Better and better, {{ FIRSTNAME }}? We laughed so hard at them last year, China’s engineers spent the holidays upgrading their kickboxing robots. ‘Cos training your own overlords is smart/fun? 🤷‍♀️

Hello and welcome to the first issue of 2026! New here? We tell you about a unique SA business every day at 6 am + give you business and wealth-building tips, tricks and opportunities to help make 2026 your year.

In This Open Letter

Peeps spend millions on yachts, yet marinas still slog through admin with pen and paper – so this SA startup’s digitising investment vessel berthing…

Fancy a yacht?

You can pick yourself up a pretty tidy bit of maritime vessel locally for between $165’000 and $55 million plus (or for those of us playing the home game, roughly R2.8 mil and a cool one billion+ Randelas)...

That’s right, some 30’000 marinas and yacht harbours around the world could be hosting hundreds of millions of rands worth of yachts in their berths. There’s constant movement, variable vessel sizes, short stays, long stays, services, payments and compliance.

Here’s the thing, though, marina managers still allocate berths from small back offices using whiteboards, paper notes, email threads and phone calls to sailors who are often out at sea. 

Giving berths

Booking a berth can take days of back and forth just to confirm dates, boat dimensions and basic utilities, thanks to patchy signal and fragmented communication.

In fact, the founder we chatted to for today’s feature says it’s not only a local problem: less than 15% of marinas around the world are using any type of digital tooling.

The startup digitising the game

Berth is a marina management system built around how marinas already work. Marina managers log into a dashboard showing vessel history, berth availability, calendars and a live berth map. The same tools they use daily, just digitised.

On the boater side, it’s not another app to download... 

Bookings happen through WhatsApp using structured forms. A boater submits arrival dates, vessel size and service needs in minutes. The marina approves or declines. Payment links are sent via WhatsApp. What previously took days of back and forth now takes minutes, says Berth founder Matthew Wilson when we chatted to him recently.

Matthew, together with the other co-founders Matt Milne and Thomas Seguin, launched their pilot programme with three local marinas: Hout Bay, Simon’s Town and Richards Bay, in September 2025. It’s helped the team iterate frequently based on direct operator feedback, prepping the app to hit international markets in 2026. Nice.

Berth has opened up their first round of funding, looking to close it by March 2026.

Their play is a behavioural one using the channel boaters already open and use every day, and digitising the tools that marina managers already rely on. 

We’re watching this space.

Capitec ZAR deposits are a go. Capitec’s 2024 announcement to suspend direct EFT and immediate payments to crypto exchanges put a slight damper on crypto investments. But the good news is that Binance has just enabled Rand deposits for Capitec Bank users on the Binance app. Noice.

The formula for a BTC rally in 2026? Following the massive and destabilising Bitcoin sell-off in October last year, crypto markets experienced strong gains at the start of 2026. Now, Bitwise (the largest crypto index fund manager)’s CIO says 3 things need to happen for a sustained rally this year. Hint: One of them has already taken place.

All the crypto insights you need for January. The latest Binance Monthly Market Insights report shows that, while investors were still cautious about crypto in December, January saw a significant shift as they began to move away from overvalued asset classes to attractively priced crypto again. Get the full report here.

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.

👍 Hook up a Job. The Western Cape Dept of Cultural Affairs and Sport has opened applications for its YearBeyond Programme. Aimed at the province’s unemployed youth, 18—25, the programme offers work experience and a pathway to further studies or employment. Lekker.

🪫 Perpetually Low Battery? Looks like 2026 could be a big year for mobile device batteries with several Chinese smartphone manufacturers already using silicon-carbon technology in their batteries. Nice.

🧑‍⚕️ DocGPT. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, a dedicated health and wellness experience within ChatGPT. It lets users connect their medical records and wellness app data to help Chat with medical-related queries. Yeah, we might still seek that second opinion after all…

⛔ Locking Grok Down. Indonesia is temporarily blocking access to xAI’s Grok due to non-consensual, sexualised deepfakes, signalling one of the most aggressive moves by government officials to fight the flood of sexualised AI-generated imagery. Awesome to see.

🚀 Expansion Enabled. When Anthony Anti-Corrosion Coatings got international clients, the cost of delivering from SA to overseas was incredibly high. So, SA small business banking specialist Lula helped them get the funds to scale and become an SA success.*

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

Your friends will love it, too! Plus: We give you free stuff every time you share.

Earning more helps, but it’s rarely the first fix. The biggest improvements often come from calm, consistent habits that reduce friction and stress.

Check in little and often: Short, regular money check-ins beat dramatic annual overhauls. They help you catch small issues early and keep momentum without overwhelm.

Name your real priorities: When you’re clear on what matters most, spending decisions become easier and guilt fades. Clarity reduces noise.

Simplify your setup: Fewer accounts, fewer products, and clearer structures create confidence. Complexity often looks productive but quietly drains energy.

Choose guidance that supports you, not sells to you: The most effective advice is ongoing, judgment-free, and aligned to your interests, helping you make better decisions over time.

Better financial health isn’t built through big moves or perfect plans. It comes from steady systems that work quietly in the background, even when life gets busy.

Disclaimer: This content is for educational purposes only and should not be considered personalised financial, investment, tax or legal advice.

We learnt momentum doesn’t wait: Two founders kicked off their own chat roulette while others were still on holiday. Loving the commitment, guys.

We learnt the SA business scene is in for some awesome plays in 2026: Our first virtual connect of 2026 helped founders reset, reconnect and share goals for the year.

We learnt consistency compounds: We’re back in full swing this week with our first standup on sales & GTM on Tuesday, working together in Office Hours on Wednesday and having a business positioning masterclass on Friday.

Find your founder community. Join The Founder Collab, it’s where 120+ real SA founders help each other to build better new businesses.

A long time ago (15 December), we showed you how BurnStar is making a major hydrogen-production play right here in SA, asking what you think of when you hear “green hydrogen”. Most were torn between future energy and disbelief at seeing an SA company in the game…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🚀 Future energy unlocked (17)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧪 Sounds cool but complicated (10)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏭 If it works at a factory, it works for me (5)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤯 Didn’t know SA was even in this game (17)

Your 2 cents…

We can get behind that, Ted. 🐭

Business Speed Dating – 13 Jan, Cape Town: Pitch, network, and connect at this energetic Cape Town mixer, with a comms workshop and free drink. More info here.

Intentional Investing Workshop – 23 Jan, Mt Edgecombe: Gain clarity on your personal wealth strategy with Chartered Wealth’s Kim Potgieter. Book your spot.

Ibhayi PowerHour – 23 Jan, Gqeberha (PE): Free morning event on the power of branding with sound. Register here.

Hosting a demo day, panel, founder meetup or tech event? Let us know, and we’ll feature it for FREE.

💡 Tool to Try: IdeaMiner scans social communities to give you new startup ideas.

🔥 That’s Interesting: The girl from the Disaster Girl meme sold her image as an NFT for almost half a million dollars in 2021.

🪵 Next Level: Watch a farm girl split a massive log cleanly.

📚 Hack: A visual guide to 50 unusual English words you probably didn’t know.

🎉 Wow Site: Missing the party vibe? Infinite Ball Drop lets you see how far above the earth you’d have to start dropping the celebratory ball for it to reach Times Square by next New Year.

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