‘Google McDuff’ passes 500 million YouTube views

ANT KATZ

His success comes from innovating a new business model from his passion for wildlife. Through this, he has created the largest wildlife crowd-sourced channel in the world and the top YouTube channel in Africa.

Reaching half a billion views, says Nadav, “is a massive accomplishment”, but it is another accolade to add to a very long and impressive list. And next week he will add another… turning 21.

He is the CEO and founder of Latest Sightings (Pty) Ltd. People visiting the Kruger Park and other South African game parks, love taking videos of their sightings. They post their videos to the Latest Sightings partnership programme created by Nadav. They retain ownership of the video, while Nadav owns the marketing rights. If accepted, the video is put up on YouTube. The game watcher then shares the considerable spoils that Nadav’s channel earns from ads on the videos.

Latest Sightings’ apps enable the app-users to maximise their trips through sharing their wildlife sightings in real time. Users can report their location, time and sighting to Latest Sightings, which in turn is broadcast to other app-users and over various social media.

While the half-a-billion views of animals in the wild includes repeat viewers, across all of Latest Sightings’ many social platforms, he boasts around 500 000-odd unique users.

Nadav’s partner programme has also helped his community of users to make lots of money. One Pretoria retiree, for example, has already earned over R250 000 after posting the world’s most viewed wildlife video (91 million views and counting), showing a lion and lioness blocking the road while children are photographing them on tablets and cameras and the lions turned to attack them. Nobody was hurt. “It’s not spectacular at all,” says Nadav, who is himself surprised at its success.

“People like videos with a good story to them,” he says. Like the one with a baby elephant chasing birds, which had over nine million views on its first day. It was taken by a Wits lecturer who has used the money to assist some of her needy students and given the remainder to elephant research.

Then there is the 12-year-old who has already made R30 000 from the over 20 million views. “It’s an unbelievable video of a young leopard trying, unsuccessfully, to hunt,” says Nadav.

Nadav tells of a US-based company who also have a user-generated content platform and paid handsomely for rights to a video of a hippo charging and badly damaging a car. The company wanted to post it on their own website with their branding. 

“We do a lot of quality control,” says Nadav. Latest Sightings moderate all videos posted and only release those that they feel make the grade. They do so in a controlled manner, ensuring there is always something new, but not too much at once.

His journey began in 2011 when he was on a family trip to the Kruger National Park. Says the digital entrepreneur’s dad, Ilan: “There were no animals and Nadav kept asking me to stop other drivers and ask if they had seen anything.” It was a bad day at the park… nobody was seeing any game.

And so it was that the bored, 15-year-old digital-savvy high-schooler sitting in the back seat realised that his family’s experience was in no way unique. He began thinking of a way to solve the problem digitally. The result: Latest Sightings was born and became a smash hit.

When he was 16, in 2013, Nadav became involved with humanitarian aid to animals. He assisted in a relief effort for Kruger Park staffers who lost their homes in devastating floods. His Latest Sightings community partnered with Land Rover SA to collect 1 000 kg of goods and R100 000 in cash.

The year 2014 was a seminal one for the young entrepreneur, whose nickname is “Google McDuff”, as he won the first-ever Creative Counsel Young Jewish Entrepreneurs Award and went on to matriculate with six distinctions from King David Linksfield. He also won the East Wave Radio Nelson Mandela Youth Leadership Award.

From then on, unencumbered by academic studies, it was all systems go. And the extraordinary youngster’s highlights include:

2017: He became UN Youth Ambassador for Technology. He was also invited to testify at the Wildlife Justice Commission at The Hague on behalf of African youth. There, he discussed the “Prevention of Wildlife Trafficking”.

2016: He made the Forbes “African 30 under-30 Most Successful People” list. He received a United Nations World Summit Award (WSA) in Singapore for his app.

2015: He participated in a youth delegation to Hanoi, Vietnam, to present the World Youth Wildlife Declaration to Asian governments and engage with Vietnamese youth and leadership on rhino horn. 

2014: Nadav was the keynote speaker at the opening of Facebook Africa’s offices. He presented at the Wits School of Economics and Business Science to graduate students in 2014 and 2015. He was also chosen as Forbes Africa’s Person of the Year 2014, with the prestigious business magazine dubbing him “Nadav of the Jungle”.

2013: He helped start the Rhino Art campaign (still an active partner in Project Rhino), and became an “Eco Ambassador” for the Endangered Wildlife Trust. He was awarded as the youngest “Virtual Honorary Ranger” ever appointed by SANParks.

That year, he also spoke at the One Young World conservation conference, appeared as a guest speaker at an event where R27 000 was raised for the SanWild animal rehabilitation centre and presented at the Tech4Africa Conference, Africa’s biggest ICT event.

Initially, Latest Sightings focused on the Kruger National Park, but, says Nadav, “We have now extended our range to include other national parks and reserves.”

In total, over 500 000 people are using Latest Sightings across all their various platforms and social media channels.

“In combination with our YouTube channel,” says Nadav, “Latest Sightings also has an app that showcases these remarkable sightings as they happen in the Kruger and Pilanesberg National Parks and even up to Malawi.”

But that’s not all: Nadav’s Latest Sightings has big plans for new initiatives in the coming years. And, he says, he plans to expand globally.