Like to ride? We got excited when Kawasaki announced this hyper-agile 150cc hydrogen-powered horse/wolf bike hybrid. Only problem is, it’s still a concept and the actual prototype doesn’t seem nearly as agile as the video claims. Still, we dream. 🎠

Right now, though, it’s another Fast Five Friday: 5 things in startup you should know, including number 4’s easy secret to getting e-commerce customers to spend up to 70% more — let’s go!

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1. EARLY DAYS

A voice-activated panic button?

House burgled while you’re away? It’s unpleasant, but, hopefully, you’ve got insurance and can get your stuff replaced (albeit with a bit of admin)...

It gets traumatic when it’s a contact crime (where the victim comes into contact with the perpetrator). With nearly 4’000 more contact crimes reported in Q1 of 2023/2024 compared to the same period the year before, contact crimes are on the rise.

So SA's (and the world’s) first voice-activated panic super app comes at a good time. 

The Valor app lets users request immediate armed security and other response services with a simple custom voice command. The user’s location is sent to Valor’s control room, and their bank is alerted to lock down their banking profile/s. Plus, the operator stays on the line, listening in on the situation to update response units in real-time.

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2. KEEP AN EYE ON THESE

SA’s economic “cheatsheet”

It’s important to keep tabs on various touchpoints of South Africa’s economy…

But the info’s disjointed and sometimes comes with a propaganda-esque flair of alarmism and fear-mongering. So we were happy to find this nifty lil dashboard that visualises all the key economic indicators in SA, all in one place (and without the panic)...

The South Africa Macro Dashboard (or sa-gov) tracks things like interest rates, inflation, GDP, deficits, etc. by taking data from various SARB website routes once a week, and populating the dashboard so we can track the health of SA’s economy.

The dashboard was built by Karl-Alexander Meier Mattern, and he’s already gotten a bunch of suggestions and requests to help improve an already very helpful tool. We’re keeping an eye on this. 

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3. INTERNATIONAL NEWS

De-extincted zombie wolves?

The dire wolf is an extinct species of wolf that lived in the Americas during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene periods, between 125’000 and 10’000 years ago.

First identified and named in 1858, the species gained a renewed popularity due to its appearance in the TV show “Game of Thrones”.

This week, Colossal Biosciences caused a stir with the announcement that they’d used both cloning and gene-editing based on two ancient samples of dire wolf DNA to birth three dire wolf pups, essentially “bringing this species back from extinction”…

Of course, something like this doesn't come without its detractors, with some scientists saying they’ve essentially cloned a glorified genetically modified grey wolf…

Colossal is apparently also planning to “bring back” the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the thylacine (aka the Tasmanian tiger), not to mention the woolly mouse they announced in March, cloned from woolly mammoth DNA. 

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4. FROM THE OPEN COLLAB COMMUNITY

Securing the bag, over and over again

One way to build brand loyalty and lock in that sweet, sweet recurring revenue is subscriptions – good for consumables people buy recurringly (monthly, weekly, etc) or even loyalty programmes (think Uber One, Takealot More, etc).

Infact, subscribers of such programmes in SA are likely to spend up to 70% more and transact almost twice as often that those that don’t.

Local e-commerce subscription platform ReserveIt is helping local e-comms process and collect recurring subs and other payments with a simple no-code implementation that gives their clients the ability to cancel, pause or skip a subscription, update the included products, or add new products with a higher level of control and customisation.

It’s all done through a slick subs storefront (also easy no-code implementation) and portal where your customers can manage their subscriptions (pause, add new products or change their shipping information)... Noice.

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Don’t be alone on your founder and builder journey. Build with other SA startup founders and builders like Yaseen Hamdulay, one of the founders of ReserveIt in our community: The Open Collab.

5. AND THEN THERE WERE 10

Innovation City’s Top 10 Pitch Event

Things are heating up for Innovation City’s Startup of the Year 2025, and it’s down to the Top 10 finalists:

• Botlhale AI
• Callbi Speech Analytics
• Flood
• Fynbos Money
• Sudor Apps
• Jem
• JOBJACK
• Lawyered Up LLC Powered by Vega
• Sensify
• LeaseSurance

These 10 SA startups will be battling it out on 23 April to see who will be crowned Innovation City’s Startup of the Year 2025 – and you can come watch them battle it out in a live pitching event… 

WHEN: Wednesday, 23 April 2025 from 17h00–19h30
WHERE: Innovation City, Darter Studio, Longkloof, Gardens, Cape Town, 8001

Check out what the Top 10 are building, connect with other innovators, learn from industry experts, spot the next trend and future opportunities, and celebrate success in a vibrant, inspiring community.

Plus, come say Hoesit to The Open Letter’s very own Renier Kriel, who forms part of this year’s judging panel.

Get your tickets from Quicket, but hurry, seats are limited.

Get your tickets

IN SHORT

Cause dropping a headline or two at the braai never hurt anyone…

📦 On the move. Local food delivery platform Spaza Eats has just dropped its ”Spaza Parcel” delivery service to support informal traders, families, and small businesses in sending and receiving parcels. We love to see it…

👀 For your eyes only. WhatsApp is testing out some more privacy features as it is trialling advanced chat privacy features, including disabling chat exporting and automatic media downloads. What about screenshots, though?

🛻 E-Powered Bakkies. Bakkie-mal South Africa is getting a double-cab 4x4 electric bakkie (no, it’s not THAT one)... Enviro has announced the arrival of the Riddara RD6, a fully electric double-cab bakkie built by Geely. Looks insane.

🍃 Cannabis backtrack. The Department of Health has made a U-turn on the regulations that banned importing, producing and selling of foodstuffs containing cannabis. Hmmm…

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with all your VC and startup legal sorted by Dommisse Attorneys, smarter and faster business banking and finance with Lula and loads more vital startup tools & services.

CHECK THIS OUT

Why Is the Isle of Man Talking to South Africans?

It’s not just about tax (although that’s nice too). The Isle of Man is showing real interest in South Africa’s startup and tech scene — and it’s worth paying attention to.

So why the outreach?

1. They see the opportunity

South Africa has talent, hustle, and high-growth ventures. The Isle of Man wants to help founders build a bridge to international markets — with the support of a stable, business-friendly jurisdiction. See their 2025 strategic objectives.

2. It’s a launchpad for going global

Many startups use the Isle of Man as a stepping stone to the UK, EU, and international investors. It offers a simple, trusted route for cross-border structuring and growth.

3. There’s a real startup ecosystem there

From FinTech and digital assets to gaming and e-commerce, the island isn’t just open to innovation — it’s actively enabling it through frameworks and government support.

4. They already work with SA founders

More than 35 South African businesses have a footprint on the island — including past winners of their annual Innovation Challenge.

5. They’re serious about sustainability

The Isle of Man is the only nation designated as an entire UNESCO Biosphere, attracting founders who think long-term and build with impact in mind.

6. They make it easy

From company setup to legal and financial services, the island’s well-established support ecosystem makes it easy to structure globally — without red tape.

7. They’re inviting you

This isn’t a cold sales pitch — it’s a real effort to connect with African founders and offer a platform to scale. You don’t need to figure it out alone.

Discover the Isle of Man

DON’T MISS THIS

Coming Up in SA’s Most Vibrant Tech Founder Network

Next up in our members-only founder network — The Open Collab.

11 April 12:000 — Chat Roulette: Meet other SA founders and builders when we all log in for an online check-in and chat to get to network — join The Open Collab to attend.

16 April 10:000 — Office Hours: Groups of SA founders log in and “work together” digitally via our platform and WhatsApp for an hour, helping and supporting each other — join The Open Collab to attend.

25 April 12:00 — The Path to Scale Masterclass: Discover the hidden pitfalls and proven tools of growth with Jason Goldberg, Art of Scale author and co-founder of Edge Growth.

PLUS: When you join The Open Collab get access to expert sessions, more than 90 SA founders to network with and weekly online and offline network engagements.

Join The Open Collab

JOBS IN TECH

Some of our friends are hiring. Noah person who fits the brief?

👨‍💻 Junior Software Engineer roles @ Octoco

🩺 Senior Full Stack Engineer @ Udok

🧱 Product Manager (Syft Analytics) @ Xero

🎨 Senior UI/UX Designer @ 5CA

💥 Marketing Manager @ Franc

Hiring? Get in touch, and we will feature it here.

GAME TIME

Three ZA startup lies and a truth

Only one of these South African startups is real.

WHAT YOU SAID

Pumping iron…

On Tuesday, we asked about your favourite workout, and weights are the game…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏃‍♀️ Running on the treadmill (13%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🏋️‍♀️ Lifting weights (41%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤳 Filming content (4%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏊 Swimming (13%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧘‍♀️ Yoga/Pilates (10%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍕 Fitness whole pizza in my mouth (19%)

Your 2 cents…

Nice, Bruce! No cool-off? ♨️

Lekker, Madelein. Also hear the ocean calling sometimes. 🤿

Ha ha, the way you’re running between events, probably counts as cardio. ❤️‍🔥

Nice, Nick! Pretty sure they’d welcome your feedback over at Octiv. 🎯

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

Advertise or Partners — Engage 22k South African professionals that read The Open Letter - partner with us or run an ad campaign — Reply to this email to get started.

Grow with Content — Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? Want to grow your brand with content? We can do it for you. Check out Stream.

Startup Community — Join 100+ SA founders in our SA startup founder community called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.

Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason

Powered by beehiiv

SA’s next top pothole? South Africans are no strangers to potholes, but this guy took pothole analysis to the next level. He goes around and films potholes and gives them a rating — you know so you can avoid the 10/10 ones altogether.

In this Open Letter:

• Power play: Getting software to run your entire fitness studio.
• AI’s fake Quake, banking apps’ IDs & ZA’s winning TechLadies.
• Step one: Picking the perfect name for your new/next company.
• Who recognised this local skills training startup? The results are in.
• Startup power: 100+ businesses SA needs right now.

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A Masterclass in Scaling!

In two weeks, we have serial entrepreneur and Art of Scale author Jason Goldberg, founder of SME, enterprise and supplier development leaders, Edge Growth, doing an exclusive series of masterclasses in The Open Collab founder network.

The first one is about the Path to Scale.

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Jason is going to give us a map to navigate the hidden pitfalls and some tools to conquer during various company lifecycle stages. Join The Open Collab founder network to get access right now.

Join The Open Collab

TRENDING NOW

The Local Player Doing the Heavy Lifting for Global Gyms

In today’s Tuesday Deep Dive, we look at the joys and frustrations of running a boutique gym and meet a local startup solving for a better way to manage the entire process, start to finish…

Running a gym or fitness studio is a workout all on its own…

Juggling everything from class schedules, membership fees, client retention, payment reconciliations and wrangling your trainers, coaches and staff. Not to mention keeping the place clean, the equipment running and the playlist banging can be a logistical triathlon.

And, more often than not, it’s all managed with disjointed systems, spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups, free booking apps, card readers and manual check-in sheets. 

This causes friction for management, staff and the customer: One missed payment, a double-booked class, or an unregistered drop-in is all it takes to frustrate a loyal member out the door. 

No wonder then that operational inefficiencies and poor member management are two of the 8 main reasons why gyms fail…

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Retention is the name of the game

Gyms are constantly trying to find ways to increase the lifetime value of their members.

Makes sense, since it’s a $100 billion+ global industry – closer to home, Virgin Active’s 634k (ish) active members bring in a cool R552 million.

And, just like any other business on the planet, loyalty matters. Retaining members locks in that sweet, sweet recurring revenue.

But they’re up against it from the very first set:

• Over 80% of gym members leave within their first year of signing up.
• It costs gyms 5x as much to get a new member vs nurturing an existing one.

Focusing on a frictionless member experience goes a long way to achieving member loyalty and keeping your bottom line healthy.

The local player doing the heavy lifting for gym owners

Octiv, an end-to-end gym management software platform, helps gyms consolidate all their activities into one platform.

The platform handles everything from:

• Members: customisable branded members’ app, bookings and payments, class scheduling, workout programming and injury tracking.
• Growth & engagement: Integrated lead management and member communication tools.
• Operations: Membership management, automated invoicing, digital contracts and waivers.
• Insights: Reporting dashboards to track coaching hours, member attendance, and financials.

We recently chatted to Octiv Founder & CEO Mark Fawzy, who says working on an app to replace a wet workout logbook in his gym bag sparked the idea of a gym management app to consolidate the various disjointed software systems used to run the CrossFit box where he trained.

Before it was Octiv, Mark’s BoxChamp was being used by nearly all the CrossFit boxes in SA at the time – with more boutique gyms like boxing and functional fitness gyms, yoga and pilates studios wanting to use the app and urging the Octiv rebrand. 

When Covid hit, Octiv had to build in features like online virtual training sessions, a Covid symptom checker and, later on, an online booking system.

The future of exercise

With more than 1’200 gyms in 45 countries worldwide, Octiv is not slowing down.

They help gyms get a good handle on member and attendance trends with digital access control: scanning or snapping via the mobile app or personalised PIN codes. Having also recently launched Octiv Pay (powered by Stripe), which manages all payments directly within the platform, they’re opening markets like the UAE, US, Hong Kong, Thailand, etc.

All of this leads us to believe a data-rich platform like Octiv is a prime use case for AI to help gyms make better decisions i.t.o. classes or when to intervene in a member’s fitness journey to retain them…

They’re also looking to do some awesome stuff in the AI-powered, personalised coaching space, integrating with wearables and helping coaches provide better coaching with real-time daily insights into their clients' fitness needs.

With platforms like Octiv seriously flexing their muscles in the gym management platform space, we’re watching this…

CHECK THIS OUT

How to Find a Name That Sticks

Cool Name. Legal Name. Sorted.

What’s in your company name?

A lot, actually: 77% of consumers make purchasing decisions on brand name; 72% of the best brand names are made-up words or acronyms; and companies with cool names and branding pay 10% lower salaries.

You want something punchy, memorable and available. But every good name feels taken — and the pressure to “get it right” can lead to days of overthinking.

Start smart

Here’s the truth: you don’t need the perfect name to start. You need a good one you can register – get insights on what legal and trading names mean in SA.

Here are 3 powerful ways to get there faster:

✅ Use a name generator – Tools like NameLix use AI to spark unique, brandable ideas based on keywords you feed it. Great for creative inspiration.

✅ Mash it up – Combine two words you love. Think Shopify (shop + simplify) or Paystack (payments + stack). It’s a proven naming formula that works.

✅ Play the domain game – Check what’s available on .co.za/.com/.io with a hosting provider (or just try GoDaddy), try variations and don’t be afraid of quirky spellings — Fiverr and Lyft sure weren’t.

Lock it in

Found your perfect company name?

You can make sure it’s legally available in SA for free in just a few seconds with the company name search tool by our friends over at Govchain.

Check if my name’s available

IN SHORT

Did you hear…?

🏆 Wired4Winning. Last week, the second annual Wired4Women Awards winners were announced. This year’s awards saw nearly 500 submissions, with 65 finalists selected across the 13 award categories, recognising women’s achievements in tech and inspiring the next generation of women to see ICT as a viable and rewarding career path. Nice one, ladies.

🪪 Smart Play. SA’s smart ID and passport services are coming to your banking app soon. This comes after an agreement was reached between Home Affairs, the Border Management Agency (BMA), Government Printing Works (GPW), and SARS, and forms part of the plan to replace SA’s green ID book with smart ID cards over the next 5 years. Mooi.

🔫 Shake 'n Quake. Microsoft just dropped an AI-generated version of the old-school FPS Quake II. It’s to demo the gaming capabilities of its Copilot AI (part of its Labs initiative). We tried it out, but it’s very limited. Janky gameplay, with random stuff appearing as you change your view, not to mention reaching a time limit pretty quickly. A long way to go, but it seems promising…

💰 Content cash in. Spotify paid local Artists around R400 million in royalties last year, up 54% YOY. Awesome, given that SA and Nigeria are Spotify’s 2 biggest African markets. There’s also been a renewed call for TikTok to pay SA content creators despite the fact that with 17 million active users in the country (one of the largest African audiences), SA creators have been excluded from the opportunity. Scandalous.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with easy-peasy business valuations with bizval, your own CTO for remarkable tech builds with Octoco and loads more vital startup tools & services.

BUILDER’S CORNER

3 Tips for Startup Founders

Brought to you by Stream — high-quality written content to grow your brand.

You’ve heard about Product-Market Fit: But have you heard about Brian Balfour’s Four Fits? Balfour led product development at HubSpot for years, developing a more holistic model for building tools for a specific market and distribution channel, with a supporting business model. He calls it the Four Fits and, if you are building a product, it’s worth checking out!

Building a newsletter business (like us!): Greg Isenberg is well known for unpacking business ideas and then showing people how to build them. Well, recently he had Beehiiv founder, Tyler Denk, on his pod to show in detail how one can use Beehiiv to build a newsletter as a business. You can watch it here.

Get $1m in funding: The Big Pitch is a StartupClubZA initiative that selects 10 startups from Joburg and 10 from Cape Town to participate in a pitch event where the eventual winner will walk away with an offer to invest $1 million. That’s right, one million dollars, which, looking at the direction of the ZAR lately, could be close to R20 million invested into your business. One catch: Joburg entries close today at 5 pm. So hurry up and enter here, Joburg friends.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last few days alone, in our online network, we…

• Attended an exclusive scaling marketing masterclass 🌟.
• Had a jol with the Mxit “return” on ESP last week (and playing Snake too).
• Helped Mordi get some options for a front-end developer.
• Got access to Gustav’s awesome funding roadmaps Notion toolkit.
• Got access to Benjamin’s sales-driving tools.
• Had long discussions about funding and sales acceleration 🤔.
• Welcomed some more new members, ‘cos it’s fun in here 💃🏻🕺🏽…

Thinking about joining The Open Collab?

