Ready, aim, fire {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? You won't believe that Neil Blomkamp tried his hand at making an AI zombie short film. And you can imagine the response on X so far. Your take?

Send this to a friend you’d survive the apocalypse with.

In Today’s Open Letter

When you need someone reliable to fix your geyser, or an electrician who'll actually show up, what do you do? Google? Nope, most ask a friend. And the big companies know this…

WhatsApp commerce is an estimated $45 billion global market, so the guys with devs and tech teams have jumped: Checkers runs Sixty60 notifications on chat, banks confirm payments there, airlines send boarding passes, etc. Your local shop doesn’t have that tech backing, so they fall behind.

The corner shop gap

Xander Barnard felt the small-shop-tech problem keenly while managing a Sandton dealership workshop where customers hated sitting on hold to check on their car. He built a WhatsApp solution by hand to help manage flow, which brother Ruan Barnard wanted him to take further: "You should be benefiting from your own good ideas, not building them for someone else," Ruan said.

That’s why they started The Messenger Network together, a WhatsApp and social media automation business. Just one problem: They onboarded hundreds of SA businesses only to realise that customers simply didn't know their contact numbers, highlighting the real problem: Discoverability. So they built the solution that does both.

One WhatsApp number with everything behind it

Clinch is a business directory and marketplace that lives entirely inside WhatsApp. A customer searches for what they need (product, electrician, new hairstyle, whatever) and Clinch connects them with a vetted local business that can supply it.

Trading power to the people

It also gives small businesses incredible shopping-experience capabilities, like clients sommer buying from you right there in the same chat. And, our favourite, voice note and image search: a customer simply voicenotes or snaps a pic of the product/dish/hairdo they want, and Clinch connects them to the local that does it. See Clinch's image search in action →

We like that they rolled big bucks features and discoverability into one, because it's early days, and trust is NB. Paid leads for service businesses are on the roadmap, as is on-demand delivery from both major retail chains and small shops.

We're keen to see how they build traction on the consumer side.

So, we're watching this space…

Looking for smarter/cheaper personal AI? Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 won 6 of 7 categories on Frontend Code Arena, beating both Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol, at roughly a third of the price with a 1-million-token context window. See the results here.

How should governments actually use AI in policymaking? Stellenbosch University's Prof Willem Fourie and the Policy Innovation Lab developed the CRAFT principles (Control, Rigour, Accountability, Fairness, Transparency) to help policymakers use LLMs responsibly. Read the research.

Can ML predict crop yields better than your best farmer? Praelexis built a predictive model for a large-scale agricultural producer that replaced manual estimation with automated forecasts backed by confidence scores. See the case study.

💳 R21.3bn Fintech Play. Pepkor is merging Flash with Shop2Shop to build SA's pre-eminent fintech platform for the informal economy, 176'000 traders, R34.7bn in throughput, and a possible JSE listing down the line. One device for payments, tracking and suppliers. Smart.

📖 AI Storytime. Meta is testing StoryKit, an AI app that generates customised stories starring your kids, narration, images, the lot. But of course they would: Meta insists on keeping up its rep for pushing untested tech onto youths before regulation catches up.

🪪 Visa Fast Lane. Home Affairs has opened a visa fast lane for tech talent; pre-vetted employers get priority work visa processing, with digital comms companies scoring maximum points. Less bureaucracy and more business benefit? Count us in.

📶 Spaza Shops Online. Now 239 spaza shops have public wifi across SA. Don't tell the minister that if SA just allowed Starlink, we'd probs all have much faster internet already and none of this would've been necessary.

👷 Teams Kitted Out. Hiring physical operations, site, warehouse or field teams? Jonsson Workwear has supplied durable workwear, footwear and PPE to South African businesses since 1955, with online ordering, national stores and tools to manage staff sizes, departments and repeat orders.*

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

Three years ago, we spoke to two founders building a way to get South Africa's commercial fleets off diesel and onto electric.

By June this year, they were electrifying the N3, cutting fleet energy costs by up to 90% per kilometre and had raised R50 million to grow. Not because of handouts, but because they built something worth investing in.

Now, we're bringing one of the co-founders, Michael Maas, to our Stellenbosch event next week for a side panel, so that he can tell you the whole story: Building, getting traction, how to know when and why to seek funding, how they got their funding. The whole journey.

Come meet Michael and hear his story. Get tickets →

Yesterday, we showed you how Clarity gives founders CFO-level insights, asking if you know which client is costing you the most. Most here say they know exactly who it is…

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤡 My favourite client is whoever sends the biggest invoice. Don't @ me (0%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😰 I have a horrible feeling it's my biggest one (33%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🔪 Oh, I know exactly who it is. They're on borrowed time (67%)

Your 2 cents…

You're definitely not alone, Trish. Two-thirds of the room is sharpening the same axe. 🪓

SA missed graduate targets in 5 out of 8 priority degree categories, and the gaps are widening.

💡 Engineering produced only 11'851 graduates, a 20% shortfall of the target of 14'800 (it’s been falling for 6 years straight now).

💡 The department's explanation: not enough matrics pass the subjects needed for STEM at university, compounded by budget cuts to higher education.

For founders in EdTech, skills dev or hiring: the pipeline of technical talent is shrinking. The 3 targets SA did hit (teachers, vets, PhDs) show it's possible; the others show where government and the private sector need to step in.

Led By Her: Tech for Good, 29 Jul, Online: Four female leaders using tech to solve problems, create access and drive inclusion. Register free

Building & Scaling VC-Backed Businesses, 30 Jul, Stellenbosch: Brett Commaille (Hlayisani Capital) in the hot seat, plus Thalia Pillay (Orca Fraud) on a VC panel. Get your ticket

Work Rewired: Hiring, Skills & Careers in the AI Economy, 13 Aug, Cape Town: How AI is changing hiring, skills and what future-ready talent actually looks like. R50. Book now

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

🧩 Tool to Try: Jem Social lets you find and hire professional UGC creators.

🌲 That's Interesting: For 50 million years in the Carboniferous era, dead trees didn't decompose because the microbes capable of digesting wood hadn't evolved yet. They just piled up miles deep and were eventually crushed into the coal reserves we use today.

🍪 Next Level: Watch this person create a scary OREO scene out of clay.

🌌 Wow Site: Universe Atlas lets you zoom in and out to see the true scale and size relationships between things; from protons to planets, to the cosmic web.