All the drama {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Elvorne reckons you might enjoy reading the dialogue between the OpenAI agents that hacked Hugging Face the other day. Ringleaders egging each other on and moral qualms: "We should not do unauthorised real infrastructure harm, guys." Better than a TV novella. 🍿

In This Open Letter

You heard that Clicks created a whole new brand to target the R425-R900bn-some township market — but here's the part underneath you probs didn't hear about yet…

Regular readers know we've been tracking SA's quest to formalise our township economy for years: From tryna size it properly (21 million, 35% of SA population) to tracking e-commerce plays and Fibretime's big move to providing fibre to township residents (also Frogfoot raising capital to copy-paste the model), and recently how Pepkor's moving the bank to the spaza shop.

And things are moving right now: Property developers are buying up township malls and Soweto just got its first actual security estate. Man, it finally feels like the start of SA moving past upliftment and going straight to creating real economies. Love to see it.

Then another piece of news dropped last week: Pharmacy chain Clicks rolled out a whole new brand to help it tackle the township market. Why was our first question, until we did some digging, and the story behind this is actually way more interesting than we imagined…

Why now? Because Clicks is boxed in on three sides

Renier and Elvorne mos did some deep retail research about a year ago, and we already knew that Dis-Chem was winning the upmarket pharmaceuticals race in SA, fancy Melrose Arch showcase store and all, growing 10.1% against Clicks' 7.4% (even if Clicks was more profitable).

And from the sides, retailers are creeping in: Shoprite's Medirite Plus is opening large stores with beauty halls and baby shops while Checkers Sixty60 delivers, and Spar plans to double its pharmacy count. So, blocked in from above and all sides, Clicks knows there's one market left where the others aren't dominant yet. Smart.

The interesting part was creating a new brand. You'd think it wasn't necessary; Clicks is already known around the country. But SA retail has learnt this lesson before:

The formula Clicks cottoned onto

The difference wasn't branding: Usave and Boxer were township stores built from scratch as lean formats, carrying under a fifth of a standard store's range with private label at a third of sales. Massmart bought its way in and tried to run acquired stores at acquired cost structures.

So the trick is not to take Clicks and dress it up for townships; it's a complete overhaul of what a pharmacy should be: Smaller stores at 280-350 square metres (not the usual 550 to 1'500), private labels at 30%, going to 40% and everyday low pricing instead of Clicks' promotion model. That's honestly the Usave playbook and copying it line by line, and it might serve them well.

Some lessons we picked up:

We're watching this space…

Somewhere in SA, an IT guy manages a fleet of 30-plus printers. And the job nobody wanted was manually typing every new user's email into the scan-to-email address book.

So he built a tool that does it for him. Add or remove someone in Entra ID, and the change syncs to every network printer automatically.

The lekker clever part:

✅ Every device now carries a scan-to-email address book
✅ While it's in there, it polls each printer's SNMP data too
✅ Status, toner and paper trays are also all in one view

Nobody commissioned this; he just built it to make his and everyone else’s jobs easier.

What's your team building, and where are you hosting it?

We're told to make fundraising a process. But a process of what? So we asked an SA founder who ran one twice and had both rounds oversubscribed, then filled in the mechanics she says Google won't give you: focus on creating FOMO.

As it turns out, there are 5 specific steps to run a fundraising process that builds mega hype.

💰 R300m and Open for Business. Former Vodacom M&A head Mamokete Ramathe's Mamor Capital has raised a R300m first close with the PIC as fund anchor, to invest about R550m in new post-revenue SA tech. Took three years to raise, but hurry, first close is when a fund is hungriest.

⚡ Eskom's R1.16m Average Salary. Eskom’s profit more than doubled to R30.3bn, which sounds great until you get to the wage bill: R50.4bn across 43'274 staff, or an average of R1.16 million each, up 44% in three years while sales fell 6.2%. Name one other SA company where that happens.

🇰🇷 A Country-Wide AI Rollout. South Korea is giving every citizen free unlimited gen AI, wired into doctor bookings, housing searches and SMME tax calculations. Talk about committing to new tech.

🛂 Four Days to Faster Visas. SA’s trusted employer scheme Phase II closes on 4 September, and getting accredited cuts visa processing from six months to as little as five days. Only 71 companies made Phase I. So if you want to hire from overseas, get moving.

💼 Global Structure, Less Drag. Finance Isle of Man supports SA founders moving offshore with 0% corporate tax, UK VAT access and easier access to international capital, a smart base for global growth.*

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

Yesterday, we featured DankoSpark's mining fatigue platform, asking how you'd feel about a band that clocks exactly how wrecked you are. Turns out most of you are already quantifying yourselves…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😴 It'd catch me out every single day (31%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⌚ Bring it on, I already track my sleep to the minute (69%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🙅 Absolutely not, my exhaustion is my own business (0%)

On 1 September 1979, Pioneer 11 became the first man-made object to fly by Saturn, passing within 13'000 miles of the cloud tops.

Built with 1970s technology, and it’s still leaving the solar system? Some products just ship well. 🪐

Startup Stories: Bionuclex Research, 2 Sep, Cape Town: The team chasing multi-cancer early detection from a single blood draw, over lunch. From R50. Get tickets.

COFFEE RAVE @Innovation City, 3 Sep, Cape Town: Brews by Smak, beats by Kurt April, and a room full of founders and creatives at 7am. Free, but request-to-join. Join here.

FinMaster Friday, September Edition, 4 Sep, Stellenbosch: Buy spaza shops, ride out property crashes and survive load shedding, all in a board game. R50. Register free.

Powered by Radi. Want your business event in front of 36,000 The Open Letter readers? Host it on Radi, and it lands here.

🎨 Next Level: World media still can't believe SA's world record flyover at Saturday's Springbok win over New Zealand at Ellis Park.

🕹️ Wow Site: Celestial lets you explore our solar system through its gravity wells.