• Supercharge your network in the SA startup landscape — get that introduction, get that customer, or meet that partner.
• Get feedback on your products, services and/or offers from others who have built and are building their own products right now.
• Join all our online and in-person events for free!
• Exclusive 1-on-1 sessions with startup consultants.

SA’s only dedicated tech startup and scale-up founder network.

Join The Open Collab

WHAT YOU SAID

Skillin’ up…

On Friday, we riddled you about an SA startup in the training space, and not everyone recognised Umuzi…

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🔥 SkillForge – An AI-driven learning platform for African entrepreneurs. (50%)

🟩🟩🟩⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏡 Umuzi – A skills training program for young professionals in high-demand industries. (22%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📚 EduLink SA – A tutoring marketplace connecting students with expert mentors. (14%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥾 NextStep Academy – A boot camp for job seekers entering tech and finance. (14%)

WE OWE YOU SOME CLARITY

In last week's (Friday, 4 April) Fast Five Friday titled Gatvol? There’s an AI for that, our first entry on the local rates and tax objection tool, Gatvol AI, gave stats on general property taxes in SA. These are actually unrelated to what the product does (help you evaluate to object to municipal rates) and were only used to illustrate that SA rates and taxes on property are generally pretty high.

The intention of the post was: If you feel you’re paying high rates, you can use this tool to get a new property valuation, and then the tool will help you object to your current rates and maybe help you get them lowered a bit.

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

Advertise or Partners — Engage 22k South African professionals that read The Open Letter - partner with us or run an ad campaign.

Build A Newsletter — Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? We can build it with you. Check out Stream.

Startup Community — Join 100+ SA founders in our SA startup founder community called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.

Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason

Powered by beehiiv

‍

Expensive imports? US president Trump has slapped the entire world with trade tariffs, including 10% on all the penguins and seals on some uninhabited islands. Closer to home, South Africa is one of Trump’s “worst offenders” with a 30% tariff. The highest tariff in the world, though, goes to none other than poor Lesotho, whom Trump says “no one’s ever heard of” — shame.

Before the global trade war, though, it’s time for another Fast-Five Friday — 5 must-know things in SA startup, in 5 minutes. Let’s go…

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Hey, Look — We Got Some Awesome New Partners!

A very hearty welcome to 3 new partners joining our mission of championing SA founders and their startups…

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Find theirs and loads more Open Letter partners’ special offers in our founder stack.

Check it out now

1. EARLY DAYS

Slowing the municipality’s roll

Owning property in South Africa is a pretty costly exercise…

SA ranks 3rd in the world for highest property taxes at 23.12%, pipped only by Singapore in 1st place (35.58%), and Belgium slightly higher than us at 24%.

Most people don’t know if their property valuation is accurate, and the problem is that if it’s too high, you pay unnecessary taxes. But even if you know it’s been valued too high, the process to object to this is a nightmare.

But we stumbled upon a South African startup that was “gatvol” of this and, low and behold, launched Gatvol AI, SA’s first AI-powered Municipal rates objector.

Combining technology, legal expertise and property knowledge, the platform uses AI to extract your valuation details directly from the municipal valuations roll, incorporate property data and comparable sales, to get a more precise valuation.

Gatvol will then compile an objection and submit it to the municipality on your behalf, hopefully scoring you reduced tariffs on your home.

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2. MAKING ITS MARK…

Would you get tatt’ed by a robot?

Tattoo artists have a pretty finite earning potential: How many hours they can tattoo per day?

Sure, they could open up their own shop with extra booths employing other artists and such… but by and large, it is what it is.

Blackdot, a TattTech startup, has launched a machine that will give tattoo artists scale by letting them upload their designs to a marketplace and receive revenue from it each time someone gets tattooed by one of these machines, even if they’re on the other side of the world…

And it’s great for people getting tatts too, with reported pain levels as low as 2 out of 10, vs between 5 and 8 of conventional tattoo guns. And because Blackdot’s machine uses tiny black dots as fine as human hair, it can create very accurate, highly detailed tattoos.

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3. FROM THE OPEN COLLAB FOUNDER NETWORK

Opening up the SA grid for business

With SA currently allowing independent companies to produce up to 100 MW of electricity, and plans are to remove the threshold altogether in the future, electricity generators (IPPS) can now buy and sell energy through the transmission grid (subject to Eskom and municipal agreement).

But it’s not straightforward: Eskom still supplies the power, you just prove you generated the same into the grid and it gets credited. Plus there are multiple stakeholders involved in the transaction, archaic metering systems & ops, and a matching process required between supply and usage.

To help simplify and streamline things, local EnerTech startup Open Access Energy is building a suite of products to: 

• Facilitate the transactions between generators, consumers, Eskom and municipalities
• IPP proposal creation (normally a 3–5 process) now in just 5 minutes
• A (free) solution for municipalities and utilities to access smart meters, collect and interpret the data, apply tariffs, and bill customers all in one place.

A vital service when SA’s energy market gets more opened up by 2026/2027.

Do you want to build with lekker startup builders like Timo C. King, head of product at Open Access Energy? Come on over, we build together at The Open Collab…

4. GET AI BUILT INTO YOUR FINANCE OPERATIONS

Simplify How You Run Your Business

Running a small business means juggling a million things. But what if you could take care of invoicing, quotes and accounting questions — without ever logging in?

That’s the power of Just Ask Xero (JAX) — your new AI business sidekick by our friends over at Xero.

It’s still in beta, but JAX is being developed to help you handle everyday tasks with a simple message, wherever you are: email, SMS or WhatsApp, JAX meets you where you work — and gets it done.

With JAX, you can:

✅ Create and send invoices while you’re still on the job.
✅ Get real-time answers on quotes, payments and what you’re owed.
✅ Ask support questions and get instant help — no digging needed.

No more end-of-day admin. No more second-guessing.

Smarter workflows start with JAX. 

Plus: Did you know that if you use our exclusive Open Letter Xero partnership, you get Xero 90% off for 6 months?

No jokes.

Get your first 6 months of Xero @ 90% off

5. PITY THE (APRIL) FOOL

The glorious day the OG social network was back

Sadly, Mxit isn’t back to stay — our exclusive breaking news on Tuesday was an April Fool’s joke in collaboration with our friends Dan Southwood-Wells and Herman Maritz from EskomSePush…

They restyled ESP to look like Mxit, complete with retro fonts and colours, bringing a wave of nostalgia to thousands of South Africans. We created the noise with our PR piece.

The prank went viral, racking up nearly 10k comments and reactions on Mxit (ag, we mean ESP), 20k+ site visitors, 400+ new Open Letter subscribers, and even landing on a Best April Fools’ 2025 list. 

More than just a joke, this was a tribute to a true South African tech icon. Mxit wasn’t just a chat app… it was a launchpad for friendships, moonbases, and a generation of tech entrepreneurs. 

Here’s to the OG social media app built right here in SA – and a big thanks to Dan, Herman and the ESP team for making it happen! 

Now hit reply to this email and tell us: what was your favourite Mxit memory?

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IN SHORT

Cool tech stories to drop at the braai this weekend…

🦻Listen up. SA-born hearing tech, hearX, has merged with Eargo to form LXE Hearing, combining Eargo’s cutting-edge design, emphasis on clinical quality and customer-first approach with hearX’s suite of Bose-powered products and its award-winning mobile app. Nice one.

🤖 Three free pics. ChatGPT’s new image generator has been so popular that OpenAI has rolled it out to its free tier users. This has, however, been limited to 3 image creations per day. At least for now.

☔️ Whatever the weather. Google has added its AI Nowcasting weather tool to its search to provide “highly localised and immediate weather updates” using satellite imagery and AI… Cool, so opposed to just looking out the window?

🌍 African STEM boost. Amazon has just launched its first African Think Big Space in Cape Town to train 100 educators to reach 10’000 learners across 6 provinces to bridge the gaps in STEM education. Let’s GO!

🏆 Last Chance to Enter. Innovation City’s Startup of the Year competition’s entries close today at 17:00! Innovation City membership, 100k+ in UX design and public recognition, this is a great opportunity to showcase your startup among the best there is. Don’t miss your chance at winning this prestigious award, enter here.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with super streamlined business registration and compliance via Govchain, all your tech recruitment sorted by OfferZen and loads more vital startup tools & services.

DON’T MISS THIS

Coming Up in SA’s Most Vibrant Tech Founder Network

Next up in our members-only founder network — The Open Collab.

4 April 12:00 — An Open Collab Network Exclusive Masterclass: Marketing for scaling your startup with Kurt Schröder from Double Shift — join The Open Collab to attend.

11 April 12:000 — Chat Roulette: Meet other SA founders and builders when we all login for an online check-in and chat to get to network — join The Open Collab to attend.

25 April 12:00 — The Path to Scale Masterclass: Discover the hidden pitfalls and proven growth tools with Jason Goldberg, Art of Scale author and co-founder of Edge Growth.

PLUS: When you join The Open Collab, you get access to expert sessions, 100+ SA founders to network with and weekly online and offline network engagements.

Join The Open Collab

JOBS IN TECH

“Yeah, I got skills. What you gon’ do about it?”

🪴 Product Owner @ Flexhire

👷‍♀️ Software Engineering Team Lead @ Bash

🎨 Product Designer @ Sand Dollar Design

😎 Talent Partner (Tech) @ MoonPay

Hiring? Get in touch, and we will feature it here.

GAME TIME

Find zen with today’s ZA startup haiku

Code, design, create,

Learning paths to shape careers,

Future skills today.

WHAT YOU SAID

Get social…

On Tuesday, we asked about the most important workplace skill, and social’s the way…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤝 Social skills (65%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💀 Meme/GIF/Viral vid skills (5%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔥 Braai skils, of course (16%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎛️ Nah, it's your DJ skills (3%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💬 Actually, I discovered the perfect work skill… (11%)

Your 2 cents…

Ah, so a little bit of self-sacrifice, eh Vuyo. Spoken like a true founder. #startuplife 🛼

Right you are, Mpho, and we all sometimes wish we had a little more of it. 🤓

In a way that’s quite true, Bosvalu. How else you gonna attract a crowd? 🔊

He he, and we guess the best politicians win? 🎩

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

Advertise or Partners — Engage 22 000 South African professionals that read The Open Letter; partner with us or run an ad campaign — Reply to this email to get started.

Grow with Content — Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? Want to grow your brand with content? We can do it for you. Check out Stream.

Startup Community — Join 100+ SA founders in our SA startup founder network called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.

Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason

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Looking good? This guy built his own custom Tesla roadster (from Model 3 parts) and drove it around town to gauge people’s reactions. Pretty cool, but not as cool as today’s Open Letter exclusive… see below…

In this Open Letter:

• Open Letter exclusive: Are you sitting down? ‘Cos Mxit is back…!
• Boosting performance: Using tech to boost 20M+ brains at work.
• Apple’s health coach, Africa’s biggest startups & teaching kids about money.
• Scaling to comps and overseas funding: 3 Things in startup this week.
• SA’s biggest recent funding round raisers: The results are in.
• Lonely building your startup? Join The Open Collab and get support.

‍

EXCLUSIVE: MXIT IS BACK!

Break out your phones and prepare to party like it’s 2005 because South Africa’s pioneering original instant messaging social network Mxit is back — with a few exciting new updates… check out our exclusive preview.

‍

TRENDING NOW

Unlocking the Power of 20M+ Way Smarter South Africans

In today’s Tuesday Deep Dive, we examine the business impact of emotional intelligence, showcasing a local startup doing some amazing things with AI in this space…

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is a big deal in the workplace. 

It’s the ability to understand, manage and use your own emotions while recognising and influencing others’ for better communication and relationships, along 5 core EQ verticals:

• Empathy
• Social skills
• Self-awareness
• Self-regulation
• Motivation.

And, as you can imagine, EQ is magic in the workplace: Directly linked to performance, which is why it’s so rare – only 36% of us are truly emotionally intelligent and 90% of top performers rank highly in it, hence they get more money in the bank, while those without it experience poor communication, low morale and more conflicts, driving stress and burnout.

No wonder emotionally intelligent organisations report stronger customer experiences, higher customer loyalty and advocacy. #winning 

‍

Ok, so how do you build EQ?

Surprisingly it’s much the same as building physical strength: Consistent effort and many reps. 

At a neurological level, our brains form neural pathways based on repeated thoughts and behaviours; the more we engage in certain patterns, the stronger these pathways become. If those patterns happen to be good, great! If not, performance could suffer.

Enter neuroplasticity, your brain's ability to reorganise itself by making new neural connections throughout life: When you gradually replace old/negative patterns with positive thinking and behaviours, you can rewire your brain to make new neural connections over time.

And it’s important to do because our brains (unfortunately) have an inherent negativity bias – we tend to focus more on negative experiences. So it’s good practice to offset every single negative experience with at least three positive ones.

The local player building your brain gym

Mygrow is an emotional intelligence enablement platform driving personal and collective growth for individuals and teams with an online brain gym featuring pro psych workouts like the Three Good Things technique, signature strengths, affirming statements and more.

The platform takes users on a journey through daily video-based learning on a specific technique before a short learning-affirmation quiz, and then jumping into actually doing it.

Best part? You can make major changes with a series of just 10 minutes a day.

Mygrow designed their program around one daily session (they call it a Droplet), so no “catching up” or skipping ahead… And their gamified leaderboard tracks individual growth across teams, so you can see who’s working to grow their EQ.

Using AI to measure growth…

Mygrow’s powered by an AI-driven technique engine that scores your attempt at each technique (plus about 12 other factors), analyses your historical data and provides feedback for improving on a given technique.

And it works best in groups: Mygrow starts with a pilot of 5 to 10% of the organisation, who eventually becomes Mygrow “champions” that act as cheerleaders for the next subset of employees – helping with check-ins and being an in-person driver for the product while normalising growth and development in the entire company.

A reporting dashboard informs champions who are engaging, which teams are struggling and who are showing a lower or higher growth score than the average. (Taking into account that everyone has a different EQ starting point and thus, journey.)

We recently chatted with Theran Knighton-Fitt, Mygrow co-founder and chief humanising officer, who is confident after their push into AI since 2024 (which brought so much more consistency than human coaches) that a Mygrow Droplet just 3 times per week can guarantee a skills growth impact of more than 70% for any organisation...

With platforms like Mygrow helping individuals and teams grow their EQ and thus skills and performance, we’re watching this space…

IN SHORT

A few tech things to take to work…

🚨Vocal panic button. The world’s first voice-activated panic super app has just launched in SA. Valor lets users set a custom panic command phrase which, when used dispatches response teams to their exact location while monitoring the ambient sounds to assess the situation and update response teams. Hopefully, you don't say it accidentally or forget what it is.

🍏 Coaching you to health. Apple is reportedly working on improving its Health app to add an AI Coach to advise users on how to get healthy. Supposedly called Health+, it’s been worked on since 2023, with a reported launch date in mid to late 2026. Hopefully, it doesn’t tune you about how much Apple TV you’re watching…

🌍 Africa’s biggest startups. Funding into startups on the African continent reached $2 billion last year — a return to pre-pandemic levels. Here’s a rundown of Africa’s Unicorns, including SA’s very own TymeBank (2024) at $1.5 billion and our “Soonicorns” Clickatell (about $500 million), Yoco ($400 million to $500 million) and Onafriq (between $300 million to $500 million). We love to see it…

🪴 Teach ‘em young. Local e-learning platform Fintr (the peeps behind the FinMaster boardgame) is launching its brand new newsletter Mini Millionaires to help parents raise money-smart kids using a short, practical weekly email filled with tips, stories, and simple guides. We’re signing up now…

🏠 PropTech Boom. Local PropTech startup, Launchbase (which we featured here), recently revealed that after consolidating data from 2024, their platform managed to sell R4.8b worth of properties. Flexing the potential of PropTech in SA.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with fractional CTO and tech scaling with Octoco, easy-peasy cloud-based accounting software from Xero and 5 more vital startup tools & services. Pss we have some new services and products on there, go check them out…

BUILDER’S CORNER

3 Things for Tech Founders

Brought to you by Stream — you build your business, we tell the story.

Read Jason Golberg’s The Art of Scale: If you’re between 10 and 200 people with the chaos of scale creeping in, this book breaks down the science and art of growing in emerging markets — without the Silicon Valley fluff. From strategy and team to money and leadership, it’s packed with real-world stories, practical tools, and actual answers, plus 50+ free online tools. Buy your copy here.

Use SA’s new open-source IP strategy resource: If you're raising global capital, this open-source framework is a must. Created by Dommisse Attorneys with SA SME Fund, SAVCA, and Endeavor, it shows you how to set up IP offshore — without losing your SA team or getting stuck in legal quicksand. Built for speed, scale, and investor trust. Start using it here.

Become a 2025 Startup of the Year: If you’re building in SA and ready to raise your profile, this one’s for you. Innovation City’s annual competition helped spotlight past winners like Kena Health and Wamly — and this year, there’s extra value: entrants get access to a benchmarking report based on anonymised data from all submissions. Entries close this Friday, 4 April. Enter here.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last few days alone, in our online network, we…

• Had an awesome first in-person event in Joburg 🥂🪩.
• Helped Malan find a couple of great labour law consultants.
• Helped Benjamin get some business valuator options to review potential investments.
• Sourced Enrico some good Stellenbosch co-working space options.
• Celebrated the arrival of Piet’s awesome new company swag!
• Got power growth-hacking lessons from the guy that grew SnapScan 🚀.
• Celebrated the success of Marco’s collab-inspired marketing strategy.
• Welcomed a host of new members — so much fun in here 💃🏻🕺🏽.

