devKey takeaways:

  • 25-Year Milestone: CEO celebrated quarter-century at Atterbury, co-founded through organic growth and passion.
  • Expert Team Building: Success based on hiring strong people who challenge leadership constructively.
  • Waterfall Deal Breakthrough: 2007/2008 transaction established Atterbury as major South African developer.
  • Shared Prosperity: Created wealth for employees, shareholders, and partners while maintaining startup culture.
  • Future Goals: Remain biggest SA developer while preserving agile, fast-moving decision-making culture.

Atterbury Group CEO Louis van der Watt was recently honoured for 25 years of service at the company he co-founded with Francois van Niekerk a quarter of a century ago. He reflects on those years and the unique team spirit that has built an exceptional legacy of excellence, entrepreneurship and caring.

Congratulations on this award… a quarter century of dedication to a company that has made very deep footprints in the property development industry. Is Atterbury today a good reflection of what you had foreseen when you started the company?
There is that saying that when you love your job, it doesn’t feel like work; and that is a good description of what it is like to work at Atterbury. It is so great to be here that it still feels the same as 25 years ago when we first started out. I can’t say that we had a particular end goal in mind, other than to work at what we loved doing, and the growth we’ve seen over the years really happened organically and naturally, leading us by increments to where we are today.

What do you remember of those very early days – anything you can share of your very first day at your own company?
Things were much more formal in those days; I remember how we came to work in collar and tie. Our founding partner Francois van Niekerk was already a seasoned businessman back then, and he insisted on us projecting a very professional image for the company. Everyone dressed like that in those days, but today we are way more relaxed, and those formal outfits have made way for jeans. We don’t need formal attire to reflect Atterbury’s professionalism anymore; the company’s reputation does that for us now.

When you started out, you must have had some expectation of the challenges that lay ahead in terms of establishing the business. How did the reality as it panned out compare with those initial expectations?
The thing that we did right, and from the very start, was to identify and associate ourselves with experts, which enabled us to have high expectations. Francois has an incredible business sense and he ensured that we drew in the right people, such as Louis Norval, Neno Haasbroek and Gary Steinberg, in all the relevant disciplines so that we avoided making unnecessary mistakes as the company grew. And 25 years later I am still surrounded by experts; people on the team have built up expertise over the years so that we have a treasure chest of incomparable knowledge under our roof. These are people who are not afraid to voice their expert opinions and to challenge preconceived ideas, and it is invaluable having this level of skill within the company.

The company has really gone from strength to strength during the past quarter century. If you had to single out two or three achievements that delivered the most satisfaction to you, what would those be?
There are two main things I can single out. Firstly, the prosperity that we have managed to create for people in and around the company. Many of our team members are also shareholders and have benefited from the success; but the accumulated prosperity also extends to suppliers, contractors and other professionals who have worked alongside Atterbury over the years. Secondly, the fact that we have managed to maintain our unique company culture… we have the exact same entrepreneurial culture as when we started out as a small company, of people who work well together and care for each other.

Is there anything about the early days that you are nostalgic about? Anything that you possibly outgrew as a company, but which you do miss?
During the first two years I drove a VW Beetle; and I do miss that little car! I still regret my decision to sell it… I have fond memories of driving around and visiting sites in my little vintage cream Volla.

If you look back over the past 25 years, what would you say are the most important professional lessons you have learnt?
The most important thing is to surround yourself with strong people – with a strong-willed leader making the decisions, it is important to have exceptional people who will challenge leadership, but for the right reasons, and for the good of the company. You need people you can trust 100%, who are invested in the company without ego or hidden agendas.

And if you knew then what you know now, what might you have done differently?
You learn through mistakes, and it is important to make those mistakes in order to gain experience and expertise. So, I am not sorry about lessons learnt, but in terms of development decisions, we made a mistake embarking on development projects up in Africa, where the financing is done in US dollars, but the people of those countries do not earn dollars. What happens when their currency weakens against the dollar, is that their spending power weakens and eventually they cannot afford to service their commitments. Having your loans in dollar and your income in a weakened other currency causes problems; we had to bite the bullet and manage those assets as well as we could until we were able to sell them.

If we were to make a movie of your 25 years at Atterbury, what event would be the big moment/climax in the narrative?
It would be when we signed the Waterfall deal in 2007/2008. It was hailed as one of the biggest property development transactions in South Africa at the time; there were many seasoned developers competing for the deal, many of them bigger than us; and there was enormous interest in the deal. That was the transaction that put Atterbury on the map; that’s when we felt we had arrived. Credit goes to the Mia family who recognised the Atterbury people’s passion to develop the area, and that no-one else could roll it out the way we could – they trusted their gut feel about us and they were proven right. After we developed the area, Attacq took over and today I believe Waterfall sets an example as one of the best precincts in South Africa in terms of design and management. Attacq is doing an excellent job.

Your involvement today is less hands on and more strategic; which one supposes gives you space to reflect on the business in a different way. How do you see Atterbury’s future unfolding, and is there a particular direction that you hope to see business developing into?
Well, firstly, the younger people on the team will disagree that I am less hands-on – they’ll tell you that I am as involved in the detail as always, and I think they get pretty irritated with me! But the company is in really great hands and I am excited to see positive change taking place. We have always been hands-on – you learn so much by doing things yourself, and all the skills that we have in the company have been grown internally, in this way. We are extremely lucky that we have not lost key people, the team who started way back are still here and that gives us a unique advantage – there is no other developer in the country that has the IP that Atterbury has built up over the years. Both our heads of development and asset management have been here since the early years and those skills were grown internally, and the company is stronger for it. Our people work with each other and for each other and that is what makes the company so strong. That is what I hope for the future too; yes that Atterbury remains the biggest developer in South Africa, but also that it retains its unique entrepreneurial culture – being agile, moving fast, making decisions quickly.

And finally, is there any dream project that you would particularly like to sign a deal for?
You know, every project we do, from conceptualising on paper to cutting the ribbon… the challenge and the satisfaction is the same. The size of the project doesn’t really matter; whether it is the Castle Gate precinct or a single restaurant in The Village – it still delivers just as much enjoyment!