Righteous weather {{ FIRSTNAME }}? One of our readers made this mini site that’ll tell you today’s weather in the style of Jules Winnfield (Samuel L) from Pulp Fiction. LOL 🕺

In This Open Letter

Africa’s R50bn gig economy is growing 50–130% per year – and this startup’s found a unique angle to grease the wheels…

Most founders talk about late nights, but Greg Cooke and Nicholas Boswell stay up talking about exchange rates… See, if you’re a regular reader, you’ll recognise them as the 2023 founding team of Rafiki, a marketplace that gets freelancing Africans hired (on the continent and abroad).

Finding great talent in Africa was never the big problem, though. 

Two years in, Greg and Nicholas realised the real issue with scaling Africa’s gig work lay in the cross-border chaos behind every project: manual invoices, time sheets, recons and compliance across freelancers and micro-agencies, with multiple bank transfers, currencies and monthly invoices piling up fast.

Across the world second-largest continent? No wonder every project felt like they’d turned into a mini finance department.

Work had evolved… but the money flows hadn’t

The real insight was that gig workers need faster payouts, with 72% of freelance workers preferring instant payments. Traditional slow-moving pay cycles mean 44% of invoices are paid late, hindering growth and costing small agencies and freelancers up to 14 hours a week in admin just to collect payments. 

Whoever could fix that would be handing flexible teams back weeks of productivity annually. So Greg and Nicholas did the startup thing, with a hard pivot…

The startup getting you paid on time

Rafiki OS is a new, standalone platform that automates invoicing from time logged, handles multi-party payment flows and gives flexible teams a simple way to work and get paid, set to launch in 2026.

Instead of painful one-to-one invoicing, Rafiki OS lets you onboard your team (including freelancers, micro-agencies and suppliers), automate multiple invoices, roll them into a consolidated client invoice, issue a payment request, and then automatically route funds into each sub-team member’s account once the client has paid, whether they’re in Langebaan, Lagos or London.

Payments land fast through digital wallets that support both regular currency and stablecoins like USDC, making cross-border work as easy as paying someone down the street. Built-in verification tools handle all the ID and business checks, so teams stay compliant without the admin slog.

The result: “It takes five seconds” for a wallet-to-wallet transfer inside the ecosystem, internal payments and international off-ramps into ZAR accounts for a low 1.4% fee.  

Make the circle bigger

Importantly, they’re stress-testing with their own agency clients and a cohort of vetted specialists. It’s currently in private beta, with a public launch planned for early 2026.

But the team are looking to add another 50 senior freelancers and specialist agencies for their “mini-marketplace” for larger international agencies to subcontract. And they’d love it to be 50 South African teams. So if you’re a small agency or freelancer looking for international work, sign up to become a vetted specialist right here.

We’re watching this space…

Building SaaS in SA? You should be focused on innovation, not managing cloud chaos...

At some point, most teams run into scaling complexity: spiralling costs, complex security and infrastructure issues slowing market entry or scaling. 

Well, the good news fr those on the Microsoft side is that our friends at Cloud on Demand can help smooth the way with their ISV programme that unlocks secure, high-efficiency, enterprise-level operations for you.

Loads of benefits

They’ll help you reduce your Axure costs by at least 20% almost instantly, and give you a Go-to-Market Engine with direct Microsoft ecosystem connection, fast.

But it gets even better…

Sign up before 31 December, and they’ll give you a R21’400 onboarding bundle, with a technical audit, assessment, $600 in credits to spend, upgrade and modernisation plans + loads more.

Stop struggling with cloud complexity and start scaling efficiently.

🤝 A Helping Hand for SA Startups. A new regulatory framework could be on the cards to help SA startups attract global investors and scale internationally. The regulatory sandbox is designed to give qualifying startups a faster, legal way to structure offshore IP while keeping operations and jobs in SA. Mega interesting.