Coming up in The Open Collab:

• Join Office Hours tomorrow where we talk about all things startup. Bring your questions and get help in moving faster than ever before.
• This Friday we have a Startup Marketing Masterclass hosted by Kurt Schröder, founder and CEO of DoubleShift - a leading startup marketing and branding agency.
• PLUS access all our previous masterclasses including growth hacking, a 3 part sales masterclass and much more.

SA’s only dedicated tech startup and scale-up founder network.

Join The Open Collab

WHAT YOU SAID

All for the money…

Last Friday, we riddled you which SA startup raised the largest seed round in 2023, and most bet on Naked, but actually it was Peach Payments with a US$31 million Series A round in April that year…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💰 FloatPays (13%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨 🛡️ Naked Insurance (54%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔗 Stitch (13%)

🟩🟩⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💳 Peach Payments (20%)

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

Advertise or Partners — Engage 22 000 South African professionals that read The Open Letter - partner with us or run an ad campaign.

Build A Newsletter — Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? We can build it with you. Check out Stream.

Startup Founder Network — Join 100+ SA founders in our SA startup founder network called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.

Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason

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Tried OpenAI’s GPT‑4o native image gen yet? It lets you generate and edit uploaded images with prompts, so you can do fun stuff like become fake BFFs with Zuckerberg on the streets of Jozi or re-imagine The Open Letter team as South Park characters…

‍

Back on Earth, though, it’s time for a very special Fast-FOUR Friday — 3 Startups of the Year you should know… and your chance to become number 4. Let’s go…

‍

Thank You, Joburg!

Our first-ever in-person Joburg event was a big jol (last night). It was awesome connecting with the Gauteng crowd — and, of course, we all left a little smarter and with hopefully loads of new AI business model ideas.

Look out for more upcoming events here and, if you want near 24/7 access to 100+ SA founders building cool things, plus free entry to all of our events, consider joining The Open Collab.

1. THE BOOST YOU NEED

Innovation City’s Startup of the Year 2025

Innovation City in Cape Town’s Startup of the Year Competition is back for its 4th edition...

And, if you ask previous winners like Kena Health (2022), Wamly (2023) and AI Diagnostics (2024), winning this could help put you on the startup map, validate ideas and teams, and even open up some partnership and investment doors. 

We’re an official partner for the 2025 awards, and we’re going to unlock some extra value for entrants:

• anonymised report from all of the entries 
• to help SA startups benchmark their progress

Meaning win or lose, entering gives you deeper insights and great value!

Entries are open until next week Friday, 4 April 2025, with the winner announced on 24 April at the Innovation City Awards Night Ceremony. 

So if you’re a South African Startup (with an office in SA), have been going for less than 5 years, with a team of 2 or more, and generating monthly recurring revenue with an MVP or service in the market, you should enter now…

‍

Do so here

In today’s newsletter, we take some time to share about previous award winners and what it’s meant for their businesses.

2. SCREEN TIME

Using the sound of TB to improve patient diagnosis

Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent worldwide (1.25 million died from TB in 2023 alone) with nearly 30% of cases missed because it shares symptoms with a host of other diseases. 

AI Diagnostics is a Tuberculosis diagnostics tool (wireless digital stethoscope and data capturing app) that leverages their TB detection AI model to analyse the sound of a patient’s lungs to either rule out TB or prompt further tests.

And it’s already delivering results with a 63% reduction in missed TB-positive patients…

On Winning the Innovation City Startup of the Year in 2024:

Before the membership (which we won as part of the prize), I was pretty convinced that we could build this business with a remote team, but my time at Innovation City showed me otherwise. Remote calls can't simulate the relationships, gut and trust that develop during in-person engagements — all of which are key for deep collaboration.

Co-founder and CEO, Braden van Breda

3. CAN YOU TAKE ME HIRE?

Recruitment, slicker and quicker

Hiring for a role can be time-consuming and costly – taking as much as 42 days (and costing R30k–R60k) to hire one person. Eina.

Wamly, an HRTech platform for one-way video interviews lets companies evaluate candidates asynchronously and flexibly while getting a better feel for them as they answer interview questions in a self-interview-style flow.  

The platform also features screening forms, customisable interview questions, skills testing capabilities and administrative and collaborative tools to streamline your team’s interview and hiring process – saving companies as much as 70% compared to traditional interviews.

On Winning the Innovation City Startup of the Year in 2023:

Wamly tripled in revenue, reached profitability, expanded our product offering, more than doubled our staff complement, and is now gearing up for a Series A round to expand even more internationally.

Founder and CEO Francois de Wet remarks:

4. IN CONSULTATION WITH

The doctor in your pocket

Seeing a private healthcare provider in SA is a costly exercise – costing between R400 and R1’000 a visit.

Not to mention the less than 8 Drs per 10’000 South Africans, making it tricky for most South Africans to see a doctor when they need to.

Kena Health is a healthcare app that connects you with nurses, clinical associates, doctors, and mental health professionals to diagnose and treat you for anything from acne to a UTI, via text, voice or video call – for just R235 per consultation (including sick notes & prescriptions).

On Winning the Innovation City Startup of the Year in 2022:

We’ve gone from launch to 50k consultations delivered. We’ve lowered the cost of care by over 70% compared to a local GP — while maintaining a 4.7/5 customer rating. And we’ve landed Old Mutual and Shoprite as partners, which will see our growth accelerate from here.

CEO & founder Saul Kornik says:

YOU NEXT?

Today’s 5th spot is reserved in honour of the soon-to-be 2025 Innovation City Startup of the Year.

Will it be you?

Only one way to find out…

Enter here

IN SHORT

Your weekend convo starters, shorted…

🤝 Making the Shyft. Standard Bank’s Shyft trading app has launched the ability to trade shares on the JSE. This is over and above giving both Standard Bank and other local Banks’ customers the ability to invest in US equities, the European stock market and UK-listed companies. Very cool…

💰Securing the Bag. Local AI startup NOSIBLE has landed $1 million in pre-seed funding in a round led by Atlantica Ventures to launch its growth marketing efforts, scale sales, and accelerate the GTM strategy. Nice one.

😡 Fighting the Rage. A new social media app has been launched to fight rage bait (any content that stirs controversy). Sez Us lets users rate other users’ posts for approval, influence, insightfulness, relevance and politeness, in the hope it makes users think twice about posting controversial content. Now, where’s the fun in that?

🏉 Backing the Boks. FNB has become the new principal sponsor of the Boks. Pick n Pay also becomes a Tier 1 sponsor, with its logo appearing on the back of the jersey, while Coca-Cola’s logo will appear on their shorts. Check out this hilarious vid about the new rule changes brought about by the FNB partnership.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with all your VC and startup legal sorted by Dommisse Attorneys, your own CFO for a fraction of the cost with OCFO and 12 more vital startup tools & services.

DON’T MISS THIS

Coming Up in SA’s Most Vibrant Tech Founder Network

Next up in our members-only founder network — The Open Collab.

28 March 12:00 — Growth hack like SnapScan. An Open Collab Network Exclusive Masterclass: How to growth hack in SA with Ben Blaine from Neurabuild (ex SnapScan)— join The Open Collab to attend.

4 April 12:00 — Make them take note. An Open Collab Network Exclusive Masterclass: Marketing for scaling your startup with Kurt Schröder from Double Shift — join The Open Collab to attend.

11 April 12:000 — Chat Roulette: Meet other SA founders and builders when we all log in for an online check-in and chat to get to network — join The Open Collab to attend.

PLUS: When you join The Open Collab get access to expert sessions, more than 100 SA founders to network with and weekly online and offline network engagements.

Join The Open Collab

JOBS IN TECH

Lock in your next step…

🏗️ Product Manager: Insights & ML Empowerment, Group Data Platform @ Sanlam

👩‍💻 Various Tech Jobs @ Wamly

🎨 Senior User Interface Designer @ SYTMN

💼 Business Development Manager @ Cue

Hiring? Get in touch, and we will feature it here.

GAME TIME

Test your SA Startup knowledge…

WHAT YOU SAID

Rather handy…

On Tuesday, we asked how you tackle home renovations and repairs, and most of us are not too shabby at DIY…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🧰 I’m well-versed in all things DIY. (33%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🪵 I Noah guy. (24%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💬 I get recommendations on my neighbourhood groups. (16%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 💸 Saw the quote, fainted and now learning how to DIY on YouTube. (27%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👷‍♂️ Nah, I have an even better solution… (0)

Your 2 cents…

Nice, Isaac! So how often do you get it right before needing to make the call? 🔧

Great, Timothy! We’re trying to show everyone just how much wonderful talent and potential there is in our country. 🚀

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

Advertise or Partners — Engage 22 000 South African professionals that read The Open Letter - partner with us or run an ad campaign.

Grow with Content — Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? Want to grow your brand with content? We can do it for you. Check out Stream.

Startup Community — Join 100+ SA founders in our SA startup founder community called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.

Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason

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Fast enough? Chinese carmaker BYD has announced a new EV model with a battery-charge time of just 5 minutes. That’s almost 3X as fast as Tesla Superchargers and about the same as filling up on diesel/petrol. Plus: BYD says it has its sights on releasing this in SA and Brazil specifically. 🏎️💨

In this Open Letter:

• Sizing opportunities: Getting big buying power for the little guys.
• Paying off takeout, Google’s Mzansi grads & Africa’s first AI factory.
• Coming in hot: 3 Trends, tools and tips when building your startup.
• Who knew this SA restaurant profit booster? The results are in.
• Lonely building your startup? Join The Open Collab and get support.

‍

Joburg, See You On Thursday!

Our first-ever in-person Joburg The Open Letter event is happening this Thursday (27 March), meaning cool peeps, lots of gees, drinks and an evening of great conversations, networking and a whole lot of fun.

We’re doing a fireside chat with The Awareness Company’s Priaash Ramadeen and Melio AI’s Merelda Wu on new AI-powered business models and how to build an AI company in Africa.

Better hurry — tickets are almost gone.

Buy Tickets

TRENDING NOW

Boosting SA's Small Builder Buying Power

In today’s Tuesday Deep Dive, we examine the challenges of contractors and independents up against megacorps in the built industry, showcasing a local startup that’s solving for a way to level the playing field and give the little guys a shot…

Trying to get a good deal on building supplies is hard…

Just ask the 55’000+ contractors on the Construction Industry Development Board’s Register of Contractors, and nearly 2’800 small independent hardware stores helping build South Africa.

(Not to mention the informal trader with a shelf or two of those critical basic building necessities…)

Sure hardware store chains and massive construction companies have big budgets and sweet, sweet bulk buying power to negotiate with, but what about the little guy doing smaller, ad hoc jobs, or the small independent hardware store that doesn't have the pipeline (or shelf space) for 40’000 boxes of tiles? 

‍

But it leaves them scrambling…

1. They can't compete, so have to accept smaller margins, or run the risk of losing the deal entirely.
2. Shopping around at various suppliers for the best price is one solution, but quickly gets untenable when you have to source loads of items.

Go the distance…

Another challenge with the larger, hardware chains is their footprint is typically heavily concentrated in (and around) SA’s major metros and cities.

Just take a look at Builders’ stores, or even Talisman Tool Hire’s more than 100 stores. 70% of them are in Gauteng and the Western Cape, leaving only a handful in each of SA’s other provinces and neighbouring countries. (No wonder they dominate: 22% of all hardware stores in SA…)

This does mean you have large swathes of underserved areas in SA, but this means contractors need to travel large distances frequently to get their building supplies.

And independent hardware stores cannot get their stock delivered from manufacturers unless they place an order of a specific size. 

Big buying power for the little guy…

Sellers Plug is a local startup that simplifies the building supply procurement process for contractors and independent hardware stores, using tech to streamline and help them harness the bulk buying power.

It all started during Covid, when Sellers Plug spotted an opportunity to consolidate orders from multiple contractors, get it from a larger supplier (usually near a big city/major metro), and bring it to a centralised warehouse to distribute.  

It wasn’t long before they realised they could secure better prices with bulk orders, passing those savings onto the lil guy (who then operates with meatier margins).

A neat gig with a lot of potential: They naturally help independents deal with multiple large suppliers and even use local transporters to deliver the supplies from their warehouse directly to the site.

Great, now make it bigger…

Sellers Plug is now also working with small, emerging manufacturers to get their products onto their platform, which helps grow the industry from the other angle too – great for manufacturer expansion without having to invest in infrastructure like trucks and warehouses. 

They’re currently building an AI inventory system to help their partners get a handle on which product line sells best in which province. And it will eventually provide a host of product insights, including packaging.

With platforms like Sellers Plug connecting contractors, independent hardware stores, local transporters and emerging manufacturers all in the name of helping the small guy win, you know we’re watching this space…

IN SHORT

Good to keep the conversation going…

💎 Polishing a Jem. Our friends, local HR Tech platform Jem HR have just announced (like at midnight last night) their R60m Pre-Series A funding round led by Old Mutual subsidiary Next176 (also friends of ours). The funding will help the WhatsApp-based HR & employee benefits platform expand beyond SA, grow the team, and enhance its platform with new products. Big congrats Caroline, Simon & the Jem HR team.

🌿 Branching Out. FNB’s venture capital arm, The FNB Vumela Enterprise Development Fund, and Edge Growth has just invested R15 million into local AI startup Trade Shield, a trade credit risk assessment platform that uses advanced data analytics, predictive modelling, and AI. Very nice…

🌍 On the Map. Cassava Technologies is looking to establish Africa’s first AI factory with its plans for a state-of-the-art data centre that’s powered by NVIDIA’s GPU-based supercomputers to accelerate AI model training, fine-tuning, and advanced inference capabilities. Taking African AI next-level…

🎓 Google Grads. SA’s first cohort of grads from Google’s Startups Accelerator: South Africa programme has been announced. The founders have completed the 3-month mentorship programme and have landed some non-dilutive funding as well as free credits on the Google Cloud Platform to facilitate app development. Congrats — keeping an eye on these startups…

🍔 Chow Now, Pay Later. DoorDash and Klarna got tongues-a-wagging this past week after they announced their partnership to give DoorDash customers the ability to purchase food on the platform and pay it off across four interest-free payments via BNPL player Klarna. Jip. Crazy times.

😎 The Stack. Founders need trustworthy tools and suppliers. Our Founder’s Stack includes an easy-to-apply R5M business finance facility from Lula, next-level authority building and lead generation with Stream, and loads more vital startup tools and services.

BUILDER’S CORNER

3 Things for Tech Founders

Brought to you by Stream — you build your business, we tell the story.

Vibe coding yet? Vibe coding is using AI tools to generate and refine software with natural language prompts. This means developers can create just by describing what they want (no need to write code). Naturally, this opens the door to more collaboration and allows people with limited technical ability to build really cool apps quickly (although having a technical background still helps a lot). Check out his cool guide to get you started.

Fancy $1m in funding? Our friends over at Startup Club ZA, just announced the Big Pitch, where founders get the chance to battle it out on stage for a shot at a massive $1,000,000 investment (yep, with six zeros — pending due diligence, of course). The next qualifier’s going down in Joburg on August 13, and if you’ve got a startup with some firepower, this is your cue to jump in. More details here.

What we’re reading: If we hear from one more American entrepreneur about how they use EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System), we’re going to start thinking that EOS might be the main reason the US is a global economic superpower. Seriously, though, tech startup founders, agencies and even media companies have been touting EOS to the point where we caved. We got ourselves Traction by Gino Wickman and are busy working through it.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last few days alone, in our online network, we…

• Got a ton of awesome startup podcasts to check out — thanks, Elijah 🚀.
• Got our tickets for our first-ever event in Joburg 🥳.
• Got another host of awesome and unique startup tools.
• Discovered a super affordable text-to-speech app for Mac.
• Helped Lenard with some connections in the local EV space.
• Helped connect Jason with some startups in the human rights space.
• Got a few peeps a sweet 20% discount on their newsletter platforms.
• Lined up a few beta testers for Thijan’s next project… 🏕️
• Welcomed more new members — what a pleasant din in here.

Thinking about joining The Open Collab?

• Supercharge your network in the SA startup landscape — get that introduction, get that customer, or meet that partner.
• Get feedback on your products, services and/or offers from others who have built and are building their own products right now.
• Join all our online and in-person events for free!
• Exclusive 1-on-1 sessions with startup consultants.

SA’s only dedicated tech startup and scale-up founder network.

Join The Open Collab

WHAT YOU SAID

Better bites…

Last Friday, we riddled you about an SA startup that helps increase restaurant profits, and many of us recognised Munch…

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍽️ Morsel.Tech (20%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📖 MenuMate (25%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🍔 Munch (45%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥗 MealSync (10%)

Your 2 cents…

True dat, Khanyiso. It’s also happens to be 100% spot on. 🎯

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

Advertise or Partners — Engage 22 000 South African professionals that read The Open Letter - partner with us or run an ad campaign.

Build A Newsletter — Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? We can build it with you. Check out Stream.

Startup Community — Join 80+ SA founders in our SA startup founder community called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.

Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason

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Digging for secrets? An Italian team claims to have discovered massive spiral structures stretching over 600 metres underneath the pyramids of Giza. The peer-reviewed research was done with SAR scans (Synthetic Aperture Radar), and they think there might be more chambers up to 2km beneath the famous pyramids. What? 🐪

A little closer to home, though, it’s another Fast Five Friday: 5 Things in SA startup — let’s go!

