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Power moves? MMA legend Conor McGregor announced he wants to be the next Irish president with a promise to wrestle power away from bureaucrats and give it back to the people. We’re inclined to take him seriously on that, you? 💪

In Today’s Open Letter

Does a startup have to come from a founding team idea? Vibe coding might just be opening the doors to building a whole new way…

If you want to start an argument with a software developer at a braai tonight, tell them that “vibe coding is the future”. Because it is, and it’s not.

But what vibe coding (and AI tools that help people write code faster and sometimes better) has done is flip the script on how tech startups are built.

There's a reason that one of the primary use cases of AI has been writing code. Writing code can be expensive, complicated and often keeps a group of potential founders on the bench due to these limitations. 

If there is a way to get first products out faster, it opens up the playing field for new ideas to come to life.

Why this matters

While there are many methodologies to test whether your startup idea is great (refer one friend to The Open Letter and we’ll send you an entire guide to doing just this), the ultimate test remains building something people can actually use to solve their problem, then get them to pay for it.

It can set you back between R500k and R5m, though. And then, irrespective of whether the tech is good, there’s a big chance that it won’t work or might need further tweaking to solve the customer problems well.

But now with tools like Replit and Lovable, product people and even non-technical hobbyists can build basic apps to test ideas. They’ve exploded in popularity, seeing Lovable’s annual recurring revenue hit $100m, just 8 months after hitting $1m ARR. 

Check out these apps vibe-coded on Lovable.

The impact of coding assistants has also mostly been positive, saving developers on average ±10 hours a week. So if we can get the MVP build cost down by 20% or more, all of a sudden, the risk goes down, and so many more different tech products can be built.

But this poses an interesting question: With rapid speed, can startup concepts be shipped at rapid speed by a team of experts only to add the ”founder” role later? 

The Venture Builder

Venture building isn’t a new concept. The whole build-it-then-find-someone-to-grow-it idea is actually quite common, even in the US: Sutter Hill Ventures gave us Snowflake, Flagship Pioneering is behind BioTech ventures like Moderna and Pioneer Square Labs often accounts for over 10% of VC deal flow in the Washington area.

Back home, we also have NEXT176, which partnered with software development firm Byte Orbit to create NEXT ORBIT. Here, they build products for problems they have identified, engaging various stakeholders in Old Mutual (and beyond) and, once they get traction, source a founding team. 

Why? Well, the data shows these types of ventures have higher success markers: 

And what’s most attractive is the speed at which it happens. On average, they reach series A (scale stage) in just 25 months, versus traditional startups’ 56 months. Note: That data is still pre-vibe coding; with vibe, it’ll probably be even faster.

With Harvard once finding that most founders step down as CEO before year 3 anyway, is “building first and finding the jockey later” really heresy or a viable new way to build ventures in SA?

Either way, with the rise of AI tools, there's probably never been a better time to give your startup ideas some life.

We’re watching this space…

The very first cookie dates back to the 7th century AD.

But it wasn't even a cookie, just some dough Persian bakers used to check oven temperatures. And it wasn't until sugar was introduced to the region that things really started to take off.

Fast forward several centuries and a 7’000 km+ trip South, and you’ll find Mondvol, a gourmet cookie e-commerce store that’s just too much fun…

Started by Season 4 MasterChef Runner-up Andriette De la Harpe, Mondvol focuses on three key ingredients to make magical gourmet cookies:

With classic flavours like Bar One, Choc Chip and Nutella, as well as proudly South African Melktert, Pannekoekie and Vlakoekie, this is not your average cookie.

Readers of The Open Letter can get a sweet 15% off using the code: OpenLetterVibes15 (valid for 15 days for the first 150 orders).

Plus: Hit them up on the socials: Insta, TikTok, Facebook.

“Our product lags. Clients complain. We’re not sure where it’s breaking.”

If performance is holding you back — outages, latency, sluggish infrastructure — you’re not alone. Most early-stage SaaS teams are duct-taping infra together until something breaks.

But here’s the truth: if your product isn’t fast, it won’t grow.

Cloud On Demand’s ISV program offers a free cloud architecture review for South African SaaS companies running on Azure.

Their engineers will:

✅ Identify performance bottlenecks
✅ Help you scale without over-provisioning
✅ Tune your stack for speed, stability and cost-efficiency

No fluff. No obligation. Just help from actual humans who’ve built this before.

You could hire a CTO or cloud architect and wait six weeks. Or you could book a free session and get real answers this week.

This is your window — fix performance now, before it costs you the next client.

🪪 Just in Tyme. TymeBank is the latest bank joining the digitisation move of Home Affairs. Given they’re a fully digital bank, they’ll be adding these services to their kiosks in Pick n Pay, Boxer and TFG stores across SA. Jinne, soon your Uber Eats driver will be able to process it at your gate.

🎒Get Em to Class. Vodacom and the Gauteng Dept of Education’s Online Admission platform processed 820’000+ applications for the 2026 school year. The zero-rated platform offers parents a better user experience and helps GDE staff improve operational efficiency. Very cool.

🌎 Banking on Connection. FNB’s mobile virtual network operator, FNB Connect, recently launched its travel eSIM that works on over 240 global networks. Pretty cool for global jetsetters, but no word yet if it works other side of the Boerewors Curtain…

🔎 Truecaller Says Why. Truecaller has just baked in a new feature into its caller identity service. Using AI, it can actually offer contextual insights into who is calling, so additional info about call intent. I mean, cool. But the intent behind a spam call doesn't make it any less spammy.

😎 The Stack. Founders need reliable tools and suppliers. That’s why our Founder’s Stack gives you cloud services and solutions for Azure, AWS, security and AI by Cloud on Demand, B2B tech marketing strategy and execution by Stream, plus loads more vital startup tools & services.

Yesterday, we told you how Fuelr’s helping keep e-hailers moving with emergency fuel credit, asking how often you see the “yellow fuel light” in rides. Most never noticed it…

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 😅 Almost every week (35%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🙃 Now and then (9%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧐 Rarely (13%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤷 Never noticed (43%)

Your 2 cents…

Nice one, Private. Probably goes a long way toward keeping them earning. 💰

OMW, Kaitlin, what a story! Glad you’re safe. Shame, the driver sounds like a legend. 🏆

🤖 AI Automation Co-Founder @ Creator's Lab

🚧 Chief of Staff @ admyt

😎 Creative Director @ Flash Group

🐂 Forward Deployed Software Engineer @ Nineteen58

🦙 Head of B2B Sales @ OfferZen

📲 Customer Support Manager @ Jem

🎨 Junior Designer @ 80eight

Hiring? Let us know here and we’ll feature it next week.

🛠 Tool to Try: Build automations by chat — Sidekick wires up Gmail, Slack, Notion, Sheets, Linear and more, then runs or schedules them for you.

🤔 That’s Interesting: Wes Anderson doesn’t adapt wages — actors get a flat fee in his films, and it’s all thanks to Bill Murray.

🔥 Next Level: This elderly boxer proves that experience trumps strength.

🍔 Hack: Never lose at tic-tac-toe again — here’s a guide to winning every game.

🌐 Wow Site: WhatIfInvest lets you simulate “what if I invested in X?” scenarios, so you can make better decisions.

Help us make The Open Letter more useful to you.

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