Got the power {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? If your inner 8-year-old is happy to see He-Man toys like this epic glowing sword on Toy Kingdom and others' shelves again, you'll love that Amazon MGM is bringing a new live-action Masters of the Universe movie to theatres in June. 🗡️

Send this to a friend who knows who Skeletor is 💀.

In This Open Letter:

While most South African’s are happy the prime rate went from 2024’s 11.75% to today’s 10.25%, banks don’t always pass those savings on – unless this SA venture gets to work on your home loan, that is…

The average SA property is worth around R1.65 million; a lifetime investment for many. And new bond applicants can enjoy a low interest rate with lower monthly payments on the same value property.

But not all older bonds are interest-linked, so many of us never see the full benefit of lower rates… Until now.

The local startup helping you get a lower interest rate

Clxr helps homeowners negotiate a better home loan rate. Just plug in your loan balance, current rate, property type and tenure as a client. And, in 60 seconds, Clxr tells you whether you qualify for a review. 

And if you do, it generates a prewritten email to the right person at your bank, with your numbers already included. Copy, paste and send – even a 0.5% reduction could save you a good couple of hundred bucks (or more) on a R1.65 million bond.

Clxr founder Siphiwe Moteane spent nearly two decades working across SA's financial sector, so he knows exactly how banks price home loans, and, more importantly, how rarely they pass improvements on to loyal clients.

And rate negotiations are just the start

Siphiwe wants to eventually build out the platform to manage the full life cycle of your home loan, from pre-approval to pay-off. And the next feature he’s adding is a property health check that lets you value your home using comparable sales data, renovation ROI, etc. (not to sell, just to know).

And it’s just as necessary, ‘cos right now, your options are calling a real estate agent (who'll probably pitch you listings for the next three months) or trusting your municipality's valuation (like Capetonians recently experienced), with some valuations jumping between 25% and 140% despite zero improvements.

It's early days, but the core product is live, free, and takes less time than your morning coffee.

We're watching this space…

UK payments company Monavate had a problem you might recognise: Great tech, but no one knew who they were. In a same-same payments industry, that’s murder: they couldn’t show their quality and capability, so customers couldn't tell them apart from competitors.

It took SA brand agency DoubleShift to turn things around for them: Relaunching their brand at Money20/20 Europe, they got 31% higher web traffic after a month, sales enquiries went up 23% and LinkedIn started pumping.

Next thing, new companies started reaching out and top talent began applying for jobs...

That is what DoubleShift does. They don't apply theories, they leverage scheme relationships, BIN sponsorship and regulatory approvals (the stuff that actually happens in your business) and then help the penny drop in the minds of the people who matter: investors, enterprise clients and regulators. 

And they don’t just work overseas. They’ve done magic for Lesaka, TymeBank and a growing list of ambitious SA companies.

R300k/month from a commitment metric. This couple turned a side-project into a serious SaaS business using a totally unique validation model, and it's one of the most real and insightful SaaS stories we've seen. Watch the full breakdown.

The AI agent war just got interesting. Rumour has it 30% of OpenClaw users have switched to Nous Research's Hermes Agent. The big difference: OpenClaw organises around a messaging hub; Hermes puts the learning loop at the centre — pausing every ~15 tool calls to reflect, write skill files and compound automatically.

R40k+ in free business tools. The Founder Collab gives you a community of SA founders helping each other win, 40+ hours of masterclasses and a stack of business perks from day one. See what's inside.

🚨 Buckle Up, SA. We’re officially in a national state of disaster with all Western Cape schools closed today due to these crazy storms. But did you hear that the impeachment process against President Ramaphosa has officially begun? And it’s only Tuesday…

📉 Funding Drought. African startup funding fell to a 13-month low in April, and a pattern is emerging: More ventures are foregoing equity and opting for debt finance instead. Our take? It’s a good sign that we're becoming so financially confident.

🤖 Eskom's Drone Army. Eskom is already using drones and an SA-made powerline inspection robot to inspect its 33'369km of power lines. The robot actually crawls along the cables. We love to see it.

📱 Ad-Free TikTok. TikTok is rolling out an ad-free paid subscription in the UK that also stops data collection from paid subs. Linked to a UK-specific law, so no word on an SA version of this yet. Sheez, can’t we just copy-paste that law then?

🌍 Going Global From SA. Later this week, we're continuing our look at what it actually takes for SA founders to go global: From structuring to jurisdiction to getting the right people in your corner. More coming soon from our friends at Finance Isle of Man →.*

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

Yesterday, we showed you Anvaya SA's legal AI assistant, asking how much you trust AI on high-stakes work. The verdict: Trust, but verify…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧠 Fully, I verify less and less these days (1%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🔍 Mostly, but I always sanity-check the output (46%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ ⚖️ Depends, routine tasks yes, critical work no (41%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😬 Barely, I've been burned before (6%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚫 Not at all, some things need a human (6%)

On 12 May 1941, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer, the Z3, was completed in Germany. And it was, well…

A monstrous thing that used 2'600 relays instead of electronic switches, it was originally built to solve aerodynamics problems. But it was never put into use, because, in case you didn’t notice, 1941 was Second World War time, and Germany was a little busy back then.

🧩 Tool to Try: TechLexicon teaches you tech vocabulary through quick, addictive games.

🌍 That's Interesting: Peter Jackson's VFX studio Wētā FX (you know, the guys that gave us movies like The Lord of the Rings) was named after New Zealand's wētā, a native species of giant flightless cricket. Because of course it is.

🎨 Next Level: Here's how to flip your kayak while holding a beer without spilling a drop.

🕹️ Wow Site: Cateno is an interactive cause-and-effect explorer for history.