Hi Jozi, Got Plans for Thursday Evening?

Until now, we have only held events in Cape Town & Stellenbosch, but that’s all changing this coming Thursday, 27 March, when we host our first-ever in-person event in Joburg!

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It’s going to be an evening filled with networking with other founders and innovators in your city, as well as a panel discussion with Merelda Wu from Melio AI and Priaash Ramadeen from The Awareness Company.

Buy Tickets Now

Psss.. today is your last chance to grab some early bird tickets at 50% off.

1. GET OUT THERE

Screening your screen time

Screen time is rising and SA leads the world…

We spend more than half our day (9 hours and 24 minutes) looking at screens, with just under 4 hours of that on social media: more than anywhere else on earth.

If you’re concerned about getting rectangular eyes, you could always add limits to your fav apps taking up most of your time, but these are pretty easy to bypass, not to mention rely heavily on our own self-restraint.

So we had a good laugh when we found Touch Grass, an app that lets you pick the apps that are most distracting to you, set a time limit on usage, and then force you outside to snap a pic of actual grass.

And don't bother trying to fool it by snapping a pic of other foliage. Touch Grass uses a computer vision AI to distinguish between outdoor grass and other plants… 

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2. EARLY DAYS

Boardroom with a brew

With the rise in work from anywhere, coffee shops need to cater to Elon’s beloved “laptop generation.” This means WiFi, plug points and even laptop-specific tables to lock in those digital workers.

A trick they’re missing though is a way to cancel ambient noise during video calls – cafes aren’t exactly libraries, you know. So when we ran into Air Offices co-founder Brendan at our last event in Stellenbosch, we were intrigued.

Air Offices lets you find and book closed-off boardroom spaces within some of Vida e Caffè’s 320 stores throughout Africa (a quiet place to take a virtual meeting or meet up in-person, off-site). This helps you ensure you’ve got a quiet spot to take that call.

It’s still early days for Air Offices, but we wouldn’t be surprised if more coffee shops start doing this real soon. 

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3. HAPPY HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

Doing the right thing

South Africans' 27 Rights are enshrined in Chapter 2 of SA’s Constitution: The Bill of Rights. But our Gender-Based Violence is out of control – with women and children in townships most vulnerable.

Memeza is a community safety initiative that’s looking to change that with SA’s first public alarm system: Hit the panic button and it alerts everyone from friends and family to the neighbours, SAPS and CPF via SMS – giving everyone the exact coordinates.

When Memeza ran their pilot programme in Diepsloot in 2023, they saw a 100% prevention rate in houses where the alarms were installed, a 60% decrease in serious crimes, and tellingly a migration in crime hotspots (criminals went elsewhere). 

They’ve also deployed large quantities of their personal alarm that makes a sound as loud as fireworks (at 140 db – the threshold of pain), which led to a 67% decrease in sexual offences…

Alarms… effective

4. FROM THE OPEN COLLAB COMMUNITY

Study break

Around 60% of SA’s 200k annual first-year university students are dropping out (many due to finances)... Not to mention the stiff competition among the 1.9 million+ students vying for NSFAS funding…

It’s super strict: They won’t pay if you fail a funded model, potentially landing some SA students in hot water.

Enter Studii, the first-ever module protection cover (in the world) that helps students “re-fund” the payment of their failed modules for around R75 per month.

It doesn’t just give away “free money”, though… Studii looks at your participation mark when considering its payouts, motivating students to attend classes while providing some failsafe with that one pesky Statistics module until you pass.

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PS: Marco Booyse, co-founder and CEO at Studii is part of our Open Collab Founder Network. Join us over at The Open Collab and build with founders like Marco.

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5. THE ULTIMATE IP RESOURCE

A Game-Changer for SA Startup Investment

International investors have made it clear that they need to see your IP outside of SA before they invest. However, navigating IP, tax, and exchange control laws has been complex, expensive, and slow until now.

That’s why Dommisse Attorneys has partnered with SA SME Fund, SAVCA, and Endeavor to open source a standardised IP Strategy for South African companies.

Now, any startup can follow a predictable, repeatable process to establish IP offshore — from day one.

✅ Protect your IP while keeping your SA-based team.

✅ Unlock international investment with a framework investors trust.

✅ Move faster, reduce costs, and scale globally.

This isn’t just guidance — it’s a game changer for startups looking to raise global capital.

Get started now

IN SHORT

Short and schweet tech tidbits…

🌿 Good Tyming? TymeBank is forging ahead on its mission to become SA’s biggest digital bank. It hit 10.7 million customers at the end of last year, with deposits climbing from R6.3 billion to 6.9 billion in just 6 months. Nice to see.

🪄 Gee Wiz. Alphabet (Google’s Mom) announced its largest-ever (possibly) acquisition. It bought Israeli cybersecurity Wiz for a cool $32 billion, more than double the current record deal when Google took over Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in 2012. All cash nogals.

🤖 Meep. Morp. Zeep. Nvidia, Disney Research, and Google DeepMind are teaming up to develop Newton, a physics engine to simulate robotics movements IRL. Disney is set to use it to power Star Wars-inspired “cute little droids” for its theme parks. Again ask: What. Could. Go. Wrong…

🦄 AI Unicorns. 23 startups achieved unicorn status (reaching a coll $l billy valuation) in Q1 of this year. Nearly half of those are playing in the AI space, with 7 of the top 11 startups having a valuation between $1.6 billion and $2.8 billion being AI startups. Is this officially a thing now?

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with your own CTO for remarkable tech builds with Octoco, your own CFO for a fraction of the price with OCFO and 12 more vital startup tools & services.

DON’T MISS THIS

Coming Up in SA’s Most Vibrant Tech Founder Network

Next up in our members-only founder network — The Open Collab.

27 March 18:000 — In-Person Event: Our first-ever JHB event is happening and it’s all about building a world-class company with AI — Network members get in free, non-members get your tickets here.

28 March 12:00 — An Open Collab Network Exclusive Masterclass: How to growth hack in SA with Ben Blaine from Neurabuild — Join The Open Collab to attend.

4 April 12:00 — An Open Collab Network Exclusive Masterclass: Marketing for scaling your startup with Kurt Schröder from Double Shift — Join The Open Collab to attend.

PLUS: When you join The Open Collab get access to expert sessions, more than 90 SA founders to network with and weekly online and offline network engagements.

Join The Open Collab

JOBS IN TECH

Some of our friends are hiring. Noah person who fits the brief?

👩🏻‍💻 Our friends over at Lula are looking for a whole host of software and data engineers. Great company with a great culture — so if you’re keen on a move, go check it out!

🎯 Some of the most exciting startups in SA have come out of the Octoco stable. If you are a hardware engineer looking to work with SA’s finest, go check out their openings here.

💡 On Tuesday, we covered FARO (ICYMI: Tuesday’s Open Letter feat. FARO), SA’s latest retail startup that uses tech to scale unlike anything this country has seen before, and they’re hiring a CTO here.

🦾 Merelda Wu (one of our guests at our upcoming event in Jozi)’s company, Melio AI, is hiring for various roles in AI. You can have a look here.

Hiring? Get in touch, and we will feature it here.

GAME TIME

Riddle us this…

I start with an “M,” but I’m no map,

Helping you sell with just a quick tap.

Inventory, orders, I handle them all,

Restaurants and cafes, big or small.

WHAT YOU SAID

Fashion police…

In Tuesday’s FARO piece, we asked how you buy your clothing, and surprisingly most of us wait for the Birthday/Christmas haul to sort us out… 🤷

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 🐊 I’ve got a brand, and I stick with it. (26%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ☑️ I walk into the first shop, buy the first thing, done. (12%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😎 Someone with better fashion sense shops for me. (15%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🎁 I wait for my Birthday/Christmas to sort me out for the year. (29%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛍️ I might have a problem… (18%)

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Your 2 cents…

Hey, yes give it a go and let us know how you find them, Isaac 💪.

Lol, Pdjan. Please, please tell us you’re wearing the same one right now 🤣.

Sweet, let us know when you do… 🛍️

Nice one, Mervyn. Ja, people often discount the value of trust. Big mistake, trust is everything 👔.

Seems like most people here are on board with that, Madelein 🧢.

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

Advertise or Partners — Engage 21 000 South African professionals that read The Open Letter - partner with us or run an ad campaign — Reply to this email to get started.

Grow with Content — Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? Want to grow your brand with content? We can do it for you. Check out Stream.

Startup Community — Join 90+ SA founders in our SA startup founder community called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.

Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason

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Easy to grasp? Apple has announced plans to include an AirPods feature that will live-translate other languages in real-time. It could be ready as early as the next update later this year — no word, though, on how good it’ll be with notoriously difficult languages like Afrikaans, but let’s see.

In this Open Letter:

• Big clearance: The SA startup tackling R2.5 trillion in fast-fashion waste.
• Google Gemini’s Getty, local learning landings & Solly saving Starlink?
• Head in the game: Where to catch the latest big trends in SA software.
• Who recognised this SA delivery marketplace? The results are in.
• Lonely building your startup? Join The Open Collab and get support.

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WE ARE COMING TO GAUTENG!

Gauteng, are you ready for the first ever in-person The Open Letter event?

We are coming to town on the 27th of March (that’s next week!), and we will be hosting an event filled with great conversations, networking and a whole lot of fun.

With special guests, Priaash Ramadeen, co-founder of The Awareness Company and Merelda Wu, co-founder of Melio AI, we are going to discuss how AI is enabling the creation of entirely new businesses, what it takes to build an AI company in Africa and how South African founders can stand to benefit from the AI revolution!

Get your tickets now! And hurry up; tickets are limited!

Buy Tickets

TRENDING NOW

Solving Earth’s R2.5 Trillion Fashion Headache

In today’s Tuesday Deep Dive, we examine the environmental and business costs of fast fashion, showcasing a local startup solving for a better way to provide premium clothing experiences to all of SA…

The fast-fashion industry churns out between 80 billion and 150 billion jackets, shoes, dresses, T-shirts and more every year… with as much as 10–40% going unsold.

Eek, that’s 8–60 billion excess items of fashion, an overstock worth some $140 billion in unmet sales (R2.5 trillion)… 

Why is this happening?

• Manufacturers enforce minimum order levels – just 100 T-shirts? No way.
• On the flip side: Retailers leverage economies of scale – bigger orders, lower cost per item, higher margins.
• Rapidly changing retail and fashion trend cycles.
• Retailers hate nothing more than missing out on a sale – so they’d rather order more stock than run out of something popular.

Return to seller…

That’s not even scratching the surface, though: Another big contributor to waste is returned items, with an alarming new trend rising on social media…

Influencers buy a “haul” of clothing items online, and then use their homes as fitting rooms, parading outfits to their followers on TikTok – asking if they should “keep or return” the items… (Could’ve gone our whole lives not knowing this is a thing, but there you have it.)

Clothing returns vary by type and where it was bought: In-store purchase returns are 10%, while online clothing purchases are double that at 26%.

Bad for business, bad for the planet

Ok, so where do all these overstocked leftovers and returns end up?

Most never go back on sale, and as much as 50% end up in landfills, 25% being incinerated, and 25% recycled.

But in reality, tons of this stuff ends up in places like Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, and Uganda under the guise of charitable donations. Problem is 20–50% of the bales of clothing cannot be used and end up in our landfills.

The local heroes finding clothing a new home

Local tech-enabled clothing retailer FARO, is tackling the problem of fashion overstocking and returns with their innovative approach: Placing high-end stores in non-core, emerging markets, where fashion brands can sell their unsold inventory for as much as 60% off. 

A solid idea since South Africans want great fashion, but at a good price. And we like that they’re making it a premium shopping experience, too.

And while FARO does not have an e-commerce presence (a smart intentional play so they’re not competing with the actual brands), they currently have 4 stores (with 12+ coming this year alone), and over 3’000 brands in-store, offering their shoppers the same premium experience as if they were shopping at these fancy stores themselves.

FARO stocks:

• Last season’s overstocked items
• Open or damaged packaging (yet nothing wrong with the item itself)
• Wrong colours or odd sizes (common in about 10% of stock).

But it retains an element of lucky play: FARO doesn't stock a concentration of specific brands, so the items you do find might be pretty scarce. 

The secret sauce of FARO IQ

FARO needs to process an enormous volume of fashion merchandise – perhaps a bit too much for humans, which is why they employ an AI platform called FARO IQ.

It automates buying, merchandise planning, and pricing. It’ll even analyse a brand’s stock list and score it based on how well similar items have performed at FARO’s various outlets. This helps FARO make the right buying decisions while helping the warehouse team process and price everything.

Is this the secret sauce to help FARO scale? Time will tell.

They recently raised $6 million, and have a bold vision of 1’000 stores across the African continent. 

It truly is global fashion at Mzansi prices. We’re watching this space…

CHECK THIS OUT

The Next Big Trends in Software?

DevConf 2025 is fast approaching and our friends at Lula are hosting the official cocktail event in both Johannesburg & Cape Town...

We caught up with John Dalton, Lula’s Head of Engineering, to hear what he’s most excited about for DevConf this year and what they’ve been up to.

Be in the know, you know…

John says that conferences are great places to challenge your assumptions and get some external validation of what you’re thinking about building, because…

1. Some of these technical aspects are covered in talks
2. There’s tons of industry expertise in the room, you simply strike up a convo, and ask your question…

The big culture shift at conference talks

John’s seen a big shift towards culturally focused talks. While technical talks are always great, talks that focus on culture, especially psychological safety at work, are also applicable to engineers.

In the past year since John joined Lula, they’ve done a lot to mature their software delivery, refine their agile practices, and bring predictability and trust to Lula’s software delivery capabilities. 

Lula’s list of next big things…

The team at Lula have also been cooking up some exciting stuff recently:

1. Releasing the Lula mobile App (currently released to “friends and family”). 
2. Building an engineering culture by getting the right kind of competencies into the business, enabling the team to be autonomous and deliver well.
3. Lula’s data strategy involving Snowflake, and how it’s going to change the way they see data in the business.

Get your most pressing engineering Qs answered at…

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IN SHORT

Something worth repeating at the water cooler…

💊 Screening on steroids. Local PropTech startup Preferental is taking the pain out of tenant screening with an app that automates and accelerates the process, using AI to provide real-time, accurate tenant evaluations in mere seconds. Can’t wait for the app to screen out weirdo landlords…

🤖 Gemini photoshop. Well, well, well. Looks like some clever peeps have figured out how to use Google’s Gemini AI: Gemini Flash 2.0 to remove watermarks from images from stock image sites like Getty. In fact, it doesn't just remove the watermark, it fills in the blanks too. Where was this tech during the days of Thunda.com?

💼 SME learning. Grindstone managing partner Catherine Young’s Thinkroom Consulting has launched a new online learning solution for SMEs with self-paced learning videos, business templates and self-assessments on entrepreneurship, strategy, finance, legal, using AI for brand, GTM and sales enablement. Very nice.

🛰️ Starlink breakthrough? SA’s Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Solly Malatsi has a plan that could see multinational firms (like Starkink) sidestep the BEE requirements by investing directly into initiatives that empower previously disadvantaged people and businesses instead. Hmmmm. Interesting…

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with all your VC and startup legal sorted by Dommisse Attorneys, your own CFO for a fraction of the cost with OCFO and 12 more vital startup tools & services.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last few days alone, in our online network, we…

• Got to know everyone and forged bonds at the Chat Roulette 💬.
• Had a phenomenal session getting first-hand insights on offshoring your company from SA.
• Got our invites for tonight’s Cape Town rooftop founder’s social 🥂.
• Helped Nita with some awesome options for Afrikaans transcriptions.
• Got Elijah and Danei their first couple of newsletter subs.
• Discussed optimal landline calling app options for HubSpot.
• Booked our spots for our first-ever JHB in-person event.
• Welcomed so many new members, our heads are spinning in a good way 💃🏻🕺🏽.

Thinking about joining The Open Collab?

• Supercharge your network in the SA startup landscape — get that introduction, get that customer, or meet that partner.
• Get feedback on your products, services and/or offers from others who have built and are building their own products right now.
• Join all our online and in-person events for free!
• Exclusive 1-on-1 sessions with startup consultants.

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WHAT YOU SAID

Drop it like it’s hot…

Last Fast-Five Friday, we gave you 3 startup lies and 1 truth, and not that many knew of Droppa…

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 🛰️ Orbi-Trac: A satellite logistics startup that tracks cargo shipments from space. (35%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨 🚜 SoilSynth: A BioTech using AI-driven soil analysis to increase crop yields sustainably. (41%)

🟩🟩⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚚 Droppa: A platform that connects users with on-demand delivery and moving services. (18%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏦 VaultEase: A SecureTech that locks away your valuables in 24/7 on-the-move unmarked vehicles for maximum security. (6%)

Your 2 cents…

So there you have it, Benjamin, SoilSynth doesn’t exist yet, but a cool idea? ⚗️

Now it’s just the race to get it copyrighted, William. 🚀

And now you know where to find them, Pam! 🚚

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

Advertise or Partners — Engage 21 000 South African professionals that read The Open Letter - partner with us or run an ad campaign.

Build A Newsletter — Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? We can build it with you. Check out Stream.

Startup Community — Join 80+ SA founders in our SA startup founder community called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.

Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason

Powered by beehiiv

‍

Wish you were there? For those who missed Metallica’s M72 World Tour performances, you’ll be able to watch an ultra-high-resolution 180-degree video and Spatial Audio immersive recording on Apple Vision Pro from today. The first of many such experiences we don’t get often in SA? 🤘

But first, it’s time for another Fast-Five Friday — 5 things in SA startup you should know. Let’s go…

The Support and the Network

Learn to growth hack like SnapScan, get your brand right like top UK FinTech Monavate and perfect the art of scaling, all while getting connected to 90+ SA founders building innovative startups.

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1. HOT (TOPIC) DESKS

The cool desk solution that’s got SA all bothered and hot

Schools (and learners) in underdeveloped areas are up against it…

Crumbling infrastructure, lack of teachers, the many kilometres to cover to and from school daily, etc.

MiDesk is a lightweight (2kg) schoolbag on wheels that converts into a sturdy desk and chair that learners can wheel around to ensure they have a place to do their schoolwork in the classroom, and back at home (many don’t have a place to sit and do homework at home)… 

Made from recyclable materials, MiDesk has several add-ons like a solar light, USB charging portal, reflective stickers and “ruggerised” wheels for rough terrain.

But it’s not been without criticism. 

Everything from why the government hasn't put proper desks in schools, to the bulky size of these wheely desks – too large for small kids, to the sponsors plakking their corporate colours and logos all over it.

Valid points. But if it gives kids one less learning obstacle to overcome, how bad is it really?

Hit reply and tell us what you think…

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2. MAKING WAVES ABROAD

Stocks from your shops

Various finance and investment gurus have told us over the years: “If you’d bought stock in Company ABC for the same amount you spent/spend on their products, you’d become really wealthy…”

Grifin is a US-based adaptive investing platform that lets users automatically buy $1 of stock from the places they shop. 

Users connect their cards to the platform, and at the end of the week, the dollar spend amount is added up, and the investment is allocated to the relevant company as per the rules set by the user. Nifty for users, but no doubt a big data play with all that transaction monitoring.

Back home in SA, there just might be a lekker opportunity for a local startup to build something similar to buy shares from your JSE-listed bank, medical aid, local hospital group, cellphone provider or grocery store, and more…

3. THAT NAGGING FEELING

The local Panda breaking kneecaps (with email)

In a recent survey by QuickBooks, 61% of small businesses struggle with cash flow issues, making it harder for small business owners to pay suppliers, loans, employees, or themselves…

Not only that: a mere 42% of B2B payments in the US happened on time in 2024, with 50% of invoices being past due, and the remaining 8% becoming bad debt…

And the longer an invoice remains unpaid, the higher the likelihood of it becoming bad debt. 

So when we found out someone could do the invoice payments nagging for us (thanks to an Open Collab community member), we rushed to check out Nagging Panda, a local startup that automates your invoice, statement & quote follow-up workflows so your business can get paid in less time with less admin (nagging).

Nagging Panda integrates with Sage, QuickBooks and Xero and was an SA Xero App of the Year finalist for 2024.
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4. MORE SPEED

Slinging properties on WhatsApp

Locking down business leads ASAP is of the essence…

Responding within the first 5 minutes sees 8x higher conversion rates. Even just being the first to respond sees 78% of people go with you.

But how do you reduce response times if your sales teams are on the road?

Local startup Sudonum is building mobile-first lead management solutions, leveraging WhatsApp.

Their real estate solution provides a better experience for both agents and clients, connecting them faster, slicker, and in a more automated way. While agency owners can see key performance metrics, which helps them know every lead is getting taken care of, in as short a time as possible.

They’re currently working on a new Seller Evaluation flow to help agents provide free property evaluations for prospective sellers using a WhatsApp bot flow, too.

Psst… Sudonum’s head of sales, Sebastian Chapman is part of our The Open Collab founder network and recently did a 3 part series on how to do B2B Sales.

Join The Open Collab founder network today and get access to these sessions as well as all our other previous sessions + much more

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5. FLYING THE ZA STARTUP FLAG

Less red tape, more global growth

SA needs pro-startup legislation to create an environment for startups to flourish and become attractive to buyers (usually from overseas).

The African Union has already developed its “Start Up Model Legal Framework” for member countries.

Back home, the StartUp Act Movement is a collective of investors, incubators, accelerators, and founders working on policies that’ll build a local industry of startups that can achieve maximum value on an international scale.

And we really like their approach. Instead of spending years developing a single, comprehensive piece of legislation, they’re tackling three key themes including:

• Exchange control liberalisation so that offshore holding companies can own their SA operations and hold group intellectual property
• Tax incentives for investment to support startup growth
• Attract talent to SA shores

Our friends at Dommisse Attorneys are one of the entities leading the Startup Act charge, which, once implemented, will no doubt see a major uptick in local startup investment appetite. 

Until then, offshoring to raise funding will remain a reality for many. 

If you’d like to learn more about this, come join our LinkedIn Live event with Dommisse Attorneys and special guest Simon Ellis from Jem as he shares what he learned on their offshoring journey.

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IN SHORT

If you know, you know…

🎓 Hitting the gas on EdTech. Local EdTech accelerator Injini has announced their 3rd cohort of 12 South African startups for the 2025 Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship. *Takes notes in EdTech…

📱Gimme a (Tax) break. In a bid to help connect more low-income South African households to the www, Treasury announced the 9% excise duty on smartphones will be cut for those ones that cost R2’500 or less. Very nice.

🗳️ X marks the spot. This week SA’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) held a three-day conference with speakers from Estonia, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to investigate the feasibility of using an electronic voting system. Interesting…

👩‍💻 SA Tech Poachers. More and more techies from SA are getting poached by international firms with Australia, the Netherlands, Mauritius and the US looking for our top tech talent. Ja, we knew it, hey.

😎 The Stack. Founders need trustworthy tools and suppliers. Our Founder’s Stack includes an easy-to-apply R5M business finance facility from Lula, next-level authority building and lead generation with Stream, and loads more vital startup tools and services.

DON’T MISS THIS

Coming Up in SA’s Most Vibrant Tech Founder Community

Coming up in our members-only, founder community — The Open Collab.

14 March 12:00 — Case Study: Come learn from Jem’s offshoring journey, supported by Dommisse Attorneys to help SA founders build overseas.

18 March 16:00 — Founder Social: Cape Town founders gather for a cold one!

27 March 18:000 — In-Person Event: Our first-ever JHB event is happening — see you there!

28 March 12:00 — Masterclass: How to growth hack in SA with Ben Blaine from Neurabuild.

PLUS: Access all the recordings of our previous sessions including Sales, Products, PR and more.

Join The Open Collab

JOBS IN TECH

Tired already? A change is as good as a holiday…

💼 Product Owner @ Santam Insurance

🤖 Artificial Intelligence Engineer @ TaskFlow

🎨 Product Designer (UX/UI) @ Hey Guys

🔥 Fractional Intern: Content Creation and Social Media @ The Open Letter

Hiring? Get in touch, and we will feature it here.

GAME TIME

Three lies and a startup truth

Only one of these is a real South African startup…

WHAT YOU SAID

Good for business…

On Tuesday, we asked how much you’d pay a lawyer to support your SME’s progress, and most will trade up for AI…

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💸 R0 – My cousin knows a guy (17%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧐 R5k – Just to say hi? 😭 (12%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⚖️ R15k – But it better be gold-plated advice (14%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🚀 Nah, let AI, take the wheel (40%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💡 Wait, I have a better idea… (17%)

Your 2 cents…

Hmm, good idea, Leigh-Anne. Efficiency for the win 🦾.

Nice one, GL. Solid advice there 💡.

Indeed, Thalia, remember to consider all risks before committing 🔒.

Ooh, hope the peeps at Lawyered Up are paying attention, Herman. Awesome idea ✅.

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

Advertise or Partners — Engage 21 000 South African professionals that read The Open Letter - partner with us or run an ad campaign — Reply to this email to get started.

Build A Newsletter — Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? We can build it with you. Check out Stream.

Startup Community — Join 80+ SA founders in our SA startup founder community called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.

Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason

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Order in? According to SA media outlets, someone dropped R20k on a single Uber Eats order in 2024, another placed 779 orders and saved themselves R18k by going with Uber One, while the top driver clocked 40’000km (once around the globe) for deliveries. PS: SA’s most searched item on Uber Eats? Crispy fried chicken with pap. Mooi. 🍗

In this Open Letter:

• By the book: The startup giving 2.5M SMEs a legal hand.
• SA’s smart geysers, same city “spyware” & declaring war on dashcams
• Business-friendly: A first port of call when setting up overseas.
• Who recognised the local traffic startup heroes? The results are in.
• Lonely building your startup? Join The Open Collab and get support.

SHOULD YOU OFFSHORE YOUR COMPANY?

Join us this Friday on LinkedIn Live as we chat with Andrea du Toit from Dommisse Attorneys and Simon Ellis from Jem about Jem’s journey—from starting in South Africa to offshoring for fundraising purposes.

RSVP to Join Now

TRENDING NOW

Keeping 2.5M Small Businesses on the Right Side of the Law

In today’s Tuesday Deep Dive, we examine the high costs of compliance for SMEs and ask, shouldn’t we be trying to reduce the cost of doing business…?

SA’s estimated 2.5 to 3.5 million Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) employ 60% of the workforce and make up over 90% of formalised businesses, contributing around 34% of the country’s GDP (R2.4 trillion out of SA’s R7 trillion).

At a conservative estimate of 2 million SMEs, each one must be generating an average of R1.2 million per year – about R100k per month. But start factoring in the costs of running a small business, and it’s that clear cash flow must be tight.

‍

Coughing up for legal help

Not least of those expenses is compliance – gotta be sure you’re on the right side of the law, or you can’t do business at all.

Especially when you contract with larger corporations. Problem is the legal help for that gets pretty pricey, pretty quickly.

The legal costs rabbit hole goes quite deep: SMEs must deposit R5’000–R15’000 just to get a lawyer to even look at them. And then drawing up a contract alone be an extra R1’000–R5’000 a pop.

Then comes the pro fees: a Junior Counsel starts at around R900 an hour, with Advocates reaching R5’000 an hour. And most are definitely worth it; it’s just unaffordable to many small businesses.

‍

The local legal AI for the lil guy (and/or gal)...

We’re no strangers to LegalTech (specifically AI) having shared some stories in previous editions like when GPT-4 passed the Bar Exam a mere 3 months after ChatGPT’s launch, or when Bowmans became the first law firm in Africa to integrate the Generative AI platform “Harvey” into its operations…

But these are international solutions, so when we stumbled upon Lawyered Up, a home-grown startup building AI-powered solutions to simplify legal processes for SMEs, we got pretty excited to chat with Serisha Barrat, Lawyered Up’s Co-Founder, about what they’re building….

Lawyered Up automates the document lifecycle with generative AI and natural language processing, and users can sign, store, share, track changes, and interact with documents. It can ask clauses in a document questions in African languages, before generating the final document in English.

Documents can be downloaded in Word or PDF or sent via an in-platform link that does not require the recipient to sign up to Lawyered Up. Handy.

And the platform is currently operational in South Africa, Kenya, Botswana, and Nigeria. With a 70% female-led team with pan-African expertise. Noice.

Plus: They also offer a white-label version for larger corporations that integrate directly into their existing infrastructure. Smart.

But AI in the legal space has not been without pain

In Jan this year, a local law firm found itself in hot water after it used “non-existent legal citations”, obviously generated by a hallucinating AI.

So how does Lawyered Up ensure this doesn’t happen?

One of their measures is employing a Head of Legal in every jurisdiction they operate in to oversee and create documents first and use those to train the AI. The aim is that, over time, the platform should get better and better.

With AI all the rage, and the Legal industry starting to see the potential of what AI tools like Lawyered Up can do, we’re watching this space…

IN SHORT

Strike up a conversation…

🤓 Smart-Geyser Tech Boost. Local IoT for Insurance startup Sensor Networks has locked in a partnership with the world’s largest geyser manufacturer Ariston to bring smart water heating solutions to South African households. We love seeing local tech proudly flying the flag.

🥸 Going Social IRL. Former Twitter Co-Founder Ev Williams is working on a new social media app called Mozi, an app that encourages more in-person meetups by letting you know when you’re in the same city (and event) as a contact in your phone. There’s sometimes a reason you don't want people knowing you’re in the same city, you know…

🤔 Dash Cam Crack Down. Jozi could be introducing a number of new bylaws for drivers with dashcams. This comes in the wake of the newly promulgated by-law regulating the use of private CCTV cameras in Johannesburg. How else we gon’ get epic local pedestrian and cyclist fails now?

🧐 Revolut Rumours Swirling. UK-based FinTech Revolut is rumoured to be setting up ops on local shores. It’s reportedly applied for a full banking license which would make it one of a handful of digital-first banks with full banking status in SA, and comes off the back of a key recent local hire… Hmmm, very interesting…

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with fractional CTO and tech scaling with Octoco, easy-peasy cloud-based accounting software from Xero and 12 more vital startup tools & services.

CHECK THIS OUT

10 Things You Need To Know About the Isle of Man — Our Latest Partner

Apart from the financial and tax perks, of course…

Many companies looking to expand globally make the Isle of Man their first port of call, mainly due to its reputation as a business-friendly jurisdiction with low corporate tax rates, a supportive regulatory environment, and a stable political and economic landscape. They champion founders of all kinds, and that’s why they have partnered with us in our mission.

But did you know…?

‍

1. The Isle of Man is not a Channel Island. It’s an island in the Irish Sea, situated between Ireland, Scotland and England. At 574 square kilometres, it has a much larger land mass than the Channel Islands of Jersey (120 km² ) and Guernsey (62 km² ).

2. In addition to being a tax-neutral Financial Centre of Excellence, the entire Isle of Man is a designated UNESCO Biosphere, recognising its commitment to sustainable development and environmental protection.

3. The Isle of Man is home to the world’s oldest continuous parliament, the Tynwald, which has been running since circa 979 AD.

4. It was the first nation to grant women the right to vote, doing so in 1881, well ahead of many larger democracies.

5. A significant number of South Africans call the Isle of Man home, and around 35 South African businesses have an established presence on the island.

6. Corlett Drive in Johannesburg was named after D.F. Corlett, a builder from the Isle of Man who emigrated to South Africa in the late 1800s. He later served as Mayor of Johannesburg in 1931.

7. The Isle of Man champions innovation and sustainability, hosting the Innovation Challenge every year, focusing on Data, AI, Clean Tech, and FinTech. Last year, South African Cindy van Niekerk won the FinTech category!

8. The Isle of Man is home to the second-largest aircraft registry in the EU, making it a key hub for international aviation.

9. Since 1907, the Isle of Man has hosted the legendary TT Races — a unique motorcycle time trial on public roads that loops through breathtaking countryside and town streets.

10. Famous Manx natives include cycling legend Sir Mark Cavendish and the Bee Gees, who were born and raised on the island.

Discover the Isle of Man for yourself

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last few days alone, in our online community, we…

• Got some valuable early-stage validation insights 🚀
• Found a handy tool to help SMEs get paid faster.
• Helped Carlos get some insights into company structure outside of SA.
• Helped Justin build out his new startup idea.
• Helped Elijah and Danei pick a lekker newsletter name.
• Welcomed some awesome new members 🕺🪩💃.

Plus: Had a killer in-person event in Stellenbosch last week…

Thinking about joining The Open Collab?

• Supercharge your network in the SA startup landscape — get that introduction, get that customer, or meet that partner.
• Get feedback on your products, services and/or offers from others who have built and are building their own products right now.
• Join all our online and in-person events for free!
• Exclusive 1-on-1 sessions with startup consultants.

SA’s only dedicated tech startup and scale-up founder community.

Join The Open Collab

WHAT YOU SAID

For the robots…

Last Friday, we riddled you about an SA startup helping manage your city’s traffic light maintenance and traffic flow, and only a few recognised Quebit…

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨 🚦 Robo-T (48%)

🟩⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👮‍♀️ Quebit (12%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚐 MzansiBot (12%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛣️ VirKeer (28%)

Your 2 cents…

So here we are messaging Beehive about adding a leaderboard functionality, Elijah 💬. Great idea, though, could be fun 🤗.

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

Advertise or Partners - Engage 21 000 South African professionals that read The Open Letter - partner with us or run an ad campaign.

Build A Newsletter - Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? We can build it with you. Check out Stream.

Startup Community - Join 80+ SA founders in our SA startup founder community called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.

Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason

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A little too fuzzy? A de-extinction startup (working to bring back extinct animals) has gene-modified mice with Woolly Mammoth traits and the result is these hairy little guys. They say it’s an important step towards actually bringing Mammoths back. But works as a pretty good PR stunt too. 🦣

Right now, though, it’s time for another Fast-Five Friday — 5 things in startup you should know, let’s go…

First time reading? Join {{active_subscriber_count}} South African professionals and sign up.

From 0 → 21k+ subscribers in just over two years.

Want to build a killer newsletter like this one but in your industry, building highly engaging relationships with your ICPs?

Book a meeting with Stream today and learn how we can help you build your own newsletter.

Meet the Stream team

1. TO THE POINT

ESPs Slick AI Catcher-Upperer

Since March last year, our EskomSePush app notifications have been pretty quiet (aside from the 2 recent quick bursts of loadshedding in Jan and Feb this year)...

But what’s been really interesting to see are the community forums launched back in 2019. 

Obviously quite loadshedding-focused at the time, these have morphed to become area-specific community chats about everything from water and power outages in the area to connecting buyers and sellers – even job-finding mechanisms. 

These forums allow users to find what's happening in their immediate area (local WhatsApp groups are hard to find), without their phone number out there for nosy Mrs Jones to get her hands on.

