Proof of life {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Forget AGI, scientists just made the world's first artificial cell that eats, grows and even reproduces all on its own. Apparently, it only lasts five generations, but still. 😳
☝ Send this to a friend to prove you're still alive.
In This Open Letter
Spatial Sales: Full-size jets in the boardroom, no jets required.
Local: SA’s Startup World Cup winner & Starlink’s competitor.
Global: Here’s what Google’s rolling out in the Eastern Cape.
Technology Jobs: 6 new SA dev & data roles are up for grabs.
Beyond: Which is harder: building a startup or raising a baby?
Work Smarter: How to build a business that can actually sell.
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TRENDING NOW
Deals You Can Step Inside
This Cape Town founder is putting full-size jets in the boardroom (no jet required)…
You'd be forgiven for thinking that spatial computing sounds like a Silicon Valley problem.
Apple's Vision Pro has been out for just over two years now and seems aimed at gamers, film nerds and that annoying oke in the office who insists on a floating Mac screen.
But when Apple shipped visionOS 26 last year, it suddenly opened up a whole host of use cases in design, training, education, and even sales thanks to new enterprise APIs and shared device pools that let teams build custom spatial tools designed around how they actually sell.
Especially those who sell like Tony Stark…
Building Iron Man's hologram table for the sales floor
Articulate Vision is a local startup that builds spatial sales tools on Apple’s Vision Pro, and its pitch is simple: some products just don't fit in a boardroom. For instance, you couldn't slide a private jet across a table for a buyer to take a look at. Until now…
Founder Cale van der Westhuizen closes that gap with the engine he’s building called Clairvoyance. It lets you put on Apple’s Vision Pro, and the aircraft appears in the room at full scale. The seller and buyer can walk around the same model, point at the same rivet, flip between configurations and slice a cross-section to see what's underneath.
Either in the same meeting room or on opposite sides of the world.
A founder to back
And the aviation focus isn't random. Cale's a private pilot and engineer who wrote flight software for a Dragonfly Aerospace satellite.
There's just one snag: These headsets aren't cheap, and Cale says it's the biggest barrier to entry. And his fix is to lease them bundled with the software, which also serves to keep him in the loop on what his clientele actually needs.
It's still early days (the tech's barely 2 years old). But Cale is betting on visionOS, knowing that Apple will work to improve it over time.
We're (literally) watching this space…
Have your say…
CHECK THIS OUT
While your trucks are running, calls are going to voicemail.
Every missed call is a job your competitor just booked. Podium's AI Employee responds in under 2 minutes, qualifies the lead, and schedules the job — while your crew keeps working.
WORK SMARTER
Not every business can be sold…
Around 70% of businesses are, in effect, the owner doing the work. No buyer wants that. So we got the co-founder of an SA valuation firm that's run thousands of valuations to show us how to build a business that runs and sells without you.
And it turns out, there are 4 specific steps to build a business that can sell by beating the owner-dependence trap.
☝ Send this to a founder whose business would stop dead if they took a month off.
IN SHORT
Easing you into the weekend…
🏆 SA’s Startup World Cup Winner. SA legal AI startup Anvaya has clinched the top prize at the SA chapter of the Startup World Cup. The global finale is in San Francisco on 20 November, where regional winners compete for a $1 million (R16 million) prize. Go get it!
🌍 Google's E Cape Hub. Google confirmed the Eastern Cape as the site for a digital exchange hub, a subsea cable landing station, edge data centre and possible internet exchange point as part of a new fibre-optic route connecting Africa directly to Australia.
📡 BrainSAT Launches. Now we know why SA blocked Starlink: They announced the launch of BrainSAT Satellite Services, the local arm of UAE satellite firm Space42. And you can already see why they didn’t want Elon’s uncapped 100Mbps LEO; the website seems to reveal a plan to exploit South Africans with 24 times slower, costlier (per MB) GEO and data bundles (again).
💘 Agentic Dating. One tech founder used OpenClaw, Instagram Trial reels and World Cup losses to get over 1 million views and 200+ DMs in a few days. The trick? Using big emotional moments when people are already feeling something. Also, what planet is this again?
🚀 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.*
📬 Owned Beats Rented. Cold outreach reply rates: 3.4%. Warm opted-in email reply rates: 21%. The companies winning in B2B aren't louder; they're more familiar. Next week, we look at what that looks like in practice. Stay tuned →*
* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.
WHAT YOU SAID
Lost in translation…
Yesterday, we featured Molo's multilingual business content platform, asking how you handle the same customer questions on repeat. Most say in a different language…
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 📞 A support team answering each one by hand (25%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤖 A chatbot we bolted on and quietly pray it behaves (19%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📄 We point them to the website and hope they read it (6%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌙 The founder's still answering DMs at 11 pm (19%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🌍 Honestly? Not in the language half of our customers speak (31%)
READY FOR A MOVE?
Jobs in Tech
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BEYOND THE NEWSLETTER
What's harder: building a startup or raising a baby?
We asked one of SA's most prolific and successful founders what's harder, building a startup or raising a baby. And the answer is ❤️🔥…
Don't miss all the extra operator interviews and insights content we do on our social channels. Come enjoy the vibez.
AROUND THE WEB
Have some fun…
🔧 Tool to Try: Broke Fix Flip scans broken and for-parts listings, estimates repair costs and calculates your profit margin, helping you find the best flips near you.
🏖️ That's Interesting: Thieves once stole an entire beach in Jamaica, hundreds of tonnes of imported white sand for a resort, and police never caught them.
🏙️ Next Level: Watch two people climb the Empire State Building to fly the flag: "When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace." He proposed, she said yes, and now they're both in jail.
⚙️ Wow Site: This site explains how internal combustion engines work in the most beautifully interactive way.
SOUTH OF SERIES A
A slice of SA startup life…
Well, what do you know… our beloved Cape Town startup now only has 3 weeks of runway left to become a unicorn. Will they make it? Find out: There's a new comic strip every Friday, only in The Open Letter.
Got a favourite? Meet all the South of Series A characters here.
☝ Send this to a friend you'd build a startup with. 🦄
