Builder in Residence · Platform Investment Partners
The best products in telecoms will not come from a pitch deck and a predetermined thesis. They will come from someone deeply embedded in the market — with the freedom to explore, the discipline to test, and a partner willing to back the process, not just the outcome.
The premise
South African telecoms is at a genuine inflection point. The Vuma/Vodacom deal has reset the infrastructure landscape. FNOs are preparing to rebuild. Retail giants like Capitec, Shoprite and PEP are expanding into connectivity. The AI-native OSS/BSS layer is emerging as independently investable. The opportunity is real.
But the precise shape of that opportunity — the specific product, the exact go-to-market, the right moment — is not yet clear. And any structure that forces a commitment to a product before conviction exists will produce the wrong product.
This proposal is not a co-venture with undefined upside. It is a residency — a structured period of exploration, funded modestly, self-sustaining through consulting, with a clear path to a proper build when the right thing is found.
The structure
correlate.club is the operating entity for the residency — a lean, focused vehicle with one person, a clear mandate, and a deliberately open brief. Cornelius operates as Builder in Residence within the PIP ecosystem: identifying, exploring, testing, and ultimately finding the thing worth building in telecoms commercialisation.
The residency is intentionally constrained. There is no team to hire, no office on a long-term lease, no product to build before the right one is found. The work happens in the field — inside operator strategy sessions, embedded with FNOs, understanding where the real friction is and what the market will actually pay for.
When a hypothesis is worth testing, small experiments are run using external contractors — short, bounded, cheap. The goal is learning, not building. If something survives contact with reality, it earns the right to a proper build conversation.
Day to day
Three activities run in parallel during the residency, each reinforcing the others:
The numbers
correlate.club is capitalised at inception with R1,000,000 — split between the two founding parties in proportion to their equity stake. This covers company setup, early operating costs, and working capital through the first months before consulting income begins. From Month 4, consulting revenue covers all operating costs. Any surplus is held for product experiments.
Consulting does three things
Active mandates with Reflex, Capitec, Herotel and Vuma place Cornelius inside frontline operator decisions — strategy sessions, commercial roadmaps, vendor evaluations. That is where real opportunities surface. Not in secondary research. In the room.
Consulting income covers operating costs from Month 4 onwards. The R1m founding capital bridges the first three months. After that, PIP's ongoing cash commitment is zero — the residency runs on what it earns.
Where consulting income exceeds operating costs, the surplus is held as experiment capital. No fixed monthly draw — experiments are funded from what the residency generates. Surplus funds the hypothesis, not the overhead.
Monthly operating budget
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Salary | R250,000 |
| Office | R20,000 |
| Travel | R15,000 |
| Total | R285,000 |
The progression
A residency is not an endpoint. It is a structured path toward one of three outcomes — each a clear next conversation between PIP and Cornelius, with real conviction on both sides.
The residency surfaces a clear product opportunity with genuine market pull. Both parties agree it warrants a proper build. A new entity is structured — with equity, additional funding, and a build team — at that point, when conviction exists and terms can be negotiated fairly.
Exploration surfaces one or more high-conviction opportunities for PIP to invest in or acquire. Cornelius acts as deal champion — with deep technical and commercial understanding of the target. PIP deploys capital. Both parties structure Cornelius's participation in the investment at this point.
Twelve months is long enough to know if the thesis holds and short enough to course-correct. If the brief has evolved, both parties reconvene: renew with a sharper mandate, or part ways cleanly. No equity unwind. No residual obligations.
Any product, company, or investment that emerges from the residency is offered to PIP before any third party. This holds for the duration of the residency and 12 months after it ends.
What PIP gets
Telecoms software is opaque to generalist investors. Cornelius's OSS/BSS background means PIP evaluates every deal in this space with a technical operator at the table — not an external consultant brought in after the term sheet.
Reflex gets a senior product advisor from day one. As the consulting pipeline opens, Capitec, Herotel and Vuma receive domain expertise that improves their commercial outcomes — outcomes that reflect directly on PIP's portfolio performance.
Any product, company, or investment opportunity that surfaces during the residency is PIP's to fund first. That option — across 12 months of deep market exploration — is secured by a R750,000 founding investment. There is no comparable way to buy that coverage.
Equity conversations are only productive when both parties have something concrete in front of them. By deferring that conversation to the moment a product or deal is identified, both sides negotiate from conviction — not speculation.
The ask
A 12-month residency with founding equity already in place — structured, funded, and with clean off-ramps for both parties. PIP's total cash commitment is the R750,000 founding investment. Everything after that is covered by what the residency earns.