They recently integrated AI into the forums, which keeps an eye out for problematic messages, and provides pretty good summaries of chats, especially when a whole bunch of messages got sent about a hot local topic. Very cool.

‍

2. MAKING WAVES IN AFRICA

Kenya’s Succulent Surf Sesh

Most modern surfboards are made from plastic derivatives, fibreglass and resin, which is great for keeping the boards lightweight, buoyant, and durable. But not so good for the environment…

Something a 30’000 acre sisal agave (succulent) farm in Kenya is looking to change. 

Grow Blanks manufactures 100% organic, biodegradable agave surfboard blanks which can then be exported all over the world to be shaped by hand or with conventional surfboard tools by surfboard makers.

The shaping waste and offcuts are biodegradable or can be used as protective packaging or as spare parts for repairs.

Grow Blank employs 3’000 Kenyans (and houses a community of over 8’000) on the farm. Kenya believe it?

‍

3. MULTI-AGENT AI

The World’s First AI Dev Team?

Well, it’s happening, multi-Agent AI teams have arrived…

It felt like just a few months ago, building anything remotely technical required a dev shop (big money over a few months). But that might not be the case for long…  

MGX (MetaGPT X) is a multi-agent AI platform based on real software standard operating procedures.

Now you can have access to Dev Team 24/7, comprising AI Team Leader “Mike”, AI Product Manager “Emma”, AI Architect “Bob”, AI Engineer “Alex” and Data Analyst “David”, to create websites, blogs, shops, analytics and games.

Simply enter what you want to build in the chat, and walk away for a coffee while the MGX AI Dev team starts work – ok, it’s actually pretty cool to watch it work. 

‍

4. IN OUR OPEN COLLAB COMMUNITY

Getting SA Ventures to Look the Part

We all build fast, break things and pivot fifteen times a week in the early days. But for every venture idea, there comes that crucial moment when you must choose: Are we gonna let this fizzle or shoot for the moon?

That’s where SA founders like Sabeeha Banubhai from Jack Studios come in. Sabeeha and team have helped over 150+ local and international early-to-growth-stage startups across various industries go from “backyard promise” to market-ready.

Whether it’s:

• Improving their pitch deck
• Building an investor-ready product demo
• Updating their website to reflect brand & value
• Improving user experience & capturing vital user flows
• UI design to make your apps look the part

So, if you or someone you know are in that “we gotta get serious” space, Sabeeha does free 30-minute workshops where they help you discover your current challenges, what’s needed to get it looking pro and if maybe Jack Studios can help.

‍

PS: Want to build with founders like Sabeeha? She’s part of the Open Collab, our dedicated founder community full of SA’s most daring founders, building exciting startups – come join us.

‍

5. REAPING A HARVEST

SA’s Growing AgriTech Scene

Big news in SA AgriTech this week is that homegrown AgriTech startup Khula has raised another R126 million as part of their still-open Series A round from investors including Absa Bank, PepsiCo’s Kgodiso Fund, AECI and E Squared.

Khula is helping over 15’000 farmers get access to key inputs like chemicals, crop feed and more, at fair prices from more than 100 suppliers to see their crops grow. Farmers can also get expert help with spraying programs and technical support, lock in buyers and get paid faster with crop contracts, and potentially get access to Khula’s funding partners to help farmers (and their produce) grow – all in-app.

The funding will see Khula expand its team and product development capabilities, as well as explore new markets.

Huge congrats Karidas Tshintsholo and the Khula team.

‍

IN SHORT

Convo starters for your weekend plans…

🔌 Power Play. SA Fintech and payments provider Lesaka has acquired local prepaid electricity submetering and payments business Recharger in a deal worth R507 million. The electricity long game has started…

🤖 AI Voiceovers. Amazon’s Prime Video is testing AI-assisted dubbing for selected movies and TV shows in English and Latin American Spanish. It’ll combine AI and human localisation pros for “quality control”. We saw what our AI notetaker did with Afrikaans recently; this could be lekka funny.

🔒 Lock it down. Google Cloud and the National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa (NEMISA) have partnered to bring Google’s Cyber Security Professional Certificate to 12’000 SA students. An awesome opportunity in a majorly trending field.

🛵 Shoprite Sixty60. After a successful pilot in Atlantis, Western Cape, and Jabulani in Soweto, Shoprite Sixty60 will roll out to 19 Shoprite stores across 8 provinces. On the Checkers side — Checkers Sixty60 is now also available on the web. Very nice.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with all your VC and startup legal sorted by Dommisse Attorneys, your own CFO for a fraction of the cost with OCFO and 12 more vital startup tools & services.

AH CLARITY….

Clarity Builds Confidence. Confidence Drives Growth.

Scaling a business isn’t just about working harder — it’s about working smarter. And that starts with clarity.

Most founders feel like they’re figuring things out as they go. But what if you knew exactly where your business stands, what challenges are normal, and how to break through to the next stage?

That’s what Metavolve’s Lifecycle Guide is for. It lays out the key phases of business growth, the obstacles that come with each stage, and how to navigate them with confidence.

With the right roadmap, you can:

✅ Recognise the real bottlenecks holding you back.

✅ Stop second-guessing yourself and make decisions with conviction.

✅ Lead with confidence knowing you’re on the right path.

The best founders aren’t just ambitious — they’re clear on where they’re going and how to get there.

🚀 Get the Lifecycle Guide and take control of your growth.

Get the Guide Now

DON’T MISS THIS

Coming Up in SA’s Most Vibrant Tech Founder Community

Coming up in our members-only, founder community — The Open Collab.

7 March 12:00 — Masterclass: How to validate early-stage ideas in SA with Thijan Dippenaar from The Delta.

11 March 12:00 — Chat Roulette: Come meet fellow SA founders and engage in startup-building topics.

12 March 10:00 — Office Hours: “Come rate my MVP” - founders giving founders feedback.

18 March 16:00— Founder Social: Cape Town founders gather for a cold one!

21 March 12:00 — Masterclass: How to growth hack in SA with Ben Blaine from Neurabuild.

PLUS: Access all the recordings of our previous sessions including Sales, Products, PR and more.

Join The Open Collab

JOBS IN TECH

One click away from that dream gig…

🗺️ Product Strategy Lead @ FairMoney

📊 Senior Data Analyst @ Gumtree South Africa

🎨 Senior Product Designer @ Zensar Technologies

🌐 Various roles @ fibertime (send an email: applications@fibertime.com)

🚀 Social and Content @ The Open Letter (yep that’s us, we are hiring, send memes)

Hiring? Get in touch, and we will feature it here.

GAME TIME

Riddle us this…

I don’t drive, yet I keep roads clear,

With data and AI, I make traffic steer.

Red, green, and orange, my signals are smart,

I sync them with traffic flow, a real-time art.

WHAT YOU SAID

Outta this world…

On Tuesday, we asked what you’d send into space, and it’s business ideas all the way…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👨‍🚀 Me (13%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😎 Some or other marketing stunt (5%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 👽 A message in a bottle for the aliens (26%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤑 Something to make a lot of money (39%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👿 Someone I don’t like (17%)

Missed it? Read about this SA SpaceTech startup doing big things.

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

• Advertise or Partners — Engage with 21 000 South African professionals that read The Open Letter - partner with us or run an ad campaign — Reply to this email to get started.
• Build A Newsletter — Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? We can build it with you. Check out Stream.
• Startup Community — Join 80+ SA founders in our SA startup founder community called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.
  
  Until next time,
  Elvorne, Renier & Jason

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Smart enough? In the quest for better, faster computing, an Australian startup has launched the world’s first commercial code-deployable biological computer. Using lab-grown human neurons (brain cells) as part of its “chip”, it’s said to be faster and more flexible than most chips used in LLMs. Plus: Apparently, it “evolves” too. 🧠

In this Open Letter:

• Local lift-off: This SA startup helps deliver hundreds of payloads into orbit.
• Fibertime’s Finnish funding, Khula’s AgriTech harvest & mobile solar devices.
• The obvious next move: The real key to strategic business growth.
• What these SA startups should pivot to next: The results are in.
• Lonely building your startup? Join The Open Collab and get support.

‍

TRENDING NOW

The SA Startup Sending 100+ Products Space

The space industry is big business. Not to mention it’s pretty cool. So in today’s Tuesday Deep Dive, we look at one SA startup that’s built up the street cred to fly with Elon and the Right Stuff boys…

Since the launch of the very first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957, we’ve sent thousands of satellites and other objects into space – their numbers growing pretty consistently each year until the boom of 2017 when the total number of annual objects launched doubled from 221 to 456.

It continued in hyperdrive to the 2’664 objects sent into orbit in 2023 alone. 

But building these satellites (or any other product for that matter) that need to function far from Earth, with no opportunity to fix once they are out there (literally one-way missions) and having to withstand extremely harsh circumstances, offers quite a unique set of challenges.

One such challenge is how to manoeuvre the various elements of the satellite in zero gravity to accomplish its mission. Typically, satellites need power – which they normally get from solar panels, but that means you need to remotely or automatically turn the panels towards the sun. 

What’s more, you need to ensure you point cameras or sensors directly towards the satellite’s goal. And, to enable it to send high amounts of data back down to Earth, you need an antenna trained on a specific point on the planet for long enough to perform the transfer (while moving at around 28,800 km per hour in Low Earth Orbit). 

All highly complex and fun stuff, done by the satellite control system.

Moving stuff at Zero gravity

The control system is a highly-specialised component and is a combination of: 

• electronic PC board design
• complex firmware that needs to run on these boards
• mathematical equations and algorithms to modulate the satellite
• complex mechanical bearings and integrations to turn the satellite as it floats in space (i.e it doesn't have a hard surface that it sits on from which it can turn on)
• optical sensors for the satellite to orient itself with where it is (and where it needs to go).

All of these elements also need to feedback to the control system, confirming it’s actually performing as instructed and reporting back on its new orientation etc.  

Complex, multidisciplinary engineering – which means it’s very expensive. What’s more, if this fails out in space, the satellite is gone. Forever.

So no data, no learnings, and nothing to show for months, even years, of work. Eina.

‍

The unique challenge of building for space

Iterating is a vital part of the learning journey when building tech down here on Earth. Builders need to iterate and improve on mistakes to achieve better results.

But when iteration is extremely costly ($300’000 for a 50kg payload) and time-consuming (you have to stand in line to catch a lift on the next SpaceX mission), getting costs and time-to-launch down while increasing the chance of flight success could be the difference between failure and success in the space industry.

And one way of achieving this is buying an “out-of-the-box” control system out of the box.

This is where this local Stellenbosch-based startup comes in…

The local startup playing in the space

CubeSpace is a local SpaceTech startup specialising in fully integrated Attitude Determination and Control Systems (ADCS) for cubes and microsatellites.

These control systems allow the satellite controller to direct different parts of the satellite to its objectives.

Their suite of products is designed to integrate modularly into their client’s onboard computer, so they can plug and play as many or as few of CubeSpace’s components into their satellite as they want.

Clients provide CubeSpace with their requirements including:

• The size of the satellite.
• The payload.
• The accuracy of where the satellite needs to point and the manoeuvres it needs to be able to perform are crucial.
• How it needs to orbit (believe it or not, different orbits present different challenges).
• Diagrams of what the satellite looks like.

CubeSpace then processes the info through a simulator with models of their components with a proven track record developed over 10 years of flight heritage (350 satellites with over 4k components for 250+ clients globally, including NASA, the European Space Agency, universities, EnduroSat, the UAE Space Agency and more. 

And they’ve just raised their 2nd round of funding, $3 million to scale even further.

With the global space industry bound to hit the $ 1 trillion a year mark by 2030 and $1.8 trillion by 2035, there’s never been a better time to cement oneself as a global leader in space technology. Something CabeSpace is well positioned to become.

We are watching this space…

PS: We’re hosting a fireside chat with CubeSpace CEO Mike-Alec Kearney this Thursday, 6 March 2025 from 6–8 PM at the LaunchLab in Stellenbosch, so you can come and get some out-of-this-world startup-building insights.

Get your tickets on Quicket for R100 (hurry up; there are not many left!)

Buy Ticket

CHECK THIS OUT

Time to Grow: The Next Crucial Step for 2025

Most businesses don’t fail because they have a bad product – they fail because they run out of money…

If you don’t have full visibility into your numbers — your cash flow, margins, payment cycles — you’re making decisions in the dark. 

Fact: You can’t scale what you don’t understand.

Along with Outsourced CFO, we held a workshop two weeks ago on making financial year-end more manageable for startups. One key takeaway was this: 2024 is behind us, but to position yourself for growth in 2025, it's time to gain 100% clarity on your finances.

Why? Because, in order to scale, you need to:

✅ Know exactly where your money is going — every day.
✅ Automate your finances so you can focus on growth, not admin.
✅ Use expert CFO-level insights to plan, forecast, and scale – most investors require it.

Growth Doesn’t Happen by Accident: It’s Designed

🎯 Measure: Are you tracking the key financial numbers that drive growth? OCFO breaks down the metrics that matter.

🎯 Automate: With integrated, automated systems in place, you can streamline your financial processes. Seamlessly connect your bank, payroll, and expenses — so your books stay clean while you scale.

🎯 Strategise: Want to raise funding? Expand? Increase profit? You need CFO-level insights to make smart decisions.

You can’t build a great business on financial guesswork. The sooner you get this right, the faster you can grow.

🚀 Book a free session with OCFO today and take your business to the next level.

Claim your free session now

IN SHORT

Strike up a conversation…

💻 To The Finnish Line. The Finnish Fund for Industrial Cooperation Ltd., finnfund has made a follow-on investment of €2 million to pay-as-you-go fibre provider, the Fibertime Group, to expand its fibre services to new townships and connect more homes. We love to see more SAns get connected…

👩‍🌾 Gooi Mielies. Local AgriTech startup Khula has closed a R126 million funding round from investors, including Absa Bank, AECI, E Squared, and PepsiCo’s Kgodiso Fund to enable financial inclusion and support a new era of farmers. Nice to see AgriTech growth.

☀️ Solar Goes Mobile. This year’s Mobile World Congress saw a number of brands showcasing their solar-powered devices (well, their concept of solar-powered devices) including Infinix’s smartphone and Lenovo’s Yoga Solar PC concept which can charge the notebook via its lid even when the laptop’s not in use. Hopefully, we get these in time for Eskom’s next bout of loadshedding.

🧚‍♀️ H2 Go. FlyH2 Aerospace, a local zero-emissions aviation startup company, has announced that its Dragonfly V prototype uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) is successfully continuing its test program. While it is still being powered by batteries, the UAV is designed to be powered by Hydrogen Fuel cells. Epic.

🎯 The Stack. Founders need trustworthy tools and suppliers. Our Founder’s Stack includes an easy-to-apply R5M business finance facility from Lula, next-level authority building and lead generation with Stream, and loads more vital startup tools and services.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last few days alone, in our online community, we…

• Got the ultimate startup PR playbook in our exclusive masterclass on Friday!
• Got a sweet new community platform with resources, tools, recordings and even our own mini startup marketplace 💃🏻🕺🏽.
• Everyone got 10% off any luxury eco-stay, getaway or holiday anywhere in the country (thanks, Lara!).
• Met 20+ SA startups, scale-ups and tech companies — usually with direct access to the founder.
• Helped Danie with feedback and loads of use cases for his new AI project.
• Helped Carlos flesh out an idea for building authority and visibility for ventures.
• Discovered 2 high-powered AI web design tools 😎.
• Mused about what’s more important: doctor’s orders or your daily cuppa…

Thinking about joining The Open Collab? There's never been a better time

On top of all the normal weekly benefits, we have now launched our community repository featuring all our recorded masterclasses, a community directory and other useful tools for building your startup.

From mastering B2B sales, building great products and raising funding, there is something for everyone.

Come join SA’s only dedicated tech startup and scale-up founder community today!

Join The Open Collab

WHAT YOU SAID

More with less…

Last Friday, we asked what pivot these SA startups could make next, and everyone wants to see Bank Zero get into decluttering…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍉 Melon Mobile — Watermelon deliveries in summer (8%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 🧗 Yebo Fresh — Outdoor adventure tours (31%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ ⚡️ Zapper — AI-powered mosquito control service (28%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📦 Bank Zero — A marketplace for decluttering minimalists (33%)

Your 2 cents…

Oh, yes, we can see it now, William — drones and the works 🦟⚡︎😎

BEFORE YOU GO

Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You

Advertise or Partners - Engage with 20 000 South African professionals that read The Open Letter - partner with us or run an ad campaign.

Build A Newsletter - Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? We can build it with you. Check out Stream.

Startup Community - Join 80+ SA founders in our SA startup founder community called The Open Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.

Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason

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Hungry? A team from Washington is working on a way to grow food in the dark. The new tech called electro-agriculture uses electrolysis to replace a plant’s need for sunlight and even soil. Here’s to a future of space farming.

But first, it’s time for another Fast-Five Friday — 5 startups in 5 minutes, let’s go…

First time reading? Join {{active_subscriber_count}} South African professionals and sign up.

Together with:

1. TAP DANCE

Tapping Into Better Water Quality

SA’s water quality standards are not in a good space.

Since 2020, the municipal water supply systems have taken a bit of a beating with the number of “Good” systems dropping from 70 to 59 in 2024. The number of “Poor” systems, on the other hand, has jumped from 39 to 57 in the same period.

So who knows what’s coming through your taps into your drinking water?

Local water subscription service Solvd is providing a way for South Africans to ensure they’re getting clean water into their homes. Solvd sediment and carbon filtration systems do this right out the gates, or you can opt for a system with 2’000l+ of backup water for those times when water gets shut off for extended periods. 

