Too messy {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Companies are now so desperate for AI-training data that they are cleaning New York apartments for free, just to be able to film it all to train bots. Hey, we got dirty dishes, too. Just saying.

Send to a friend who needs a free home clean. 🧹

In Today’s Open Letter

AI search captured more than half of the global searches, but it lacks local context, so this venture is building the SA-version of AEO/GEO/AIO – whatever you want to call it…

SA leads the continent on AI adoption. But the shift from Google to AI search has been dramatic: Generative AI has spread faster than any tech before it, and AI visitors convert 4.4 times better than search ones.

It’s powerful, but SA businesses could lose out.

See, just like Google originally gave people in Sandton recommendations for pizza places in New York back in 2004, AIs like ChatGPT aren’t very good at distinguishing Silicon Valley from De Aar in the Northern Cape.

Luckily, these guys have done it for you…

The platform showing you what AI says about your brand

BrandAxis tracks how your brand shows up across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI answers. 

Give it your customers’ frequent questions, and it runs them daily across every model, reporting when, where and how you appear (and if the AI talks you up or down). And it does the same for every competitor, so you can see who owns the answer and by how much.

Then it pulls the exact sources each model leaned on, so you know which Reddit thread or listicle to influence. But it doesn't leave you to puzzle it out. The data turns into a to-do list your marketing team or agency can actually work through.

Building the brain

BrandAxis’s SEO-obsessed founder, Felix Norton, happened on the idea when ChatGPT recommended his digital marketing agency, Woww. He started the hard way: Logging into ten chatbots a day to ask the same questions and tracking it in a spreadsheet. But soon had enough data for co-founder Freddie O'Donnell to build the engine.

The juice: It queries from local connections, so a Cape Town answer isn't a New York one, which is why around 200 businesses are on it already, before any real marketing push.

We're watching this space…

Did Microsoft finally figure out what AI is for? Copilot Cowork just landed, and as Claude and GPT users already know, it's the "don't tell me what to do, do it" vibe that makes AI actually useful inside your workflow. See how it works here.

What if your AI gave you updates every morning? OpenAI gave scheduled tasks their own hub. Daily World Cup updates, a morning email monitor, anything you'd repeat manually can now be set up to run automatically with a single click. Set one up here.

Can Machine Learning keep cash-in-transit drivers safer? Praelexis built predictive models for a cash management company that optimise stock levels across vaults, cutting unnecessary trips (and the risk that comes with them) while reducing emergency purchases. See how AI impacts real industries.

FDC calls it The Authority Gap: the distance between how credible a leader actually is and how the market sees them online. Their entire model is built around closing that gap — turning your executives into visible, trusted voices on LinkedIn through profile strategy, content, targeted networking and lead generation. All managed. All measured.

The results speak in names you'd recognise: Bob Skinstad has generated over 43 million impressions and 87'500 new followers. Bruce Whitfield built 6.9 million impressions and a Top 1% SSI rank. Kim Conley, CEO of Amoyo NPO, used her LinkedIn credibility to unlock R1.7 million in donations for an after-school programme in Imizamo Yethu.

Across 500+ clients in 20+ countries, backed by a 60-person team, FDC has built a repeatable system for turning invisible authority into visible opportunity.

📋 Compliance Meets Billing. Fintura is now an official Sage partner, with native API integration between its CIPC compliance platform and Sage Business Cloud Accounting — closing the loop between company compliance and billing for SA firms.

📉 Rates on Ice. Nedbank reckons the Reserve Bank will hold interest rates at current levels until inflation trends clearly towards 3%, with cuts likely in 2027. Hopefully, falling oil prices after the US-Iran deal will ease pressure by year-end.

🎮 GTA 6: Opens for Pre-Orders. Rockstar has revealed GTA VI pre-order pricing at $79.99 (R1'330 excl. VAT) for the Standard Edition, $99.99 (R1'663) for the Ultimate. Pre-orders open at midnight tonight. SA pricing may differ. RIP productivity.

🔍 Detecting the Detectors. Superhuman (the Grammarly rebrand) just acquired GPTZero — the AI detection startup built as a Princeton thesis that grew to 19 million users and $30M ARR. Their logic: two AI detectors are better than one.

✈️ Pay How You Want. SA airline LIFT now accepts crypto (via Ozow), Google Pay and Apple Pay alongside cards, 1Voucher, Mobicred and PayU. The most payment options of any local airline.

💳 Cash-Free Cape Town. The City of Cape Town is piloting cashless payments at Table Bay Mall and Durbanville service centres from 1 July — card only, no cash. No word yet on which rails or providers they'll use.

🌍 Built for Africa. Most global payments providers weren't built for African customers. Paystack powers online and offline payments across 10+ countries with the local payment methods, settlement speed and conversion rates your customers expect.*

☁️ Cloud, Simplified. Cloud got complicated — and it doesn't have to stay that way. Cloud on Demand gives you a named account manager, an ISO 27001-certified platform, Microsoft and AWS practices and local support — all starting with a form and a warm phone call.*

Most SA founders list what their product does and wonder why nobody bites. So we got an SA product strategist who's helped launch 150+ startups to show us how to find that change and put it at the centre of everything you say.

And it turns out, there are 4 specific steps to sell the transformation, not the features.

☝ Send this to a friend who needs to delight their users. 😍

Yesterday, we showed you the Investec developer community, asking what you'd programme your bank card to do. Most here want auto savings…

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛑 Stop me from spending altogether (21%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💸 Save me money without me knowing (61%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧾 Just pay my bills already (7%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥗 Block the takeaways, approve the gym (11%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔮 Something else? Let us know… (0%)

Your 2 cents…

Noice, Jennifer! Ja, that's basically the whole thesis behind programmable banking. 💳🤫

SA's public transport is basically non-existent — bus and train combined carry just 3.6% of workers.

💡 Private vehicles and taxis carry half of SA's workforce, while walking (22.5%) is the third most common way to get to work (nearly 1 in 4).

💡 The number not on this chart: over 60% of SA school learners walk to school, and for many, that means long distances through unsafe areas where school transport is essential.

For founders building in mobility, logistics or remote work: 12.3% already work from home, and formal public transport has effectively stalled. The gap is the opportunity.

🧩 Tool to Try: SupportPages auto-generates a living help centre from your repo (with step-by-step guides, screenshots and narrated video walkthroughs).

🏭 That's Interesting: 94% of mid-premium brand Bosch is owned by a charity, which donated over €200 million to social causes last year. Wouldn’t it be more charitable to drop their prices (especially at their service centres)?

🏔️ Next Level: Check out the icy Laojun Mountain in Henan, China — the refuge of the founder of Taoism 2'500 years ago.

🧠 Wow Site: Make Me Wrong is a 10-minute experience that predicts your choices, then shows you the hidden biases steering them.