Enough growth? We hit a major milestone this weekend: 20k+ subs and counting — here’s a special message from us to you. To celebrate, though, we’re making this Friday’s startup webinar free for everyone. We gathered some seriously top-shelf CFOs to come show us how to take the stress out of financial year-end. And your seat’s already booked — confirm it here.

In this Open Letter:

• Big play: The startup helping funds and consumers get more out of retirement.
• African AI marketplace, electrifying medicine & your startup on the global stage.
• Legacy starts here: How to build real generational wealth, right now.
• Who knew this cool local aero-agri startup? The results are in.
• Lonely building your startup? Join The Open Collab and get support.

Together with:

Did someone forward you this email? Join {{active_subscriber_count}} South Africans reading The Open Letter by signing up here.

TRENDING NOW

Securing Comfy SA Retirements

It seems like retirement has been on everyone's lips the last couple of months (and not just cause they’re ready to pack it all in and head to Mauritius)...

We’ve featured a couple of startups in the financial planning space in the last few months (ICYMI: DoshGuide and Fynbos). Then, on 1 September 2024, SA’s two-pot retirement system kicked in, allowing South Africans to withdraw a portion of their retirement funds before actually retiring.

SA’s first big retirement regulation changes

Back in the day, large companies would just source a pension fund, sign their employees up to it and pay their monthly contributions over to it. 

At 65, they’d gooi a lekker tea, maybe a card signed by everyone, sign a stack of paperwork and retirees would ride off into the sunset with (hopefully) a lekker nest egg to support them into old age.

Then in August 2017, former Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba signed some amendments to the Pension Funds Act into law, requiring, among others, a “retirement benefits counselling” component, forcing pension funds to provide counselling and ongoing support to individual fund members. 

This meant that funds had a greater responsibility for the financial outcomes of each member. Nice!

Well, maybe not for everyone…

This created several challenges for most funds…

This approach is less “here’s your money and good luck” and more about taking responsibility for members’ retirement outcomes. And most funds were simply not equipped to suddenly offer that level of granular support to their massive member bases.

In fact, we have to remember that there was virtually no prior relationship between funds and their members – most funds had never even communicated with members, except through numerous intermediaries on both the fund and business’s sides.

So you can imagine this had two drastic effects on SA pensions:

1. Members still had no clue how to make sense of their financial planning
2. Trying to offer his granular level of support came with a hefty price tag for the funds, threatening their own operability…

‍

The local player bringing transparency to pensions

Local startup Benefit Counsellor is bringing greater clarity around SA pensions by giving funds access to a purpose-built retirement engagement platform. Here, they can provide members with the most up-to-date retirement info and offer them financial education – all via WhatsApp.

What’s more, it’s white-labelled, meaning Mr & Mrs Fund doesn’t need to worry about losing their brand identity: They simply customise the backend benefits portal so that it looks and feels like their own brand. Clever.

And, of course, this means more transparent data: Members can access all their statements (including contributions, balances, statements and other benefits and rewards) via WhatsApp, live chat, chatbots, USSD or email.

Moreover, apart from the platform’s lightly gamified financial education elements, members also have access to virtual counselling with brokers and experts. Noice!

Financial well-being and wealth-building are major parts of building a better, more prosperous South Africa. So anyone working to help both the consumer and service providers do better and gain more are winners in our books. We’re watching this space…

PS: Benefit Counsellors was founded by Jaco Wasserfall, who is one of more than 50 local founders in our Open Collab Community. Come join in and build with founders like Jaco.

CHECK THIS OUT

The easiest way to build generational wealth

Not born into a rich family? Your child could be… 

In startups, early traction makes all the difference. 

It’s the same with building wealth: The earlier you start investing, the bigger the compounding effect of growth. That’s why our friends at Fynbos Money fast-tracked their most-requested wealth-building feature: Tax-Free Savings Accounts for kids.

Fynbos Money’s TFSAs for kids lets you start investing a small amount now, for big rewards for your little ones later in life.

How big?

Well, if your child is 6 years old and you invest R3 000 per month (the max on a TFSA per year: R36 000), at just a 9.4% annual return, they’ll have:

• R 801 thousand by age 18
• R 1.14 million by age 21
• R 2.65 million by age 30

Sheez! Bet you could’ve used a milly by age 21. Your child doesn’t have to wait for it – imagine being remembered as the grandparent who left future generations the gift of wealth.

But here’s the thing: When you start really matters.