They also offer annual water quality tests, regular filter replacements, and added components such as an additional tank or 3-stage filtration.

2. RAPID EXPANSION

Our Biggest Exit Yet?

Big news coming out of the local startup scene this week is the acquisition of RapidDeploy by Motorola Solutions. The deal has been described as a “landmark” and one of SA’s largest tech exits by its investor HAVAIC.

What started out as an idea by 2 South Africans Steven Raucher (a volunteer on the NSRI’s Rescue Crew), and Brett Meyerowitz (a volunteer Community Medic), RapidDeploy is active in 24 states across the US offering first responders and emergency services a full suite of powerful, cloud-enabled products.

These include Radius Mapping for real-time, precise location tracking, Lighting an emergency info app for first responders, and Eclipse Analytics to measure call response times and staffing optimiser based on call volumes – all in the name of getting first responders to the people who need them in the shortest time possible.

Check out RapidDeploy’s origin story…

Join RapidDeploy's cofounders, Steven Raucher and Brett Meyerowitz, as they reveal the powerful origin story of our company. Hear firsthand why RapidDeploy…

vimeo.com/374944144

3. HOLIDAY SOUVENIRS

Year-Round Revenue For Holiday Hotspots…

Few industries get hit by changing economic winds like the hospitality industry…

It’s highly seasonal, tourism numbers fluctuate when times are tough, holidays and leisure are one of the first things to go, and freak events put a serious spanner in the works: Just think back to the 2nd round of Covid travel bans to SA when Cape Town alone suffered loses to the tune of R200 million per day. 

What if hotels, lodges, resorts, guesthouses, or BNBs could find ways to make money throughout the year by tapping into the nostalgia of visiting guests and setting up their own storefronts for guests to buy products and services directly to their guests?

Well, furbsh is a brand new startup that seems to think there’s something there. Anything from wine to locally made arts and curios (Africa has some seriously lekker stuff that local and international tourists absolutely love) that can be shipped directly to your guest's rooms, or to their home if it’s a little big to fit in their suitcases. And while it’s still very early days for furbsh, we’re definitely watching this space.

The founder of furbsh, Carlos Ferraz, is part of our The Open Collab Community.

Do you want to build with founders like Carlos? Join our community today!

Join The Open Collab

4. UP IN AFRICA

Fighting The Fake Pharma Fight

Fake meds are enough to get your blood pressure through the roof – especially if the meds you’re taking are meant to lower it, turn out to be fake.

Fake and ineffective meds are a big problem globally with 250k children dying worldwide every year from taking counterfeit meds – 300 in the last year from fake cough and pain syrups alone.

Not to mention a continent like Africa with its malaria infection rates, seeing nearly 90% of antimalarials in some markets reported as fake.

These fake pharmaceuticals have devastating consequences. Something Adebayo Alonge the CEO and Founder of RxAll experienced when he fell into a 21-day coma after taking fake meds he bought from his local pharmacy in Nigeria.

This experience led him to start RxAll which built the RxScanner a device using AI and machine learning technology to check and confirm drug quality.

5. AN EVENT YOU CAN’T MISS

Founder Fireside Stories

Not many South African startups manage to scale globally, let alone beyond our planet, but CubeSpace is shooting for the moon!

Join Mike Kearney, Co-Founder and CEO of CubeSpace, for an in-person fireside chat with Renier Kriel at LaunchLab in Stellenbosch, where we’ll unpack the journey of a South African startup that beat the odds to become a global space-tech leader.

In this fireside chat, we will discuss:

• How CubeSpace scaled from a university spinout to a global deep-tech leader
• What it takes to raise international funding in South Africa
• Scaling a hardware business for a global market
• Winning major international clients like NASA and ESA
• Lessons on scaling, investment, and building a globally competitive tech company

PLUS: a whole lot of networking with The Open Letter Community.

Tickets are selling fast, so get yours now.

Buy Tickets Now

IN SHORT

🩲 Shorter shorts for a Fast Friday…

⭐ Time to Shine. Are you ready for Innovation City’s 2025 Startup of The Year Awards? If you’re a startup younger than 5 years, with an MVP and want all the glitz, glory, exposure and startup support you can handle — enter here.

🌊 Keep it Flowing. Flow48, a FinTech in the SME lending space has just concluded its $69 million Series A round. $10 million of that is earmarked for scaling its SA operations. Nice.

🔌 Charging Freebies. Volvo SA is offering its new EV owners a 2-year charging voucher linked to the GridCars charge card valued at R12’000, R7’500 towards a GridCars wall box for home charging, and 3 years of 10GBs of free Vodacom data. Wow.

🍿 Oscar Buzz. There’s been a rise in online scams in the lead-up to Sunday night’s Academy Awards. Posing as a streaming service for Oscar movies, these sites are stealing people’s personal and financial data. LOL.

🤝 Going Green in CT. Cape Town has landed a cool R2.9 billion from Germany’s KFW Development Bank. This takes the Mother City another step closer to its green energy switch and a step further from Eskom reliance. Love.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with your own CTO for remarkable tech builds with Octoco, your own CFO for a fraction of the price with OCFO and 12 more vital startup tools & services.

CHECK THIS OUT

Unlocking Growth? You Need a Solid Foundation

SME owners already know the pain of financial year-end: the last-minute reconciliations, scrambling for missing invoices, and the tax headaches. 

But what if this could be the year it all changes?

Last week, we partnered with Xero and OCFO to show founders exactly how to make financial year-end effortless. We broke some of the first few steps down into:

✅ Build a rock-solid financial foundation — without the overwhelm.
✅ Automate accounting so your books stay clean year-round.
✅ Use Xero’s seamless integrations to cut down admin and boost clarity.

The takeaway? When you have full visibility into your numbers, financial year-end isn’t a panic — it’s a breeze. And it’s only once you’ve laid that foundation that you can start thinking strategically about your business.

Getting down to it

🎯 Measure: How solid is your financial foundation? OCFO’s experts shared the key numbers every business owner must track.

🎯 Automate: Xero connects seamlessly with your bank, payroll, and expenses — so you can stop chasing invoices and start making strategic decisions.

🎯 Iterate: Like any great business, financial management is about continuous improvement. And the right software makes that easy.

Don’t wait for next year to do things differently. Get your books in order now — and take the financial stress off your plate.

🚀 Get 90% off Xero for 3 months when you sign up today. This offer expires tonight.

Claim my 90% off right now

DON’T MISS THIS

Coming Up in SA’s Most Vibrant Tech Founder Community

Coming up in our members-only, founder community — The Open Collab.

28 Feb 12:00 — Masterclass: Tech PR 101: Building Buzz Without Big Budgets by Jo Eyre from Voxeon Communications.

7 March 12:00 — Masterclass: How to validate early-stage ideas in SA with Thijan Dippenaar from The Delta.

21 March 12:00 — Masterclass: How to growth hack in SA with Ben Blaine from Neurabuild.

PLUS: Weekly office hours, online chat roulette and in-person coffee and drinks gatherings.

Join The Open Collab

JOBS IN TECH

Hot off the Jobs press…

🏗️ Product Developer @ Ninety One

👩‍💻 Senior Software Engineer @ Confluence

🎨 Financial Wellness Design Lead @ Old Mutual South Africa

💼 Business Development Consultant @ Outsourced CFO

Hiring? Get in touch, and we will feature it here.

GAME TIME

3 Startup Lies and a Truth

WHAT YOU SAID

Proof of life…

On Tuesday, we asked about important documents you’re always scrambling for when applying for finance, and proof of address is by far the hairiest…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🪪 Copy of ID (9%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🏡 Proof of address (54%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💰 Payslips (9%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📰 Proof of life (17%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📂 All of these... (11%)

Your 2 cents…

Spoken like a true straight-outta-college founder, Danei. But yeah, pay yourself a salary before applying for finance to save yourself from turning grey before 30. 👵

Ha ha, yes, pretty sure if financial products were as easy to buy as airtime, we’d have a much more prosperous society. 🤑

Hopefully initiatives like Umazi will start making these kinds of things easier for you real soon, Neo. 💪

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Feeling lucky? Not like this Polish guy who found a piece of a SpaceX rocket in his garden, more like us buying you a coffee to start your day… That’s right if you get 2 of your friends to sign up for The Open Letter before Friday 8 AM — simply send them your unique referral link — and we’ll send you a 40 bucks Vida voucher. Give the gift of The Open Letter to your mates now.

(PS: Don’t cheat — we can tell.)

In this Open Letter:

• Big play: The startup rolling out tech to ease all your KYC pains.
• Accelerating OceanTech, Prosus’ takeaway splurge & coming off the Greylist.
• Room to grow: How to get the cash-flow support you need to make it in SA.
• Who knew (and didn’t know) the local dev boys? The results are in.
• Lonely building your startup? Join The Open Collab and get support.

Together with Lula:

‍

‍

TRENDING NOW

Taking the Pain Out of KYC

If you’ve ever applied for a financial product or service in your personal capacity, you’ll know they want to see a quarter of a million documents before anything gets done.

Now, most of them are your standard KYC (Know Your Customer) to ensure the FSP (Financial Service Provider) is FICA (Financial Intelligence Centre Act) compliant. But if you’re applying for a financial service outside of SA, it takes even more paperwork. 

And to make matters worse, these institutions are required by law, to have updated documentation. This means they will hunt you down over time and ask you to provide the same documents again, just in an updated format.

‍

Not only for individuals

These painful processes aren’t limited to individuals. In fact, it’s even worse for companies:

Multiple bank accounts and products at different providers, statutory duties, and registering as a supplier with a large organisation or government all require different types of documentation.

Trading in Europe? From June 2024 onwards, companies must perform due diligence on suppliers to identify, prevent, and mitigate adverse human rights and environmental impacts across their supply chains. This is part of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).

All of which means more requests for documents – or, shall we say, more requests for the same kind of documents, from more companies. 

Compliance’s price tag

All of this compliance has good intentions…

Limit the flow of funds to terrorists, sanctioned individuals, abusers of human rights and those that are grossly negligent with the environment and, importantly, prevent fraud:

• In 2023, an estimated R23 trillion in illicit funds flowed through the global financial system, encompassing activities such as money laundering, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing. 
• Fraud has seen a dramatic rise, with a reported 1,400% increase over the past decade. 
• In 2023 alone, global losses from fraud scams and bank fraud schemes amounted to R8.9 trillion.

And while added levels of compliance will likely contribute to combatting these scourges, it comes at a price. In the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, financial crime compliance costs have reached R1.5 trillion, with 98% of financial institutions reporting increased expenses in this area. 

It’s estimated that executing a compliance check in Europe can cost anything between R18k to R183k per customer (depending on the level of depth and complexity) for regulated institutions. On the flip side, clients of these banks are often subjected to multiple, outdated and largely manual requests for compliance, like British Telecom, which has a team of over 200 people responding to due diligence checks. So, the problem is dual-sided.

Anything that can simplify this process to reduce costs and speed up time to execute, could be a real game changer for companies. 

The SA female founder are making a play

South African-born Cindy van Niekerk saw the massive overhead that compliance introduced when she worked at some of the world’s biggest banks and financial institutions in the UK. This led to her founding Umazi. James Deely, a seasoned banking COO and Michael Harvie CRO (another South African) comprise the founding team.

Umazi is pioneering decentralised, collaborative due diligence to speed up corporate identity verification. It allows companies of all sizes to create digital identities coupled with a repository of documents – these documents and declarations then only need to be verified once after which it can be shared (with permission from the owner) with companies requesting it. The regulated organisations benefit from the reuse of verified data, as they will be notified in real-time of any data changes and updates. This process can solve problems like re-FICA.

Cutting the cost of due diligence by sharing verification among different participants all while improving the speed at which checks can be done.

And they have made some great progress. 

Having won the Digital Isle of Man innovation challenge in 2024 (btw: entries for 2025 are now open, so check it out), Umazi is set to run a pilot with the island to create digital identities for newly created companies. They’ll perform standard due diligence and then supply data straight from the organisation’s Umazi-created digital Identity – cutting out all those tedious document processes.

It’s something that could change the game for virtually every business on the planet. We’re watching this space…

CHECK THIS OUT

Helping SA Businesses Keep the Cash Flowing

If you run a growing business in South Africa, you know the challenge: You need cash to scale — but growth often eats up your working capital. 

Whether you’re expanding locations, launching new products, or handling increased demand, cash flow gaps can stall progress when you can least afford it.

That’s where Lula steps in.

Lula provides quick, flexible funding solutions tailored to South African businesses. No long waits. No rigid conditions. Just the capital you need — when you need it — to keep moving forward.

See it in action

Take Off the Gluten Path, a fast-growing gluten-free food brand. Founder Bronwyn Phillips needed cash to test new retail spaces and expand their nationwide frozen food delivery. 

Traditional financing options were slow and restrictive — but Lula was different. 

With Lula’s funding:

✅ The application process was quick and easy.
✅ Approval was fast, with no unnecessary red tape.
✅ Funds were available when needed, giving Bronwyn the freedom to use them where they mattered most.

This kind of financial flexibility helped Off the Gluten Path grow without compromising its mission to serve customers who truly need safe, gluten-free options.

Your business could be next. 

Need to bridge a cash flow gap or fund your next big move?

See how Lula can help

IN SHORT

Strike up a conversation…

🛟 Ocean Rescues. The 6th edition of OceanHub’s accelerator programme is open for applications. The 12-month programme will help as many as 24 African startups working on preserving and restoring the world’s oceans. Applications close 30 June 2025 — apply here. Hmmm, any startups doing something about the Milnerton Lagoon?

🚨 Rapidly Acquired. RapidDeploy was recently acquired by Motorola. The startup was founded in Cape Town in 2016 and built a cloud-based emergency response and analytics platform. After major global traction, the startup moved to Texas, USA in 2018 and have gone on to service 1’600+ emergency communications centres. Another big win for the Saffa startup community!

🥡 Meals on Wheels. Naspers’ Prosus just picked up Just Eat Takeaway for a tasty $4.3 billion. The acquisition forms part of Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi’s rapid expansion plans for the group. The Uber Eats competitor operates in 17 markets around the world serving 61 million eaters. Wonder if the service would be expanded into SA?

👽 HD Space. NASA is launching a brand new telescope capable of creating the most colourful map of the cosmos in history. The infrared SPHEREx telescope takes spectroscopic images and will help scientists understand how the universe was formed, how galaxies have grown throughout cosmic history, and the location of water molecules anywhere in the galaxy. Now we gon see some things…

👏 Out of the Grey? South Africa has addressed (or at least largely addressed) 20 out of 22 action items set out by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and could see us be delisted from the FATF greylist in October if the remaining items — investigations and prosecutions of serious and complex money laundering, and terror-financing activities — are addressed in the next reporting period, March to June. *Cue the Start of a Slow Clap…

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with next-level business strategy support from Metavolve, all your VC and startup legal sorted by Dommisse Attorneys and 12 more vital startup tools & services.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last few days alone, in our online community, we…

• Tested out a new platform with all kinds of tool kits, recordings and exclusive value-adds for the Collab 🤩.
• Helped Brandon get the ultimate remote exec PA service.
• Had a session on how to make financial year-end easy — with CFOs.
• Discussed who is the best type of person to help develop your products.
• Checked out the back-end setup of Gemin’s new AI co-pilot for science.
• Had a lekker laugh learning that even Paul Graham’s teens won’t listen to him.
• Put Chris in contact with a potentially valuable partner 🚀.
• Hooked Christian up with some quality door-to-door package services.
• Gave Danei some helpful feedback on their awesome new website.

Thinking about joining The Open Collab?

• Supercharge your network in the SA startup landscape — get that introduction, get that customer, or meet that partner.
• Get feedback on your products, services and/or offers from others who have built and are building their own products right now.
• Join all our online and in-person events for free!
• Exclusive 1-on-1 sessions with startup consultants.

SA’s only dedicated tech startup and scale-up founder community.

Join The Open Collab

HAPPENING SOON

Upcoming Event

6 March 2025 — First Open Letter In-Person Event of 2025: Come meet us and the entire community at LaunchLab in Stellenbosch for another legendary Open Letter event — R100 per person (buy here) or free to members of The Open Collab community.

WHAT YOU SAID

Got devs?

Last Friday we riddled you an SA scale-up that helps corporates and other ventures get their software teams sorted with SA’s top talent. And almost everyone recognised good-ole OfferZen…

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💼 DevSouth (8%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛡️ DevProtect (8%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 👨‍💻 OfferZen (72%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💳 HireADev (12%)

Your 2 cents…

We always try our best, thanks! 🙌

Gulp, thanks for the heads up, MrShenery. From now on, you know where to find us 🎣.

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Bodyguards? No problem: One of the latest products on the Apple Store is Protector, an app that lets you book armed agents — choose from US military vets to special forces, use sliders to add armed convoys or motorcades and all kinds of crazy options. No wonder the startup’s co-founder calls it, “Uber, but with guns”.

Back in SA, though, it’s another Fast-Five Friday: 5 things you should know in SA startup, in 5 minutes — let’s go!

Together with:

‍

1. TO THEIR CREDIT

Giving 27M South Africans Economic Access

We feature awesome SA FinTech startups in The Open Letter all the time – some of them aiming to serve folks in SA’s informal economy.

But did you know nearly 27 million people (45% of the population) in SA are credit unserved or underserved? They have no credit score, so they can’t buy a house, a car, or even stuff like laptops and cameras on credit. 

