Election fever {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? The ANC lost 1'299 seats in this local election; the EFF −392, but the DA gained 281. Because councillors pay a portion of their salary to the party, the ANC will be ~R295m poorer, the EFF will lose R89m, and the DA will gain R64m over the next 5 years, until the next local elections. 🤔

In This Open Letter

Running a mine, property portfolio or bunch of infrastructure is a massive job: you’ve got machines, people, rising energy use, equipment faults and the risk of security incidents all the time — but now, operators can have their own custom AI war room…

When we last featured co-founders Priaash Ramadeen and Shazia Vawda’s situational awareness scale-up The Awareness Company (TACo) in October '25 (you know, the guys who started out helping SA secure national key points), its HYDRA platform was live at 130 infrastructure sites and properties.

In October, they launched custom-built war rooms: a physical room they come and install for you, with screens, hardware, HYDRA software and AI agents, sold as one package and built around your company's operations. They currently have a showcase set up in Fourways, and if you know a business that needs this, tell them to email [email protected] to book a tour.

It's really something to experience. Click below for a video…

What's under the hood

Control rooms show systems; the War Room shows situations: what's happening, where, the evidence and who's on it. It pulls in cameras, sensors, drones, radios and even WhatsApp groups, and 4 always-on AI agents do the work:

In a demo, Follow replayed a copper cable theft at a sample mine, from the cut fence to a drone spotting the getaway bakkie. The fun part: it can phone the mine manager (or authorised individual), brief them on what's happening and suggest a fix. The human can then press 1 to approve, from anywhere in the world, and the war room AI will brief teams on the ground to get it done.

No jokes. Click to see it in action 👇.

Yes, this is a South African company, and yes, they are the only one (as far as we know) on the continent that helps you actually build a war room and supply the software as a single capex.

4 lessons Priaash and Shazia say got them here

1. Executives see the 10% that fails, not the 90% that works (Priaash): Reliability is the product for an exec. The War Room helps them tell the story of what's working, not just what's broken – that's a different product from a dashboard.

2. Narrow the pitch, not the product (Priaash): HYDRA can run energy, security and much more, and TACo refused to shrink it into one of those. But "it does everything" left customers unsure where to start, so they kept the product broad and started selling it one clear use case at a time.

3. Get the economics right while you're small (Shazia): Checking every product's costs early let the team tune AI, pricing and hardware before scaling, so growth makes TACo stronger, not thinner.

4. Sell AI the way customers already buy (Shazia): Large enterprises buy what they can see and trust. So the War Room lets them walk in, see their whole operation live, and buy AI the same way they already buy a control room.

What's next for TACo

Getting the War Room into the hands of South Africa’s mining houses, property portfolios and critical infrastructure: the operators guarding the country’s most valuable and most targeted assets. PS: The war room runs with an all-new HYDRA 2.0 platform (but that's a story for another day)...

We're watching this space…

A night out at a restaurant can easily cost you more than R450 a head. That's what a ticket to our final Open Letter Gathering of the year costs, and it covers the whole evening.

Here's what you get:

New venue, and our biggest yet: the Homecoming Centre in District Six, this Thursday, 12 November.

At work, a team member kept watching technical spec sheets fall apart: Excel and Word files with broken layouts, mismatched formatting and dates the QA team read two different ways.

So they built a simple web app where you enter product specs, tables and a logo, and it gives you a clean, standard PDF.

The lekker clever part:

✅ Build spec tables on the fly, with methods and values
✅ Pick one date format so nobody misreads 03/04 again
✅ The logo preview updates instantly, right in the browser

What's your team building, and where are you hosting it?

After about 10 years at OfferZen, Philip Joubert started Magic Safari with a tiny team and AI built into how the company works. So we asked him what changes when AI is there from day one, from picking the idea to building the product.

And it turns out, there are 5 lessons from building an AI-native startup worth knowing before you start yours.

🏦 Yoco Launches SME Loans. Yoco has secured R1.65bn in funding to give its merchants cash advances itself, without leaning on partners. It’s already advanced R6.5bn without a single losing cohort. And the real asset here isn’t the money.

💸 The Corner Shop Is the Bank. Mukuru customers can now pay for money transfers in cash at 170'000 spaza shops through Flash, no bank trip needed. That's 170'000 branches overnight, and a lesson for every fintech chasing cash users.

🛒 Amazon Wins Round One. A price check found Amazon SA cheaper on 7 of 10 early Black Friday tech deals. But Takealot hasn't played its big card yet, and the real test lands on 27 November.

📡 The R1m Licence Problem. Buying a second-hand telecoms licence in SA now costs over R1 million, SpaceX told Icasa. And even then, Starlink still couldn't get in. Comments close in January if you want a say.

💼 Global Structure, Less Drag. Finance Isle of Man supports SA founders moving offshore with 0% corporate tax, UK VAT access and easier access to international capital, a smart base for global growth.*

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

Yesterday, we featured our SA AI adoption report, asking who's actually in charge of AI at your company. And it's a dead heat…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🙋 Me, because nobody else would volunteer (44%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤷 Whoever last watched a YouTube tutorial (12%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤖 Honestly, I think the AI is (44%)

On 10 November 1983, Microsoft formally announced Windows, a graphical interface for its DOS-based systems. Bill Gates promised it would ship by April 1984.

Windows 1.0 didn’t actually arrive until November 1985, and it wasn’t all that popular. Neither was Windows 2. But when Windows 3 finally rolled around, the world was hooked and history was made. 🪟

What It Takes to Scale and Exit, 12 Nov, CPT: Pay@'s Andrew Hardie on building to a R1bn exit, plus Capitec, Quona and Katapult Ocean on building ventures in SA, this Thursday at the Homecoming Centre. Get tickets.

Meet Your Co-Founder, 19 Nov, CPT: OneBio brings scientists, clinicians, engineers and business minds together to form biotech founding teams. Apply here.

Biotech & Beers, 3 Dec, CPT: OneBio's final biotech networking evening of the year, drinks on OneBio, in Salt River. Get tickets.

Powered by Radi. Want your business event in front of 36,000 The Open Letter readers? Host it on Radi, and it lands here.

🧩 Tool to Try: Bag Learning turns your lecture slides, notes and recordings into flashcards, quizzes and mock exams, with an AI tutor you can message on WhatsApp. Built in Durban for SA university students.

🌍 That's Interesting: Whoopi Goldberg's real name is Caryn Johnson. Her mom suggested "Goldberg" because she reckoned a Jewish-sounding name would give her a better shot in Hollywood.