Too far {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Someone programmed a robot to beg for recharge money on the street. And, funny as it is, it's coming at a time when protests are rising in Asia over robots and AI, for fear that they're taking human jobs before society's value-attribution systems and regulations catch up fast enough. 💸

Send this to a friend who needs their own robot.

In This Open Letter

66% of South Africans do not have a will, because they think it only matters for rich people (about 43%), perhaps because those handing out “free wills” do so to cash in on the back end – so this local founder’s making it truly easy and affordable to get a will…

The problem is that anyone who dies without a will’s estate gets handled according to a fixed formula decided by the Intestate Succession Act, and you lose all say over who inherits or even who raises your children. 😳

That’s when grieving families experience tension, long delays in winding up estates, and complex legal processes.

Even bigger problem

Now, some companies offer you free wills to seemingly try to solve this dilemma. But there have been recent warnings that not all can be trusted. Some of them do so only to make themselves the executor, so they have control over your assets and can take up to 3.5% of your estate.

That’s something that bugged SA founder Samashan Pillay, who's spent the better part of a decade inside South Africa's insurance and wills world, so much that he built an honest chat-based solution. 

The startup turning your will into a WhatsApp chat

4Will is a self-service will builder that runs entirely inside WhatsApp, turning the most-avoided admin job into a 15-minute chat.

You answer a guided set of questions, and it turns your replies into a will document, which then gets generated for you to print out and sign. All in 4 easy steps (hence the name).

4Will also sort guardians for your kids, an asset schedule for your executor, and the ability to split your estate proportionally between all your beneficiaries, flagging when you go over 100%. It even includes a basic living will for free, plus a full template for premium users.

It hasn’t been marketed yet, beyond a single LinkedIn post that garnered 34+ users. But Sam’s building out premium tiers with attorney review, insurance layers and a white-label API version. 

We're watching this space…

Cloud On Demand has been doing one thing since 2012: Taking the complexity out of cloud for South African businesses.

They sit between the global platforms (Microsoft Azure, AWS) and the local ecosystem of resellers, managed service providers and software businesses, consolidating access, billing, support and marketplace reach onto a single platform.

The idea is deceptively simple: Instead of juggling separate vendor relationships, billing cycles and support desks, a partner works through one platform, gets one consolidated bill, and calls one team in local time, who understands the local market.

Behind that sit the things most partners struggle to assemble alone: A curated catalogue of trusted vendors (Microsoft, AWS, AvePoint, ESET, Mimecast, NinjaOne, StorVault), hands-on help with migration, security and optimisation, and co-funded marketing to actually win business.

The credibility is there to back it: Cloud On Demand is ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified, runs accredited Microsoft and AWS practices, and counts South African businesses like Quick Consols, Cyberlab, Drivatic, CX Consulting and NV Technologies among those publicly endorsing the platform (several citing month-end billing that now takes a fraction of the time it used to).

Simplicity at scale is the new operating model.

⚽ Bafana Bump: SA's Happiness Spikes to 7.1. Bafana Bafana's historic World Cup knockout-stage run has pushed SA's national happiness score to 7.1 — way above the 5.8 baseline. You can track it live here. Not sure how the last-minute Canada lost will affect that, though…

⏩ YouTube Shorts at 2x. Google's adding 2x playback speed to Shorts. Handy for those 3-minute padded vids with the pay-off right at the end.

💱 Standard Bank Cuts the Dollar Out of China Trade. Standard Bank is now the first African bank authorised to clear Chinese renminbi on the continent — jointly with ICBC, across 19 African countries, without converting to dollars first. Big move for SA-China trade.

📈 bStocks Hit $100m AUM in Two Weeks. Binance's tokenised stock product has crossed $100 million in assets under management just two weeks after launch. The stock market closes, bStocks doesn't.

🧠 UX That Pays Back. Bad UX kills conversion, retention and revenue. Isoflow is a 32-person, founder-led design studio that has spent 16 years building intuitive, high-performing digital products for fintech, ecommerce, insurance and healthtech teams.*

🌍 Bridge Building. We're digging into what it actually takes for SA founders to go international, and why the smartest ones don't do it alone. This week kicks off a series on the networks building that bridge.*

* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.

Many of us struggle to port all our company knowledge to AI, because there's just so much info (in your head, or sheets and docs) all over the place, it's hard to start. So we got an SA operator who rolled out Claude across an 80-person company on two continents to show us her shortcut.

And it turns out, there are 4 specific steps to build your first AI context doc without writing a word yourself.

☝️ Send this to a founder who keeps meaning to "document the process" and never does.

BTC briefly crashed below $60k. Overnight June 24–25, bitcoin hit $59'023, its lowest since October 2024, before bouncing to ~$61'800. Nearly $1bn was liquidated in that 24 hours, but there’s always someone ready to buy the dip. And it’s not just private individuals, because…

Corporations are buying the crash. Even as retail panics, Strategy added 520 BTC and Strive bought 759 BTC near $65'850. And many now wonder if this is the normal cycle-based dip, or whether institutions have completely changed the nature of the game, giving BTC a slow, gold-like grind.

Why tokenised securities? Binance's latest explainer breaks down how bStocks compare to traditional equities: 24/7 trading, fractional access, instant settlement and no broker middlemen. With bStocks hitting $100m AUM in two weeks, the model is proving there's appetite.

Disclaimer: Digital asset prices can be volatile. The value of your investment may go down or up and you may not get back the amount invested. You are solely responsible for your investment decisions and Binance is not liable for any losses you may incur. Not financial advice. For more information, see our Terms of Use and Risk Warning.

Last week, we showed you Recon Electronics' off-grid IoT platform, asking what you'd most want eyes on where there's no connectivity. The verdict? That borehole that always dies at 2 am on a long weekend…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💧 The borehole that only ever dies at 2 am on a long weekend (26%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥛 The office fridge (we will find out who's taking the milk) (15%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔥 The braai, obviously: meat status from the couch (15%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 🐕 That one gate the dogs keep "accidentally" opening (22%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 📍 My kid's location, let's be honest (22%)

Creative AI for Non-Designers – 3 Jul, Online: Aldo shows how to use Claude and MCP-based workflows to create polished, on-brand visuals without a design background. Founder Collab members only. Join the Collab.

Led By Her: SA to Ireland – 7 Jul, Online: South Africans who've made the move share the truth on visas, cost of living, culture shock and whether Ireland is all green fields and Guinness. Hosted by The Lekker Network. Register free.

Getting Better Results From Google Ads – 17 Jul, Online: Chantelle unpacks when Performance Max makes sense, what to watch and how to stop wasting budget. Founder Collab members only. Join the Collab.

Building & Scaling Venture-Backed Businesses – 30 Jul, Stellenbosch: 150+ founders, investors and operators at Workshack. Panel on raising VC, plus Renier Kriel sits down with Brett Commaille (Hlayisani Capital) on decades of investing in SA startups. Get tickets.

🧩 Tool to Try: ScopeMetrix helps B2B service firms and agencies find and fix pricing leaks.

🌍 That's Interesting: In 2016, a woman bought a lottery ticket out of spite to prove to her husband that lotteries are a waste of money. It won her $1 million.

🏔️ Next Level: Watch someone slide down an actual iceberg into an Alpine lake for a cold plunge.

🏞️ Wow Site: This website spells your name using real-world images.