Many IT executives who hit it big sink their money into wine farms. Or just into wine, in some cases. British geek Rory Sweet did something more unusual. He bought Leobo game reserve in the Waterberg and turned it into a wild playground for the boy he remains at heart. He renovated the existing lodge and built the over-the-top Observatory as a family home-cum-castle. Now his business acumen has kicked back in, because Leobo Lodge and the opulent Observatory have opened for bookings, billed as the perfect retreat for a small business conference or a weekend away.

Sweet sold his Cisco distribution company RBR Networks to Datatec for $50 million in 1998, when it was just five years old. He had to split the cash with his co-founder, but it still left him with pots of money. He was also a co-founder of MessageLabs, an anti-virus company that Symantec bought for $700 million. His third startup was Zycko, a distributor of networking and data storage equipment with offices in 14 countries, including South Africa.