Karl Lee.
Associate · Founder
Started Synqa. He comes from business strategy and running ventures, and keeps the work pointed at what moves a client's numbers.
SECTION I · ABOUT · EST. 2026
Who built this.
Synqa is an operator's consultancy, founded in 2026. A small team across Toronto and Cape Town: some of us ran the businesses, some of us build the software, all of us have watched good work get buried under bad systems. This is who we are.
The people who ship it.
A small group from different trades: film, strategy, operations, and engineering. The team runs across two offices, six time zones apart, and shares one standard: knowing what the work costs before quoting it.
43.65 N · TORONTO
William Foye.
Associate · Director of Marketing and Product Delivery
A filmmaker and editor by trade. He runs marketing at Synqa and makes sure what we build actually gets into people's hands.
CAPE TOWN · 33.92 S
Emmanuel Raphiri.
Associate · Co-Founder
Co-founded Synqa. A developer who started out on an IT help desk, so he builds for the people who actually use the thing.
Olaf Terblanche.
Associate · Director of Software Engineering
Leads engineering. He spent years keeping big systems online at places like Clickatell and Mukuru, so he builds things that stay up.
Jaraad Hassim.
Associate · Operations Advisor
Spent years running operations, including a turnaround across eleven branches. He advises the team on whether an idea holds up in a real workday.
One pattern kept showing up.
Synqa didn't start in a consultancy. It started in the businesses themselves: the ventures our founder built and scaled, and the distribution business our team ran branch by branch. Different operations, different problems on the surface. Underneath, the same pattern: businesses spending more time fighting their systems than running their operations.
The CRM that doesn't talk to invoicing. The reconciliation that should have been automated three years ago. The data entry someone is still doing by hand at 9pm on a Tuesday. None of it is interesting work. All of it is happening at most operators we've ever met.
The people who could fix it were never in the room. The firms we could have hired sold software; what we needed was the time back, and systems that didn't need someone babysitting them after hours. So we built the team we'd have wanted to call: operators who have run the floor, engineers who keep it standing, and the people who make the work make sense. The gap between selling software and giving hours back is what this firm is about.
Built across two continents. By hand.
Toronto holds the brief. Cape Town holds the keyboard. Six time zones apart, one chair in common. Code ships overnight, gets reviewed in the morning, lands in the operator's hand without a meeting in the middle.
It's not nearshoring or offshoring or any of the words that come with those models. It's two rooms full of operators who used to be on the other side of the engagement. Same chair, two rooms.