Eek! This means 45% of SA’s populace is locked out of the economy – and you wonder why it’s not always growing as fast as we’d like…

But, local startup Pokkit is fixing this by helping these credit-unserved folks build up their credit score with savings investments: The user buys a Redeemable Savings Voucher and pays between R100 and R4k per month for 12 or 24 months.

This info gets sent to all the major credit bureaus to improve their credit score, and at the end of the 12/24 months, users have a tidy little savings amount they can withdraw (after some hopefully lekker 7% growth in Allan Gray’s Money Market Fund). 

2. CONNECTING THE DOTS

Find Hot, Open Tables in Your Area…

There’s nothing worse than owning a restaurant, bar, or cafe that stands empty after the breakfast coffee run, or between the lunchtime or dinner rush. You’re not making money, your waitstaff isn't making money, and with all those overheads, it’s costing you to keep the doors open...

SA is fast becoming a popular destination for digital nomads. Since many of these people do not have an office, they need a space to plug in, lock-in, and get to work.

After much success in the UK, Reef App is now available in SA. Reef App connects the globe’s laptop force with laptop-friendly restaurants, bars and cafes in their local area. Reef members can get a spot to work with varying amenities ranging from Wi-Fi and electricity (obvs) to coffee and brekkie to fuel the hustle (plus a few more bespoke venue-dependant perks).

Restaurants, on the other hand, have a great way to drive foot traffic to their tables during off-peak times. Mooi.

‍

3. COME FLY WITH ME

Building Faster than the Speed of Sound

Not since the iconic Concorde (shelved in 2003 due to high operating costs) have regular air passengers traveled at supersonic speeds.

But with the recent push to commercialise space travel, could supersonic passenger travel be back on the cards?

Yeah, about that startup that went supersonic the other day: In this recent interview with Y-Combinator, founder Blake Scholl shares the story about Boom Supersonic’s future plans: The Overture will be a supersonic airliner to transport around 65 passengers at Mach 1.7, running on 100% sustainable fuel by 2029.

And apart from being at the cutting edge of technology and engineering, Blake shares some incredible insights from his founder journey including fixing the economic issues with Concorde, finding the right people (starting with a guy who played hockey with some dude who worked at SpaceX), and navigating qualitative claims about quantitative topics.

Can you imagine a 45-minute flight from Jozi to Cape Town?

4. FROM OUR OPEN COLLAB COMMUNITY

Get Rewarded in Gold…

Gold prices just keep on rising, with the precious metal hitting an all-time high – returning over 40% this year in Dollars and Rands. It’s also seeing an uptick in interest (even Elon wants to take a peek at the real Gold sitch at Fort Knox).

We’re living in funny old times when age-old assets like gold are being digitised at breakneck speed, yet traders in London are having to physically empty out the Bank of England’s gold vaults in order to fly bullion bars to COMEX repositories in America. 

And it’s at this intersection that we think our friends over at Troygold could very well be on to something with the launch of their digital gold API (dubbed GoldSave) late last year.

The API allows third-party digital platforms to offer their customers retail gold directly within their existing apps. Powered by Troygold’s technology and RMB Bank gold custody, digital players can seamlessly integrate fractional gold savings and allow their users to turn their rewards and loyalty points offerings into cold, hard Krugerrands.

The Troygold team claims that speed in adding digital products is key and hence the gold API can be integrated seamlessly by a mid-level dev in under a week. A quick way to add an additional revenue stream, earning 2% on gold transactions and a share of the monthly AUM fees.

The DigiGold API is already powering some of SA’s ⁠large remittance platforms, ⁠digital voucher players, a ⁠telco super app, and more coming on stream…

Keen to build with Founders like Troygold’s Dane Viljoen? Join our community of SA Startup Founders & Builders, The Open Collab today.

5. NOW OR NEVER

All the Big Health Corporates & Investors in One Place

Hey, HealthTech founders, ever wish you could get into a room full of corporates and investors who’re super passionate about growing SA’s HealthTech sector?

Here’s your shot: The legends over at Octoco are bringing together local and international HealthTech experts and putting them into a room for you to meet and mingle.

The panellists alone give you an idea of the calibre of people who're gonna be there:

• Richard Gordon – South Africa Medical Research Council
• Aurélie Ette Askia – Senior Investment Manager: Sanofi
• Esté Burger – BioCode
• Dr Anton Du Preez van Staden – Fluorobiotech
• Thomas Kisimbi – Boston Consulting Group
• Fanie Hattingh – Mediclinic

The topic? Emerging trends in AI, digital health, and groundbreaking technologies shaping Africa’s healthcare future.

Plus: Alongside the panel, African and local startups get a chance to showcase cutting-edge products through exhibition booths, fostering collaboration and investment opportunities with industry leaders.

Scaling HealthTech Innovation in Africa

🌍 HealthTech Expo | Panel Discussion | Networking
📅 Date: 27th February 2025 | 🕒 Time: 18:30 - 21:00
📍 Location: Workshack, Stellenbosch | Moderator: OST | Octoco
Organised as part of: BRAIN Regional Bootcamp 4th edition (so very startup-friendly)

🎟️ Tickets: FREE but limited…

Register now on Quicket

IN SHORT

Made to share…

🪡 Stitched back together. Local online payments solution WigWag is heading back to the Stitch stable after it spun out from Stitch in 2023, and returns as Stitch Express. Stitch Express will serve businesses that operate on e-commerce platforms to integrate online payments like card payments, Apple and Google Pay, Capitec Pay, BNPL and more coming soon. Lekker one folks.

🚀 Time is Now. Wanna rocket your startup onto the international stage? The Isle of Man is inviting SA startups to apply for its 3rd annual Innovation Challenge. Successful applicants get access to world-class mentors and potential investors within their ecosystem. The winners unlock everything you need to take this thing global — apply here.

🤖 Google’s Co-Scientist. Google just announced its AI co-scientist built on Gemini 2.0 to help scientists create novel hypotheses and research plans. The collaborative AI tool lets researchers specify their research goal using natural language, and the AI co-scientist will propose hypotheses, summarise relevant published literature and recommend approaches. Check out the link for an infographic explainer of the workflow — it’s pretty cool.

🔪 Slashing our cash? Four of South Africa’s major banks (Absa, Standard Bank, Nedbank, and FNB) shut down 238 ATMs between them over the December 2023 and June 2024 period, bringing the total number of ATM closures from June 2023—June 2024 to 400. Capitec on the other hand opened UP almost as many between February 2024 and August 2024 — a respectable 367 new ATMs. Well, looky here…

🛑 11th Hour Budget Delay. Shortly before SA’s Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana was set to deliver the country’s budget speech on Wednesday afternoon (where it was expected he would announce a 2% VAT increase), it got delayed to the 12th of March. Apparently, other members of the GNU had not heard about the increase in previous briefings for “fear of it being leaked”. Awkies.

🔥 Easy-Peasy FYE. Where all the founders at? Stressed to the nines because it’s financial year-end time. But it doesn’t have to be so stressful: We got some of the best CFOs in the business together to come show you how to take the stress out of your FYE — register for free here.

JOBS IN TECH

Room to grow…

🤖 AI Product Manager @ Fuse Universal

🌐 Head of Network Engineering (Path to Chief Network Engineer) @ fibertime

🖊️ Mid-Senior Digital Designer @ Ogilvy One

🍲 eCommerce Manager @ Le Creuset

Hiring? Get in touch, and we will feature it here.

GAME TIME

Think you know your SA startups?

Lines of logic, dreams in flow,

Building futures, byte by byte.

From dev to startup, watch them grow,

Matching talent, left and right.

A bridge between the minds that build,

And those who dream of tech fulfilled.

WHAT YOU SAID

That one-day feeling…

On Tuesday, we asked about your ultimate retirement plan, and being financially free to travel’s the one to beat…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏝️ Move to Mauritius (6%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛶 Go off-grid and live off the land (18%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💰 Be financially free and travel the world (37%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🐟 Spend my days fishing & golfing (5%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏡 Stay put and finally enjoy my home (10%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😬 Wait, people actually retire? (24%)

Your 2 cents…

Here’s to Pieter, one day living it up like royalty 👑.

Ha ha, ja GL, some people can’t help it — retire them to a desert island and they’ll open a glass-making factory or something 💎.

Hey African Box, at the normal returns of 7-10% per year, yeh you’d have to invest like R5k+ per month. But last year’s best-performing ETFs were insane: Sygnia Itrix MSCI USA did 20%, 1nvest SWIX 40 did 27.8%, NewGold ETF and Satrix MSCI China both did like 40% returns. At rates like those, you’d only have to invest R500 per month from age 35 to 65 to accumulate R7 million. So never say never 🏆.

Sounds like a gift, Isaac! Here’s hoping you can at least do some of that in the meantime too 🎁.

Ooh, Charmaine, stop it — now we wanna come visit ⛳.

Smart, Benjamin, we taking notes… 💡

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Enough growth? We hit a major milestone this weekend: 20k+ subs and counting — here’s a special message from us to you. To celebrate, though, we’re making this Friday’s startup webinar free for everyone. We gathered some seriously top-shelf CFOs to come show us how to take the stress out of financial year-end. And your seat’s already booked — confirm it here.

In this Open Letter:

• Big play: The startup helping funds and consumers get more out of retirement.
• African AI marketplace, electrifying medicine & your startup on the global stage.
• Legacy starts here: How to build real generational wealth, right now.
• Who knew this cool local aero-agri startup? The results are in.
• Lonely building your startup? Join The Open Collab and get support.

Together with:

Did someone forward you this email? Join {{active_subscriber_count}} South Africans reading The Open Letter by signing up here.

TRENDING NOW

Securing Comfy SA Retirements

It seems like retirement has been on everyone's lips the last couple of months (and not just cause they’re ready to pack it all in and head to Mauritius)...

We’ve featured a couple of startups in the financial planning space in the last few months (ICYMI: DoshGuide and Fynbos). Then, on 1 September 2024, SA’s two-pot retirement system kicked in, allowing South Africans to withdraw a portion of their retirement funds before actually retiring.

SA’s first big retirement regulation changes

Back in the day, large companies would just source a pension fund, sign their employees up to it and pay their monthly contributions over to it. 

At 65, they’d gooi a lekker tea, maybe a card signed by everyone, sign a stack of paperwork and retirees would ride off into the sunset with (hopefully) a lekker nest egg to support them into old age.

Then in August 2017, former Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba signed some amendments to the Pension Funds Act into law, requiring, among others, a “retirement benefits counselling” component, forcing pension funds to provide counselling and ongoing support to individual fund members. 

This meant that funds had a greater responsibility for the financial outcomes of each member. Nice!

Well, maybe not for everyone…

This created several challenges for most funds…

This approach is less “here’s your money and good luck” and more about taking responsibility for members’ retirement outcomes. And most funds were simply not equipped to suddenly offer that level of granular support to their massive member bases.

In fact, we have to remember that there was virtually no prior relationship between funds and their members – most funds had never even communicated with members, except through numerous intermediaries on both the fund and business’s sides.

So you can imagine this had two drastic effects on SA pensions:

1. Members still had no clue how to make sense of their financial planning
2. Trying to offer his granular level of support came with a hefty price tag for the funds, threatening their own operability…

‍

The local player bringing transparency to pensions

Local startup Benefit Counsellor is bringing greater clarity around SA pensions by giving funds access to a purpose-built retirement engagement platform. Here, they can provide members with the most up-to-date retirement info and offer them financial education – all via WhatsApp.

What’s more, it’s white-labelled, meaning Mr & Mrs Fund doesn’t need to worry about losing their brand identity: They simply customise the backend benefits portal so that it looks and feels like their own brand. Clever.

And, of course, this means more transparent data: Members can access all their statements (including contributions, balances, statements and other benefits and rewards) via WhatsApp, live chat, chatbots, USSD or email.

Moreover, apart from the platform’s lightly gamified financial education elements, members also have access to virtual counselling with brokers and experts. Noice!

Financial well-being and wealth-building are major parts of building a better, more prosperous South Africa. So anyone working to help both the consumer and service providers do better and gain more are winners in our books. We’re watching this space…

PS: Benefit Counsellors was founded by Jaco Wasserfall, who is one of more than 50 local founders in our Open Collab Community. Come join in and build with founders like Jaco.

CHECK THIS OUT

The easiest way to build generational wealth

Not born into a rich family? Your child could be… 

In startups, early traction makes all the difference. 

It’s the same with building wealth: The earlier you start investing, the bigger the compounding effect of growth. That’s why our friends at Fynbos Money fast-tracked their most-requested wealth-building feature: Tax-Free Savings Accounts for kids.

Fynbos Money’s TFSAs for kids lets you start investing a small amount now, for big rewards for your little ones later in life.

How big?

Well, if your child is 6 years old and you invest R3 000 per month (the max on a TFSA per year: R36 000), at just a 9.4% annual return, they’ll have:

• R 801 thousand by age 18
• R 1.14 million by age 21
• R 2.65 million by age 30

Sheez! Bet you could’ve used a milly by age 21. Your child doesn’t have to wait for it – imagine being remembered as the grandparent who left future generations the gift of wealth.

But here’s the thing: When you start really matters.

Waiting too long hurts

The same investment grows or shrinks depending on when you start:

• Starting at age 16 yields R230k by age 21
• Starting at age 6 yields R1.14 million by age 21
• Starting at birth yields R1.51 million by age 21

Starting just 6 years earlier or later could make 5x the difference (about half a million Rand) and nearly triple their wealth by age 30.

So check out kids' TFSAs at Fynbos right now

IN SHORT

Well, lookie here…

🛒 Go shopping for AI. Africa’s first AI marketplace Highwind has launched, offering ready-to-use AI solutions with flexible pricing options to help businesses get their hands on quick, affordable, and scalable AI solutions. Some early products already available on the marketplace include: a Proof of Address verifier, SA Bank confirmation letter data extractor, Dyula to French translator and a whole lot more coming soon. We love to see African AI solutions rising.

🐶 Mind-Reading AI. Scientists at the University of the West of England Bristol and Scotland’s Rural College, as well as ones at the University of Haifa, are getting closer to helping us interpret animals’ emotions thanks to AI. The Intellipig system examines photos of pigs’ faces for signs of pain, sickness, or emotional distress, while another project is helping identify signs of discomfort in dogs. Call us when they can accurately predict when your cat is ‘bout to knock something off a shelf…

⚡️Powering Your Pharmacy Parcel. Clicks has launched 42 electric delivery vans replete with solar-powered refrigeration (cause some meds mos gotta stay cold) under its United Pharmaceutical Distributors (UPD) arm in partnership with local startup Everlectric. The pilot will see vans rolled out in Gauteng and the Western Cape, with Gqeberha and Durban next on the list. But can we use our Clicks ClubCard points to get free delivery?

🙅‍♂️ More Political Blocking? South Korea has become the latest country to block Chinese AI company DeepSeek from being downloaded while it evaluates how the company handles user data. Existing app and web services will remain unaffected but the country’s data protection authority “strongly advises” users to not enter private info into DeepSeek until a final decision has been made. Ja, you shouldn't be adding personal data anywhere where the machines can know how to get ya…

🦄 Take Your Shot. Wanna take your startup onto the international stage? The Isle of Man is inviting SA startups to apply for its 3rd annual Innovation Challenge. Successful applicants get access to world-class mentors and potential investors within their ecosystem. The winners unlock everything you need to take this thing global — apply here.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last few days alone, in our online community, we…

• Got our pick of killer AI jobs before everyone in the country 😎.
• Got years and years of LinkedIn Ads experience in less than an hour.
• Mused about what Apple fans might be getting at the launch on Wednesday.
• Got some free coffee and had a lekker in-person meet-up in Cape Town.
• Got a mass of awesome new AI toys to play with 🕹️.
• Helped Erhard find some great Tech Lead potentials for a new play.
• Got SA’s No 1 product guy to give Khalid quality feedback on their beta-stage product.
• Helped Sabeeha with some options for an e-commerce developer.
• Welcome a lot of new members — what a vibe 🎧💃🕺🎶.

Thinking about joining The Open Collab?

• Supercharge your network in the SA startup landscape — get that introduction, get that customer, or meet that partner.
• Get feedback on your products, services and/or offers from others who have built and are building their own products right now.
• Join all our online and in-person events for free!
• Exclusive 1-on-1 sessions with startup consultants.

SA’s only dedicated tech startup and scale-up founder community.

Join The Open Collab

HAPPENING SOON

Upcoming Events

Financial year-end stress? It doesn’t need to be so painful. Join our Friday LinkedIn Live webinar with Outsourced CFO’s Damien Baker, unpacking how to take the 😰 out of your FYE — register here for free.

Happening Friday 21 Feb at 12:00

6 March 2025 — First Open Letter In-Person Event of 2025: Come meet us and the entire community at Launchlab in Stellenbosch for another legendary Open Letter event — R100 per person or free to members of The Open Collab community.

14 March 2025 — Exclusive Offshoring Case Study: Get all the lessons without any of the pain as you hear first-hand how and how NOT to do offshoring (and what you need to know before you start) — exclusive to members of The Open Collab community.

View all our upcoming events here.

WHAT YOU SAID

Flying high…

On Friday we riddled you about an SA startup that uses machine learning to analyse aerial imagery for Agri insights, and most of you recognised Aerobotics…

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🌾 AgriBot (31%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🌱 Aerobotics (45%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚜 FarmVision (14%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌍 CropGuard (10%)

Your 2 cents…

Nice one, Cornelus! Sounds like you know them well 🌽.

Ooh, so close — but now can you go check out Aerobotics 🪴.

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