer, while opening up about the challenges faced along the way – and how perseverance helped turn obstacles into lasting success.
Although no longer involved in the day-to-day running of ITWeb, Regasek says the company’s future success will be powered by one key force – artificial intelligence (AI).
He founded ITWeb two years after relocating to South Africa from Belgrade, Serbia, which was then still part of what remained of war-torn Yugoslavia.
Before moving, Regasek had already built a legacy of media innovation in his home country, where he founded and edited the first PC technology magazine and launched Serbia’s first BBS (bulletin board system), a dial-up computer-to-server communication network.
“I feel great,” Regasek says about ITWeb turning 30. “The 30th anniversary is a significant milestone, especially in such a dynamic and volatile industry as online media and the internet in general.”
He notes that many companies have come and gone, but ITWeb is still here, going from strength to strength.
“I’m proud of what we achieved, together with my partners, board members, 690 employees and more than 2 000 freelancers, professional journalists and people from the ICT industry. I’m proud of the role we’ve been playing in our industry and in South Africa’s economy, in terms of our contributions to the country’s budgets and employment, and in the lives of our past and current employees.”
Prior to starting ITWeb, Regasek did not contemplate starting a company. “I did not think: ‘let me start a company’. I came up with a business idea, which led to starting a company.”
He reminisces that while working as a features editor at the trade publication Computer Week, he discovered what he described as a key pain point within the public relations industry.
“The ICT industry is very information-intensive – we were bombarded with press releases, and 99% of them ended up in the editor’s dustbin. Companies were spending so much money on the dustbin, and I then realised the internet would be an ideal ‘dustbin’.
“So, as a solution to this problem, I decided to create a central repository for press releases, globally accessible forever, and named it the Virtual Press Office (VPO).”
The VPO offered companies the opportunity to create their own branded virtual press offices and host press releases, company profiles, contact details, print-ready pictures of executives and products and other public relations material. Several years later, the VPO was positioned as a “perception management tool,” he adds.
Overcoming the nerves
Regasek remembers how nervous he was on his first day at ITWeb. “On 1 March 1996, everything was ready for business. I was waiting in anticipation for the first two employees, salesperson Lynn Horsfall and secretary Slavica, to come to work. I didn’t know whether they would show up for work at all. They came. I prepared and published the first story. Before I started the web server to go live, I was so scared – as if I was about to press a red button to launch a nuclear bomb. I felt as if the whole world would jump on me.”
As he steadied the ship, Angela Wresell, now Mace, joined in May, while Anja Regasek arrived in June, and is still with the company. Robert Mace and Sinisa Jovanovic joined in June and July as working investors. Ranka Jovanovic joined in 1997 to head a new website, WebShopper.
Regasek points out that in 1999, after securing the company’s first investments from a private investor and Archway − an investment fund founded by several IT companies − ITWeb was transformed from ITWeb CC into ITWeb Limited.
He explains that the move led to the formation of the company’s first board of directors, comprising Ranka Jovanovic as editorial director, Robert Mace as sales director, Angela Wresell as CRM director and later events director, and Sinisa Jovanovic as technical director, later chief technology officer, while Regasek served as CEO.
According to Regasek, the same board managed the company for about 25 years, and he attributes much of ITWeb’s success to the unity of the board and the hands-on operational contributions of each member.
On how ITWeb helped to reshape South Africa’s ICT industry, he says: “The media has an unbelievable power to influence public opinions, behaviour and actions. In its own right, ITWeb has that power in our ICT industry. As a key communication platform in the ICT industry, I believe ITWeb, with its three platforms, does influence industry developments. I believe that our timely, accurate and fair reporting on developments, trends and thinking has been a catalyst for decision-making in many boardrooms.”
He believes the company had made a positive, tangible impact on people’s lives, influencing not only its employees but also its readers.
“We prefer to employ young people and skill them up. Often, they would leave to work in mainstream media. For many years, we worked with Rhodes University and employed their graduates. We have good jobs to offer.”
The toughest hurdle, Regasek recalls, was winning over the very audience they were aiming to serve. When ITWeb first launched, it set out to be a go-to news service for the public relations (PR) industry – but the market wasn’t ready to bite.
“I was expecting the PR industry to welcome VPOs as a valuable tool for improving service to clients and increasing returns on investment. VPOs multiply the chance of reaching the target market with public relations messages by hundreds. The internet was uncharted territory and ITWeb was perceived as a dangerous competitor. When I faxed information about ITWeb to PR agencies to promote a service, one PR agency was so angry that they called me to say: “Don’t waste my fax paper with this rubbish!”
“So, I decided to bypass the PR companies and go straight to marketing managers and directors. Thankfully, they did not share their PR companies' views and started signing annual contracts. They understood that I was building something valuable for the industry,” he says.
By May 1996, when ITWeb officially launched, it had already secured 24 clients. The first was Stock Systems Technology, whose marketing director, Paul Booth, quickly saw the potential of the internet. He became not just a vocal supporter but also a regular columnist for the publication for many years, championing its vision from day one.
The transformation from a company news dissemination service into a media company was another challenge, Regasek adds.
“ITWeb was PR-based. I quickly realised this was not enough to aggregate the audience, so I introduced the original content on top of the VPOs. In 1997, Ranka Jovanovic, online editorial director, formed a professional newsroom with news writers and sub editor.
“Glenda van Zyl, our chief sub, finalised the process in 1998. We were employing the best editorial skills money can buy. It was challenging to strike a healthy balance between hosting press releases and original news and information on the same platform. Press releases are mortal enemies of credibility. Yet we managed to find the balance and to build credibility and trustworthiness with our original content. Besides, press releases are not as evil as ‘real journalists’ believe. They might be poorly written in a propaganda style, but they might contain valuable information. The information is what counts.”
In the world of B2B media, Regasek says the real game-changer is relevance, not just excellence. That said, he notes that ITWeb has never compromised on quality, striving to deliver content that’s both timely and top-notch.
With the launch of Brainstorm magazine in 2002 and its events division in 2004, ITWeb evolved into a full-spectrum media powerhouse, spanning multiple platforms and formats, he adds.
Asked about his vision for the company, he says: “I don’t manage the company anymore, and my vision does not matter – I’m not there to make it happen.
“We have a young, energised management team in place, with Ivan Regasek as CEO and Masa Lloyd as COO. My dream is that ITWeb fully adopts artificial intelligence to improve efficiency, productivity and the quality of our work.
“We have an archive of more than 200 000 articles. What a wealth of information! I can’t even imagine the value AI could extract from that for the reader's benefit. But our journalists will continue writing our articles and our editors will edit them. I can imagine a badge on our articles: ‘genuinely human’.
Family affair
As a family-oriented business, Regasek also addresses the issue of nepotism, saying it’s normal for him to rely on family members.
“Anja Drobnjak, my daughter, is the oldest active employee. My niece Sonja Khan is a sales director. My son Ivan Regasek is CEO. My daughter Masa Lloyd is COO. My wife, Jela Regasek, was a banner designer. Before she retired, she designed 35 000 banners for our clients. My grandson Damian Anicic is a junior developer. I’m fortunate that my family members are interested and capable of working in the company. They bring stability and certainty.”
Despite being a family company, he says ITWeb was open to everybody. “We had three institutional investors in different periods and a share incentive scheme for our employees – some 20 employees were shareholders. My family members don’t own any shares. They are just employees, like everybody else, without any privileges. While CEO, I did not have any privileges either. Excluding the first couple of months, I never even had a secretary,” he concludes.
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