Cities of data {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? If you're intrigued by the Flock camera saga in the US but can't keep up with all the reports, this YouTuber did a great roundup of the whole story after he built a reverse Flock system: cameras to spy on the police, and the response was exactly what you'd expect. 🤦

In This Open Letter

Growing too big to give your core customer the same personalised service you started with is a business killer – so this local founder built what makes it scale…

One of the biggest losses a company faces when it grows is being able to serve its first adopters and core user base effectively: grow big enough that you need a call centre or support desk, and you lose the magic of connection the founding team built the company on.

Some see it as inevitable, but it actually drives up costs: internationally, customer acquisition costs (CAC) have tripled in the last 8 years, and with all the new competition in SA, the cost of getting 1 new customer has rocketed to between R500 and R1'000+, and repeat business is dropping: 84% abandon their purchase.

Victims of success

It's a pain local founder Tino Chaminuka felt himself: in 2024 (while still at university), he started an e-commerce brand, obsessing over just two customers a week, which allowed him to keep detailed records of each one to maintain the relationship. But when the store took off, he employed someone to run support, and suddenly the regulars stopped coming back.

It took a lot of pain to learn why: the new hire was optimising for closing tickets, not for retaining customers. And, once the damage is done, it's done. So Tino teamed up with co-founder Owen Muchini to build the thing that scales that personal touch…

The startup that spots your best customers leaving before you do

Amity is a Shopify app that gives an online store one memory of every customer, so no matter who replies on whatever channel (email, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and the store's chat widget), everyone has all the context instantly, and no buyer needs to explain themselves twice.

It also tracks how each shopper moves through your store and feeds you that info so you can recover them with specific data, combs through Instagram and Facebook comments for customers going off in public, and learns your team's writing so it can reply in the brand's voice instead of a general template.

What we like about it is that the founder story is the product spec, so it's built for a pain we know scaling stores feel. The install is also quite simple: you add their Shopify app, connect your Gmail, WhatsApp and Instagram, and you're off (nothing changes on the shopper's side).

We're watching this space…

PS: Amity should pair well with the new on-site Shopify option: SA stores never had the ability to do checkout on their site; payments are sent to a gateway, which is where the big drop-offs are. So Paystack (Stripe's Africa arm) brought it to SA for the first time, and some stores are seeing a 90% conversion rate. We'd use Amity and Paystack's Onsite Shopify together – you can't lose.

Most SA businesses run their stack or parts of it in the cloud to save costs and modernise, but, as with everything, it's something that needs fine management; otherwise:

A growing cloud budget is NOT a requirement for winning and growing your business, though. The winners are the companies that can actually fine-tune the cloud for growth (lean on cost, strong on performance) and whose teams can work securely from anywhere without the business carrying the risk.

Yes, we're talking optimisation and modernised work. And most growing concerns either don't realise the requirement or don't have the in-house specialists to close the gap.

So how do the winning SA businesses excel and stop leaving money on the table?

🏦 Standard Bank Bets R3.4bn on OPay. It's taking up to 4.99% of the Nigerian payments app ahead of its New York listing. OPay has 50 million monthly users, so Standard Bank is buying the distribution it couldn't build.

📱 Sixty60 Now Sells Airtime. Data and vouchers too, with no minimum basket. Airtime makes almost no margin, so this isn't about money. It's about getting you to open the app more often than your banking app.

💥 Data Centres Are Now War Targets. Ukraine just hit two of Yandex's five data centres, after Iran hit AWS in the Gulf in March. A drone costs up to R845k. The missile to stop it costs around R68 million.

🧩 Claude Is Coming for Office. Anthropic made Docs, Slides and Design free on every Claude plan, and added live dashboards and video. The threat to Microsoft and Adobe isn't the features; it's that it’s free.

🚀 Build Faster Together. The best founder advice comes from other operators in the trenches. The Founder Collab curates events, resources and a peer network specifically for SA founders navigating the pressure of building locally.*

📶 Signal You Can Trust. One dropped signal costs you a sale, a payment or a client. If your business runs on a connection you can't trust, this is your nudge. It takes two minutes to find your Cell C Business tier. Protect your business now →*

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

Would you believe that just 3 years ago, the employees of one of SA's most AI-first scale-ups were all petrified of using AI? Jip, they even disobeyed direct orders to use the tech. So the CEO had to do something drastic to drive trust and adoption. And we got him in to explain what it was…

And it turns out, there are 5 steps to get your team excited about AI without a single mandate.

FNB launched crypto trading for its customers. Clients can buy bitcoin, ether, XRP, solana and USDT from R10 through VALR on the existing share platform, but coins are ringfenced and cannot be moved in or out.

Bitcoin slid to a three-week low. BTC opened Friday at $81'690 and briefly touched $80'350, down about 4% on the week, with $1.09 billion in liquidations and spot ETFs near $1 billion of October outflows.

Binance Research says the total crypto market grew 11% in September despite the Fed's first rate hike since 2023, and Binance has now launched Binance AI, a free assistant rolling out globally that briefs you on markets in plain language.

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 the SA founders building Healthleap in the US, asking whether you'd move overseas if that's where your buyer is. The verdict? Sell to the world, stay right here…

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✈️ Bags packed, just waiting on Sequoia's email (23%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇿🇦 Never. SA or nothing, bru (23%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🌍 I'll sell to the US from the Karoo (54%)

Startup Stories: Biomine, 14 Oct, CPT: How Biomine is taking microbiome testing beyond the gut into skin, oral and infant health, over lunch. Get tickets.

Vibe Coding with Wine, 15 Oct, CPT: Fluent AI shows you how to build your own app with AI in under an hour, no coding needed, plus an AI wine tasting in Three Anchor Bay. Register free.

Biotech & Beers, 29 Oct, JHB: OneBio brings its informal biotech networking night to Joburg, no panels or pitching, at The Frog in Illovo. 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: Founder Page is a directory for discovering and following founders building in public on X.

🍫 That's Interesting: More chocolate is bought and sold at Brussels Airport than anywhere else in the world. On average, a 500g box changes hands every 15 seconds.