'Karoogle': the small Karoo town doing tech work for Silicon Valley
Siblings who grew up in KwaNojoli came home from abroad and built a creative tech company with US clients and mountain views.
KwaNojoli — In KwaNojoli, the Eastern Cape Karoo town formerly called Somerset East, a renovated panel beater's workshop on Nojoli Street houses one of the region's most unlikely businesses. Its staff sometimes call it "Karoogle".
The Karoo Tech Hub belongs to a family company that makes explainer videos and other creative work, mostly for clients in the United States, many of them in California's Silicon Valley. The company is now called Piehole TV.
Home, not a beach in Spain
Its founders, siblings Priscilla and George Groves, grew up in the town at the foot of the Boschberg mountains and went to school at Gill College. Both then spent years abroad: George in engineering, investment banking in London and the food business; Priscilla as an advertising copywriter and voice-over artist in Argentina, Chile and the US.
They had almost decided to run the company from the south of Spain. On a visit home, they saw they could have the best of both worlds in the Karoo: good internet, exchange rates that let them offer quality South African work at prices even small US start-ups can afford, and a quality of life a city cannot match.
The company says 85% of its business is repeat work. The hub moved into its current open-plan building in 2017, complete with a coffee station, a small cinema and a kudu trophy with pink-painted horns. Outside, there is no traffic and a view of the Boschberg.
Source: Daily Maverick (book excerpt), November 2026.
