It’s never too late to back your big idea

This article forms part of CN&CO’s series covering The Insurance Conference Western Cape 2026. Across the series, we revisit the ideas, stories and conversations shared by the conference’s speakers, highlighting the insights that are shaping insurance, business and leadership in a changing world.

What does it take to build a technology start-up from scratch, take on some of the biggest names in the world and keep going when almost nobody believes your idea will work?

For Denise Walker, founder of Cape Town-based e-hailing service Caby, the answer includes seven years of work, extensive research, every cent she could put into the business and a stubborn determination to keep going.

At The Insurance Conference Western Cape, CN&CO founder Carel Nolte sat down with Denise to talk about the unlikely journey that led to Caby, why she believes there is room for a different kind of e-hailing service and what she has learnt about entrepreneurship along the way.

There’s another detail that makes the story particularly inspiring. Denise is 72.

Starting with the problem, not the app

Denise describes research as being “in her DNA”. Long before Caby emerged, she had built a career around asking questions, investigating problems and looking for answers.

The idea that eventually became Caby started about seven years ago, when Denise was asked to investigate an e-hailing concept. She knew little about the sector at the time, so she did what came naturally: she researched it.

Importantly, she started with the people who understood the transport business from the ground up.

“I spent months speaking to drivers, listening to their stories and understanding how the industry worked,” she told Carel. “I didn’t want to decide what drivers needed. I wanted them to tell me.”

Those conversations shaped Caby.

In fact, Denise says she deliberately avoided studying competing e-hailing apps too closely. Rather than starting with an existing model and trying to improve it, she wanted to understand the business behind e-hailing: the economics, regulations, driver experience and operational challenges.

“The business of the business made me design Caby,” she said.

Building something fairer

One issue kept surfacing during Denise’s research: driver income.

She spent time speaking directly to drivers and examining the relationship between fares and what drivers ultimately earned. What she found convinced her that a different model was possible.

Caby has consequently been designed around keeping more of the economics local and giving drivers a greater share of the income generated by rides.

“We’re a small, local team and the money stays here,” Denise explained. “For me, it comes down to the numbers. If the numbers don’t work for the driver, the model doesn’t work.”

But getting from an idea to a viable business was anything but straightforward.

Caby took around two years to build before going to market. It subsequently shut down for 18 months and Denise reached the point where she was ready to give up.

Her auditors, who had worked with her for more than 25 years, disagreed. They introduced her to businessman and investor Patrick O’Flaherty. What followed was a four-hour interrogation of the business. Denise walked away convinced she had failed to persuade him. Three days later, Patrick phoned.

That call changed the trajectory of Caby.

“Sometimes you just need one person to believe in what you’re building,” Denise said. “That gave us the boost to keep going.”

Safety has to be designed in

Safety is inevitably one of the biggest questions facing any e-hailing business in South Africa and Caby has attempted to address it through the design of its technology and operations. Both rider and driver can identify who they are travelling with, while rides can be tracked through Caby’s back-end systems and contact centre.

The app includes an SOS function that allows riders to nominate three family or friend contacts. If the SOS is activated, those contacts are alerted and Caby’s control centre can identify the vehicle, driver and location.

Cape Town has also been divided into operating zones, allowing the company to identify areas considered too risky for drivers. The system can restrict trips into these areas.

Denise is careful, however, not to pretend technology can eliminate every danger.

“We’re an e-hailing company, not a security company,” she said. “You have to understand what you can control, build as much safety into the system as possible and be honest about what you can’t control.”

That realism extends to insurance.

Caby is exploring solutions that could provide additional protection for drivers, including technology involving in-vehicle cameras. But the economics first need to work at scale, an issue Carel promptly threw out as a challenge to the insurance professionals in the room.

It was a useful reminder of what can happen when entrepreneurs and insurers actually talk to one another. New business models create new risks and those risks create opportunities for insurers prepared to think differently.

Back yourself

There was another thread running through Carel and Denise’s conversation that had little to do with e-hailing. It was about having the confidence to pursue an idea.

At 72, Denise is working with developers, investors and technology while continuing to rethink and refine the business she spent years building. Her team jokes that her sudden bursts of ideas are “brain orgasms”.

She has also somehow found the time to write a book, the culmination of some 25 years of research and writing.

For Carel, Denise’s story carried a message extending far beyond Caby. Good ideas don’t belong exclusively to the young, the well-connected or people who fit the conventional image of a tech entrepreneur. And people with those ideas shouldn’t underestimate themselves simply because others might.

“Find your investor, back yourself, find the people who will back you and make it work,” Carel told conference delegates.

Denise’s journey is a pretty compelling example: Seven years of work. A business that nearly disappeared. An entrepreneur who put everything into an idea. An investor who finally saw what she saw. And, at 72, she’s nowhere near finished.