In Conversation With: Victor Kula-Szilagyi, VP of Product and Managing Director of Sedna’s New Cape Town Hub

At the beginning of 2024, Sedna officially set its anchor down in Cape Town, South Africa. The strategic decision marked a significant milestone in our path towards continued innovation and sustainable growth - harnessing the region’s rich talent pool to establish a Centre of Excellence that could propel our Product and Engineering capabilities to new heights. 

Now, a few months following our official launch and already 12 team members strong, Sedna Cape Town is thriving and continuing to grow with the support of award-winning regional talent partner Salt.  

This week, we sat down with Victor Szilagyi, VP of Product and Managing Director of Sedna Cape Town, to find out more about his journey with Sedna so far, his recent relocation to Cape Town from London, and his vision for the hub and team there. 

Victor, you’ve been at Sedna since 2021.  Why did you join and what’s the journey looked like to date? 

Well, I joined the Product team at Sedna just as the world was emerging from Covid - a time when we all became acutely aware of the fragility of the supply chains that keep our planet moving. Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to shape the future of everything from consumer electronics to financial trading platforms. So the idea of joining Sedna and contributing to improving how global trade gets done seemed like a worthy way to invest my time. 

Since joining, we’ve grown our customer base at a rapid pace with a roster of very impressive names across sectors in the industry. From owner-operators like Oldendorff and DS Norden to commodities companies like Viterra, Exxon, and Chevron. We’ve spent a lot of time working to improve how our platform transforms  the way these organisations function. 

From a product and engineering perspective, that’s a huge but satisfying challenge. We're not working on apps that people dip in and out of for seconds or minutes at a time. Walk into the offices of any of our customers and you'll see Sedna Stream and Pulse front and centre on every desktop. From Copenhagen to Cape Town and a plethora of cities in between, people use our platform to collaborate, make decisions and take action on a truly global scale.

It’s exciting - shipping is a 24x7 industry and Sedna is fast becoming the critical backbone.

You’ve now relocated to Cape Town as Managing Director of Sedna Cape Town. Tell us about that.

When we started looking for a place to expand, Bill Dobie, Sedna’s Founder and CEO, was intent that we carry our company culture and ways of thinking to our new location. We’re an incredibly mission-driven company. Just like our customers, we’re all working on getting the things societies globally depend on - food, medical supplies, fuel - to the places people need it in the most efficient, sustainable way possible. Sedna has a part to play in that. This requires a lot of trust and diligence; the relationships and presence we build is just as important as the technical innovation we’re bringing to bear on the challenge. 

That’s why it was a top priority for us to place someone from the executive team here, who could help bring that DNA to life in a new location. We know that’s critical to our long-term success in the region. 

Sedna South Africa is a critical part of our next chapter. It will be a significant location for research and development for us. It will be driving operational excellence for us globally - so having the VP of Product come down to build it made a lot of sense - and it’s an opportunity I was more than happy to accept. 

I’ve been fortunate to have a truly global career, working with teams from San Francisco to Seoul and everywhere in between. I’m passionate about the fact that building an effective team is as much about the diverse backgrounds and experiences each team member brings, as it is about the company culture. How we think and experience the world brings vital nuance - and different perspectives drive better, more innovative solutions when brought together in the right way. 

It also helps that my wife is Capetonian, so we’ve been here many times before. I’m looking forward to getting to know the place where she grew up much more deeply over the coming years and experience all that the region has to offer. 

How are you enjoying life in Cape Town so far? 

Perhaps moving here in the winter wasn’t the best idea, but the bright warm moments between the current downpours are filling me with hope for the next few months! 

We’re also getting out and really loving the nature that surrounds us - whether that’s taking a hike around Lion’s Head or driving out of town on a day trip. 

Most importantly, my wife and I travel on our stomachs. I'm really enjoying getting to know about everything from Braais to Cape Malay cooking. The diverse food and cultures here are incredible and something I don’t think I’ll get bored of exploring any time soon!  

Why did Sedna choose Cape Town for its newest hub?  