🌊 Hooked Up. The world’s longest open subsea cable system is operational. Spanning across the African continent and connecting it to Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the 180Tbps 2Africa Subsea Cable system is expected to generate $37 billion for connected African countries. Lekker.

✂️ Easier Loans and Upped Spending. The Reserve Bank cut SA’s interest rates by another 25 basis points yesterday, bringing it down a full percentage point from 11.25% at the start of 2025 to 10.25% in November. Lekker.

🦕 Karoo Time Machine. A South African-made animation has won the Lanzendorf–National Geographic PaleoArt Prize for its depiction of life at a Karoo watering hole 255 million years ago. Produced by Fancy Horse Studios, the 6-minute film depicts six species from that time. Hello weekend viewing.

💅 Pick’n Pay’s Glow-up Game. Continuing its turnaround strategy, Pick’n Pay is revamping key stores across the nation, giving at least 17 stores the “flagship model” treatment. Nice one.

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools, so our Founder’s Stack gives you IP offshoring and global market access with Finance Isle of Man, VC and startup legal sorted by Dommisse Attorneys and more.

Yesterday, we showed you how Amnova is enabling industrial 3D printing in Africa, asking if you’ve ever 3D-printed anything. Most say it’s too expensive…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛠️ Of course, I’m basically a home engineer (14%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💸 No: the printer costs more than my car (22%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💥 Tried… printer went to war with me (7%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ❓ 3D printing? I barely manage PDFs (11%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💰 Looked at the prices and quietly closed the tab (46%)

Your 2 cents…

We hear you, Dave. Yeh, we need that tech to really take it up a notch. ⚙️

🐒 Senior Software Engineer @ Rafiki

💎 Customer Support Manager @ Jem HR

🌳 Full Stack Software Developer @ Koola Capital

😎 Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) @ Matrix Software (Pty) Ltd

😎 Solutions Consultant @ Matrix Software (Pty) Ltd

🧑‍💻 Software Engineering Roles @ Octoco

🦖 Head of Sales @ OfferZen

🌮 Full-Stack Developer @ The Awareness Company

Sasol's stock surged on a trading statement forecasting an excellent swing back to profit.

Data from Investing.com (captured 20 Nov 2025, 1-Week performance)

Gold prices were supported by a strong Rand and continued safe-haven demand.

+0.03\% (R 69’686.98 → R 69’711.02)

Data from Investing.com (Fri 14 Nov 2025 → Thu 20 Nov 2025)

Bitcoin slipped on macroeconomic pressures, profit-taking and massive forced liquidation of leveraged positions.

-1.56\% (R 1’614’030 → R 1,588,831)

Data from Investing.com (Fri 14 Nov 2025 → Thu 20 Nov 2025)

Ethereum and other altcoins followed Bitcoin lower as crypto market volatility and fear intensified.

-1.58\% (R 53,066.0 → R 52,227.8)

Data from Investing.com (Fri 14 Nov 2025 → Thu 20 Nov 2025)

🌍 Tool to Try: Simcardo gives you instant global eSIM data in 290+ destinations.

📚 That’s Interesting: McDonald's McRib isn’t made from ribs; it’s all boneless pork shoulder, formed to look like a mini rack of ribs.

🌞 Next Level: Capturing a shot of a human against the sun’s chromosphere.

⚡ Hack: A visual guide to global nuclear energy production.

🦊 Wow Site: Bird Feed is a crowd-controlled wildlife camera.

Most successful founders will agree, to make it big, you need some luck.

But how does one increase one's chances of success when luck plays such a big role? Increase your surface area of luck!

✅ Meet more people

✅ Get faster feedback on your product builds

✅ Make faster progress when you are stuck with expert help.

That’s what The Founder Collab, SA’s premium community for startup founders, does. Weekly opportunities to meet other founders, get feedback, get unstuck and a network unlike any in SA.

It’s a surefire way to increase your surface area of luck..

Vote in the poll, leave a quick comment, or hit reply — we read every single one.