Did you hear {{ FIRSTNAME }}? SA just become way more business-friendly: We raised the compulsory VAT registration threshold to R2.3 million per year revenue and added more capital gains tax exemptions, adjusted personal tax brackets and increased how much you can save tax-free per year — all amazing news for small businesses. Read the good news here.

In Today’s Open Letter

Most speciality insurance’s pricing models are locked in old, legacy spreadsheets – these guys are speeding up quotes by 800x…

You’d think a cornerstone of the global financial system is held together by a little more than a wing and a prayer. But the truth is, the world’s insurance industry still runs on spreadsheets.

Around 67% of insurance premiums are calculated just on spreadsheets, some decades old, and nearly 94% with serious errors.

Case in point: These 140 public companies had to eat humble pie and inform investors that previous financial statements were wrong and had to be redone. Ouch…

Raising the stakes

Spreadsheets are still the gold standard for pricing high-stakes risks like yachts, mines and cyber liability – remarkable considering speciality insurance will be a $279 billion market (R4.4 trillion) by 2031.

And it’s different to insuring your car (that’s a few minutes, these days). Specialised high-value insurance pricing isn’t customer-facing; it lives inside internal underwriting systems and policy administration software, creating a unique bottleneck.

And in a market where 81% of insurers doubt their own pricing technology (thanks to Excel), being slow to quote can cost you the deal.

The local venture giving insurance spreadsheets a new lease on life

Exakt is an AI-powered engine that instantly converts complex insurance pricing workbooks into production-ready APIs.

Exakt was born when founder Kobus Rust went, shall we say, experimental, working in the pricing team at a well-known local insurance company while completing his Master’s in data science. 

Shocked at the expensive consultants and clunky legacy software that insurers use, he built a side project to prove that modern algorithms could outperform the status quo. But then realised the real opportunity wasn’t a fancy new algo, it was helping the team port the models from spreadsheets, better, faster.

Extracting the logic

Instead of developers spending three months manually recoding a spreadsheet into a system, Exakt uses AI to extract the logic directly from the Excel file. It compiles that logic into an execution layer that is significantly faster than traditional methods – now 12-minute quote queries become sub-second API responses (800x faster).

And leveraging AI has also helped the Exakt team stay lean; just three on staff means they can compete with established giants and already gain insurance clients in SA and the UK, with a pipeline stretching into the US and Canada. 

In March, they’ll be pitching for the Lloyd’s Lab accelerator in London.

And we like the fact that Exakt isn't trying to kill the spreadsheet; it's simply giving it an exit strategy into the modern web.

We’re watching this space…

Can entire AI models get stolen? Anthropic says rivals tried to distil Claude using 24’000+ fake accounts and 16M prompts; a wake-up call for anyone building with AI. Read more here.

Need to keep coding while away from your desk? Claude Remote Control lets you continue local Claude Code sessions from your phone or browser, without moving data to the cloud. See more here.

Want OpenClaw without the risk? IronClaw adds security and privacy guardrails to OpenClaw agent deployments; open-source from the NEAR AI team. Check it out here.

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🇬🇧 Fancy a Cuppa? Local coffee sensation Plato looks to be gearing up to hit the UK soon, preparing its flagship store to hit the streets of London. Go, you good thing.

🇿🇦 Back On Top. SA just hit the top of the VC table, reclaiming top spot for funding on the African continent for the first time since 2017. See the mechanics behind it and what it means for the tech sector in our look at the state of South Africa VC.

🔒 Locking It Down. Apple is introducing new age-verification tools to comply with laws being passed both in the US and around the world, in countries like Brazil, Australia and Singapore, effectively blocking the downloads of apps rated 18+. Nice.

🏦 Banking On It. Nedbank has just received regulatory approval to acquire a majority stake in Kenya’s NCBA Group, one of East Africa’s largest financial services groups. The deal is valued at around R13.9 billion. Ja, no, lekker, hey.

📈 Pipeline Switched On. Growing SA software consultants IQ Business needed leads but didn’t have the in-house muscle to run effective campaigns. So Cloud on Demand funded and ran full social media campaigns, turning marketing spend into qualified leads and real sales.*

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

Yesterday, we showed you how Swiitch's bringing a swiitch screen time manager to SA, asking about your biggest screen time distraction. Most say the late-night doomscroll…

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚙 When I'm driving (0%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🥱 The late-night doomscroll (43%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😵 During work hours (14%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍽️ During family time (11%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ ☀️ The first thing in the morning (32%)

Your 2 cents…

We love to hear it, Herman. First thing in the morning, inbox open, priorities straight. 📬☀️

SA plug-in hybrid sales nearly quadrupled in just one year.

South Africa’s new-energy vehicle market is shifting fast:

💡 Plug-in hybrid sales jumped from 738 units in 2024 to 2'810 in 2025.

💡 New, more affordable entrants drove the surge, with models like the Haval H6 PHEV and Chery Tiggo 7 Pro PHEV leading sales.

💡 Unlike traditional hybrids, PHEVs can plug into the grid, allowing drivers to run purely on electricity for short trips while keeping petrol for long distances.

Traditional hybrids still dominate overall volumes (12'818 units in 2025), but the rapid rise of plug-ins suggests SA’s transition to electrified mobility is starting to accelerate.

⏳ Tool to Try: WaitlistKit adds a waitlist to your site in 60 seconds.

🧳 That's Interesting: Japan’s Kansai International Airport operated for 30 years without ever losing a single piece of luggage.

🐕 Next Level: Watch this greyhound outrun almost every other dog breed.

⚡ Hack: A guide to working with your energy rhythm: schedule deep work for your peaks.

🤖 Wow Site: PETER Abuse is a PETA site parody fighting for the “ethical treatment of abused electronics and robots”.