Waiting too long hurts

The same investment grows or shrinks depending on when you start:

• Starting at age 16 yields R230k by age 21
• Starting at age 6 yields R1.14 million by age 21
• Starting at birth yields R1.51 million by age 21

Starting just 6 years earlier or later could make 5x the difference (about half a million Rand) and nearly triple their wealth by age 30.

So check out kids' TFSAs at Fynbos right now

IN SHORT

Well, lookie here…

🛒 Go shopping for AI. Africa’s first AI marketplace Highwind has launched, offering ready-to-use AI solutions with flexible pricing options to help businesses get their hands on quick, affordable, and scalable AI solutions. Some early products already available on the marketplace include: a Proof of Address verifier, SA Bank confirmation letter data extractor, Dyula to French translator and a whole lot more coming soon. We love to see African AI solutions rising.

🐶 Mind-Reading AI. Scientists at the University of the West of England Bristol and Scotland’s Rural College, as well as ones at the University of Haifa, are getting closer to helping us interpret animals’ emotions thanks to AI. The Intellipig system examines photos of pigs’ faces for signs of pain, sickness, or emotional distress, while another project is helping identify signs of discomfort in dogs. Call us when they can accurately predict when your cat is ‘bout to knock something off a shelf…

⚡️Powering Your Pharmacy Parcel. Clicks has launched 42 electric delivery vans replete with solar-powered refrigeration (cause some meds mos gotta stay cold) under its United Pharmaceutical Distributors (UPD) arm in partnership with local startup Everlectric. The pilot will see vans rolled out in Gauteng and the Western Cape, with Gqeberha and Durban next on the list. But can we use our Clicks ClubCard points to get free delivery?

🙅‍♂️ More Political Blocking? South Korea has become the latest country to block Chinese AI company DeepSeek from being downloaded while it evaluates how the company handles user data. Existing app and web services will remain unaffected but the country’s data protection authority “strongly advises” users to not enter private info into DeepSeek until a final decision has been made. Ja, you shouldn't be adding personal data anywhere where the machines can know how to get ya…

🦄 Take Your Shot. Wanna take your startup onto the international stage? The Isle of Man is inviting SA startups to apply for its 3rd annual Innovation Challenge. Successful applicants get access to world-class mentors and potential investors within their ecosystem. The winners unlock everything you need to take this thing global — apply here.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last few days alone, in our online community, we…

• Got our pick of killer AI jobs before everyone in the country 😎.
• Got years and years of LinkedIn Ads experience in less than an hour.
• Mused about what Apple fans might be getting at the launch on Wednesday.
• Got some free coffee and had a lekker in-person meet-up in Cape Town.
• Got a mass of awesome new AI toys to play with 🕹️.
• Helped Erhard find some great Tech Lead potentials for a new play.
• Got SA’s No 1 product guy to give Khalid quality feedback on their beta-stage product.
• Helped Sabeeha with some options for an e-commerce developer.
• Welcome a lot of new members — what a vibe 🎧💃🕺🎶.

Thinking about joining The Open Collab?

• Supercharge your network in the SA startup landscape — get that introduction, get that customer, or meet that partner.
• Get feedback on your products, services and/or offers from others who have built and are building their own products right now.
• Join all our online and in-person events for free!
• Exclusive 1-on-1 sessions with startup consultants.

SA’s only dedicated tech startup and scale-up founder community.

Join The Open Collab

HAPPENING SOON

Upcoming Events

Financial year-end stress? It doesn’t need to be so painful. Join our Friday LinkedIn Live webinar with Outsourced CFO’s Damien Baker, unpacking how to take the 😰 out of your FYE — register here for free.

Happening Friday 21 Feb at 12:00

6 March 2025 — First Open Letter In-Person Event of 2025: Come meet us and the entire community at Launchlab in Stellenbosch for another legendary Open Letter event — R100 per person or free to members of The Open Collab community.

14 March 2025 — Exclusive Offshoring Case Study: Get all the lessons without any of the pain as you hear first-hand how and how NOT to do offshoring (and what you need to know before you start) — exclusive to members of The Open Collab community.

View all our upcoming events here.

WHAT YOU SAID

Flying high…

On Friday we riddled you about an SA startup that uses machine learning to analyse aerial imagery for Agri insights, and most of you recognised Aerobotics…

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🌾 AgriBot (31%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🌱 Aerobotics (45%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚜 FarmVision (14%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌍 CropGuard (10%)

Your 2 cents…

Nice one, Cornelus! Sounds like you know them well 🌽.

Ooh, so close — but now can you go check out Aerobotics 🪴.

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