Same old thing? This weekend was the first time you could catch Whitney Houston live in concert since she passed away 13 years ago. Brought back with AI, she has 6 more performances this year alone. Jip, looks like we're doing this now. 🎙🤖
In This Open Letter
Tourism Play: Getting the most out of your SA holiday.
Local: A good FinTech buy & behind SA’s AI hiring frenzy.
Global: Your favourite meals take to the skies (again).
SA Businesses: SA founders help each other — you in?
Tech events: FinTech CX, tax for creators & world tourism.
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TRENDING NOW
Stretching Holidays to The Max
The limbo between check-out and your next flight’s such a waste – this startup’s helping tourists make the most of it…
Things are heating up across SA, and before you know it, we’ll be up to our eyeballs in full-blown summer Dezemba vibes and SA awash with tourists from all over the globe.
Cape Town, in particular, is riding a wave of international travel: The Cape Town International Airport saw over 3 million international passengers passing through last year (December alone saw 1 million), a healthy 10% increase on 2023’s travellers.
The traveller’s check-out dilemma…
While there’s always a little wiggle room if you want to have a lie-in (not sure why: sunup’s 5:30, but hey), it’s pretty universally accepted that check-out from your accommodation happens around 10 or 11 AM, while most international departures from Cape Town happen late afternoon/early evening.
This means your last day in The Mother City often gets wasted, lugging bags around, rushing to the airport too early or asking hosts to do you a solid.
Sure, you could take your chances leaving your luggage in your hired car, but it's pretty risky.
When “My Precious” is about to become theirs…
That predictable gap of tourists needing to store valuables while exploring the last bit of the city is a huge risk. And therein lies an opportunity to make things a little more convenient for our visitors.
The local startup securing the bag
Bag Drop is a scheduled luggage collection, storage and delivery service operating in Cape Town.
More than just a storage solution, Bag Drop actually collects your luggage from your doorstep (or even at the airport), tags, seals and photographs it before transporting it to their secure facilities for storage. Then they’ll drop it off exactly when and where you need it again.
It’s smart and super accessible: Bookings run through WhatsApp or a simple online form, while a team of dedicated drivers handles luggage pick-ups and drop-offs.
With 4’500 bookings in the bag and nearly 11’000 items of luggage moved since launching in 2021, Bag Drop Founder Kyle Brijder told us they’ve just seen their busiest winter yet, with a 60% increase year-on-year, with some travellers flying in with 15 to 20 suitcases at a time.
More and more travellers expect convenience; the real win is turning checkout limbo into one more chance to enjoy a SA holiday city.
We're watching this space…
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IN SHORT
Start the week off right…
💸 Tipping The Scales. Street Wallet has acquired SA startup Digitip, strengthening their digital economy foothold and helping take informal traders cashless with enhanced tech and daily payouts. Congrats folks,
🧱 Brick By Brick. Balwin Properties is launching several vocational training centres across SA to fill a skills gap in construction, training 300 locals annually in trades like plumbing and electrical work. Literally building the nation. Love it.
🚁 Winner Winner Drone Delivery Dinner. Uber Eats is taking another stab at drone deliveries, with Flytrex drones set to launch in US cities. Interesting…
🤖 SA(I) Hiring Frenzy. Companies in South Africa are on a mad dash to employ AI-savvy professionals, as demand for these skills has skyrocketed over 350% since 2019. "Hey ChatGPT, how do I add using ChatGPT as ‘AI skills’ to my Experience on LinkedIn?"
✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools and suppliers. That’s why our Founder’s Stack gives you full-funnel tech performance marketing by Stream, hardware, software, acceleration and funding for remarkable builds with Octoco and loads more vital startup tools & services.
LOVE IT?
BUILDING A BUSINESS IN SA
5 things we learnt in The Founder Collab
Chat roulette FTW: Founders across SA met face-to-face online in under an hour to swap ideas, share scars and spark new collaborations.
Tech channel win: Jetson Nano vs M4 Pro sparked a warm intro to a CV/ML pro who’ll guide next steps. Momentum unlocked.
Missed Notion’s big update? A member posted a crisp recap with a demo — what changed, how to use it and where it boosts real workflows.
We celebrated Mynard’s launch of a glossy new monthly newspaper in Stellenbosch — now in print and digital for broad local reach.
Thick-skin hour: We discussed the mission to get clients when building a startup. 99% nos, 1% yes. Iterate, ask “who next?”, mine rejections for signal, then circle back with v2 to build momentum.
Find your founder community. Join The Founder Collab, it’s where 100+ real SA founders help each other to build better, faster every day.
WHAT YOU SAID
Listen up…
Last Friday, we told you about Apple’s migration as a service play, asking how you listen to music. And most are on Spotify…
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍏 Apple Music (20%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🔎 Spotify (47%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⚡ Tunes on Winamp (3%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🖥️ YouTube Music (25%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📻 Radio (5%)
Your 2 cents…
“YouTube music because one price also gives me no-ads videos. And it has all the functionality I need.”
Lekker, LBoat, ja, the experience changes completely once the ads are gone. 🎯
“I have found that YouTube Music’s recommendations are better than Apple Music, however, the Apple Music UI is way more cleaner and pleasing to use compared to YouTube Music.”
True dat, Hiren, but then again, it’s Apple, so of course… ✨
LOOKING TO NETWORK?
Upcoming SA Tech Events
Top Women Conference — JHB 22–23 Sep — Africa’s biggest platform for women in business returns. Panels, networking, expo & more. Book here.
Tourism Connex: World Tourism Day — CPT 26 Sep, 18:30 — Celebrate tourism’s future with coastal elegance, wine, bursaries & views. Register here.
Creator Tax Workshop — JHB 27 Sep, 10:00 — Tax tips for influencers and creators. Simplify, budget and avoid year-end shocks. Grab a seat here.
SA Auto Week — Gqeberha 1–3 Oct — Africa’s leading auto industry event. 3 days, 4 stages, 20+ panels, VIP networking & more. Tickets here.
CX in Financial Services — JHB 2 Oct — Explore AI, mobile, trust & trends shaping customer experience in BFSI. More info here.
Hosting a demo day, panel, founder meetup or tech event? Let us know, and we’ll feature it for FREE.
AROUND THE WEB
🛠 Tool to Try: BestCity.io will match you with your ideal city, based on what you like.
🤯 That’s Interesting: Humpty Dumpty was never an egg. It was slang for a clumsy person.
🐦 Next Level: She rescued one injured bird… and a whole flock came to thank her.
🧠 Hack: Don’t treat every hour the same. Use your high-energy times for tough work and your low-energy hours for admin or breaks.
🤖 Wow site: This free game about solving CAPTCHAs is too much fun.
THANKS FOR READING
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