Pleistocene Park {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Scientists have sequenced the complete woolly rhino genome from a piece of undigested flesh in the stomach of a frozen wolf pup they found from 14’000 years ago. That means we’ve got the full DNA of at least 5 different extinct ice age animals. Wowzer. 🦣

In This Open Letter

SA’s 29 sleep health centres can’t serve our 30 million poor sleepers, so this venture is bringing high-tech sleep monitoring home to you…

We all need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep. But sleep quality’s been declining around the world.

South Africans are among the world’s earliest risers, taking 2nd place for an average wake-up time of 6h45. We’re also one of the earliest to bed, hitting the pillow at 23:09. That’s at the lower end of the spectrum, at around seven and a half hours of shuteye. 

The big sleep problem

In 2025, both the Public Servants Association and Discovery Health found independently that fully half of SA (so 30 million peeps) suffer from sleep deprivation, costing the economy a potential R22 billion per year. 

And, in case we need to remind you, poor sleep really messes with your body: It klaps your central nervous system, immune system, respiratory system, hormones and cardiovascular system (heart and blood flow), to name but a few, causing all kinds of nasty ailments and health problems.

But the big problem is that SA healthcare isn’t geared to manage 30 million sleep-deprived citizens. We have only 29 sleep centres in the country, mostly in Joburg and Cape Town, the best of which have only 4 sleep rooms, and most can serve only max 700 people a year.

Not to mention that most of them are private medical, so only about 16% of the population has access to them. So, time to democratise sleep-health access in SA? You bet… 

The local venture bringing home better sleep

The Sleep Health Centre is a fully doctor-led, “virtual-first”, end-to-end sleep offering that you do yourself at home (no need for expensive stays at a lab somewhere). 

After a virtual consult with their doctors, they courier an at-home sleep study device for you to wear overnight in the comfort of your own bed, to get your sleep results so you can move from “guessing” to a real diagnosis and plan. 

The timing is somewhat ideal. Even Discovery medical aid has recognised the need for good sleep in overall health and wellbeing, launching Vitality Sleep Rewards in 2026 – a programme that one of Sleep Health Centre’s co-founders, Dr Alison Bentley, advised on. 

We recently caught up with Sleep Health Centre Co-Founder, Dr Benji Ozynsk (you may remember him from the feature we wrote on Engage Mx a while back), and he says they focus on 1) clinical care for sleep disorders and 2) doctor-guided “sleep optimisation” track for high performers who work long hours and are trying to improve sleep (ahem, founders anyone?)...

A doctor-led, evidence-based sleep practice built for how people actually live and sleep today? 

We’re watching this space…

Trust + tech wins for SMEs. Lula’s CEO Trevor Gosling explains how digital banking and real relationships are reshaping SME success in SA. Read here.

Claude, but for real work. Claude Cowork lets founders hand off multi-step tasks on Mac (from organising files to building decks) and come back to finished outputs. See it here.

Nonstop ads optimisation. Groas replaces Google Ads managers with AI agents that analyse 100’000+ data points daily and optimise campaigns 24/7. Check it out.

PS… Joining our community pays for itself fast. Members unlock R40k+ worth of SA business-building value: from free data and calls to cloud architecture support, legal and hiring vetting, to 1-on-1 strategy and coaching sessions, plus free event tickets, Microsoft Marketplace access and more. Join the Founder Collab.

For decades, the financial playing field was defined by legacy and location…

Trust was built on brick-and-mortar facades and decades of history. The competition was about who had the most branches, the longest queues and the most plastic/paper in their ecosystem.

That game is over.

The new arena is digital, experience-driven and deeply personal. The winning players aren't just moving money. They're leading movements.

They're hanging their hats on building trust through human connection. Where customers not only want but expect service and experience that understands how they actually use money, not how the system dictates. 

“So what?” you ask. 

The brands that will win are not the ones with the most bells and whistles. The brands that will win will be the ones that understand real lived-experiences by real living people, and build trust and communities through consistently showing up where those consumers need them.

This isn’t something that can be solved by efficiency and new tech alone.

It’s solved by belief.

And belief is built through sharp strategic positioning and emotionally resonant communication.

The question isn’t whether you can build the future of financial services. (Techies have been doing that for decades.) It’s whether people will believe in it, trust it and choose it.

Ready to craft a brand that builds long-term trust? Let’s communicate your value in a way that sticks and cultivates both curiosity and connection.

👞 Movin’ On Up. VEA Capital Partners has acquired a stake in local retailer Freedom of Movement to grow the brand and enable an integrated platform to scale SA design and manufacturing both locally and globally. Lekker man.

🧵 Threading Water. After a less-than-desirable start, it would seem like Meta’s persistence on Threads is working, with the Zuck-owned microblogging platform now more popular than X on mobile. Interesting.

📢 OpenA(ds)I. Seems like ads will start appearing in ChatGPT for US users this week. The idea is that it’ll be based on conversations you have with chat, and the responses will be relevant to that query. OpenAI has said ads will not influence answers in Chat. Hahaha: “Yes, you’re totally right for catching that…”

🛰️ Amazon Hook Up. Amazon's low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite service is set to launch in South Africa later this year, through local licensed partners. Nice one.

🇿🇦 Taking SA Companies Global. Seeing how hard it is for SA founders to take companies global, Dommisse Attorneys worked with the SA SME Fund, SAVCA and Endeavor to create an open-source framework to establish your IP offshore called IP Strategy Flow.*

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

Yesterday, we showed you how Venu’s bringing stadium food delivery to SA sports and concerts, asking about your biggest stadium deal-breaker. For most, it’s the beer queue…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🍺 The Beer Queue: Missing the action for a drink. (34%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💀 The Food Wait: Standing 20 mins for a lukewarm pie. (17%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥹 The Bathroom Dash: Planning your life around the halftime rush. (17%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤑 The Price: I’d order more if it didn't feel like a mission. (5%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 😡 The crowds. I’ll watch the game at home, thanks. (27%)

Your 2 cents…

Same here, John. And restaurants could probably bring in better menus or even dark stores if it takes off. 🍔🍺

On 20 January last year (2025), Chinese AI lab DeepSeek launched its famous R1 model, which performed on par with OpenAI’s GPT 4, Gemini Ultra and Claude 3.5, but cost less than 10% to train than any of them, $600 billion off NVIDIA's market cap in a single day and shattering the idea that AI needs to cost billions to train.

💡 Tool to Try: TruVerifAI queries GPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok, so you can pick the best answer.

🧛 That’s Interesting: Dolly Parton secretly co-produced Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and she even shares Buffy’s birthday (yesterday, 19 January).

🎯 Next Level: You don’t need to be South African to know your way around a kettie. Watch this Asian girl hit a water droplet mid-air with her slingshot.

🏢 Hack: Check out this visual guide to how public companies are structured.

🧬 Wow Site: Soup of Life simulates life itself: organisms emerge, evolve and die in real time.

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