We chose Cape Town for our next major office for a few different reasons. 

There's great engineering talent in Cape Town. The vibrant ecosystem of tech companies here is proof of that. We're proud to be joining a community that includes homegrown services like Jumo, Yoco, and Takealot as well as global players like AWS.  We’re also finding partners in our own sector here – it was great catching up with the team at bluVerve at the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers  (ICS) event a few weeks ago.  Just like Sedna, all these companies are solving incredibly complex problems for their customers. I’m excited about the opportunity for us to build connections with like-minded people around town and to support this community. 

Beyond the tech scene, South Africa is a place well known in the world of shipping. Some of our longest-standing customers, Sturrock Grindrod Maritime (SGM) for example, are here - not just Cape Town but also in Johannesburg and all South African Ports. Speaking for myself, I get a kick out of it when I can see our customer’s vessels floating by as I walk along the promenade in Sea Point or drive along the Foreshore! 

As a global operation with an HQ in the UK and an office in Singapore, South Africa gives us another hub where we can collaborate across teams without much timezone friction. All of these places are tremendously diverse and represent a rich pool of cultures and world experiences. This is key when it comes to better serving our customers and global trade - which is without a doubt one of the most worldwide, interconnected industries. 

What’s your vision for the Centre of Excellence and team in Cape Town? 

We’re building the foundations for a significant presence here in Cape Town, and the team has an exciting opportunity to really shape our next stage of growth as a company. Ultimately, that’s going to come down to people joining the hub who relish understanding how the world works, and using technology to make it work a lot more efficiently. 

It’s about being at the forefront of change and emerging trends and I think one of the interesting things being in any port town, is the speed at which you see this evolve. 

Our Cape Town hub will be at the centre of the research and development that continues to drive Sedna forward - and this doesn’t stop with the engineering and product teams. By building out other parts of the business here too from Support to Finance, we can better understand the context we’re working in and collaborate more effectively cross-functionally as we scale. It isn’t a regional subsidiary, Sedna Cape Town is part of the global team driving global solutions for the global challenges we’re overcoming for customers. 

What foundations have been built in Cape Town so far? 

We have 10-plus folks in our Sedna Cape Town crew right now so we’re a relatively small yet mighty team, but that’s by design. By the end of the year we’re hoping to be at 20 - so we’re growing very intentionally and sustainably. It’s important for us to have the right people joining to help us build the hub out. 

The team is incredibly diverse in background - bringing a wealth of experience from successful scaleups to the big five accounting firms. But everyone is very connected to our mission and driven by the opportunity to shape Sedna’s presence here from scratch. 

We’re moving to our permanent office in De Waterkant very soon which we’re all excited about. I wanted to set our roots in a spot that allows us to achieve our growth ambitions, but is also somewhere people want to be and come together. 

Connecting over weekly lunches, collaborating and spending time as a hub has been invaluable so far - seeing the team come up with ideas for activities and contribute to community events such as our recent Women’s Day fundraiser for Ons Plek Projects with Salt has been awesome. 

What do you think motivates the team in Cape Town? 

Definitely the fact they’re joining a mission-driven scaleup that is solving vital problems, with a truly global team, for global customers — and that they can contribute to building the culture here in our Cape Town hub. 

We’re at an inflection point at Sedna that’s incredibly exciting. Our platform is used by two hundred of the world’s largest companies worldwide - now we need to work out how we get to the next two thousand. The way you scale a product and operations between the two milestones is wildly different  - and that’s an exciting challenge for us to tackle together. 

What are the growth plans for the hub over the coming months? 

Our Cape Town hub isn’t just an investment in technology. As we continue to scale our global footprint and build on the foundations we’ve laid here, it’s an investment in people, in ideas, and in the future of global trade. 

We’re here to push the boundaries of what’s possible in our industry - I’m incredibly excited to see what we’ll achieve together and continue to contribute to the flourishing tech ecosystem here in South Africa. 

If you’d like to join our Sedna Cape Town hub or learn more about the open roles we’re hiring for there, head over to our Careers page here.