The 30-Year AI Transformation: Why South African Businesses That Start Today Will Dominate Tomorrow

In 1995, Jeff Bezos started selling books online from his garage. Traditional bookstores laughed. “Who would buy books without seeing them first?” they asked.

By 2000, those same bookstores were scrambling to build websites. By 2010, most were bankrupt. Borders, Exclusive Books’ international competitors, all gone. Not because they didn’t eventually adopt e-commerce—they did. But because they started too late. The cost of playing catch-up bankrupted them.