Roelf Diedericks is a serial entrepeneur and director of Byte Heavy Industries (Pty) Ltd, and Cool Ideas Service Provider (Pty) Ltd, the top-rated Internet Service Provider in South Africa.
His first post-university and military conscription employment was at the South African Reserve Bank, as a network and mainframe systems engineer.
After tech-incubating several websites in the 2002 dot-com era, such as Ananzi.co.za, and I-Net Bridge, a distributor of real-time stock market data, as well as businessday.co.za, financialmail.co.za and sundaytimes.co.za a change of direction was required.
With a few friends, he struck out on his own, and started neology.co.za, responsible for WIMAX, WISP and ISP management/billing systems deployment through Africa. Large customers such as DiData/Internet Solutions and iBurst made use of Neology’s services and products.
Neology was eventually acquired by RAIN Networks South Africa, where he served as director and shareholder. He was involved in the planning, fundraising and design of a national 4G/LTE rollout and the establishment of a new 4G/5G Mobile Network Operator.
After exiting RAIN in 2017, Roelf acquired shareholding and directorship in Cool Ideas, South Africa’s leading Fibre Internet Service Provider where he still serves today.
He is a constant tinkerer, and has contributed to numerous open-source projects, such as the Linux Kernel, FreeRADIUS and FreeDiameter
In his free time he enjoys DJ’ing, brewing beer, racing cheap enduro cars, and tinkering with Home Automation.