『☕』Gamifying Your Next Cuppa...
A winter nonny? Seeing as we’re all missing summer a bit, SAB has announced it’s bottling sunshine with Crona Cero in SA, a new alcohol-free brewski that’s enriched with Vitamin D — you know, for when you’re missing the sun.
In this Open Letter:
- Big break: Here’s to gamifying the R12bn coffee industry.
- Pirate clampdown, Discovery breach & SA’s thriving ecosystem.
- Something for you: 100+ SA business ideas — get access.
- Slam dunk: How to build a killer newsletter in South Africa.
- Where you wanna invest: The latest poll results are in.
- Giveaway extension: More chances to win R1k’s worth of gold.
TRENDING NOW
Gamifying Coffee
Ask boomers how to buy a house and they’ll probably say something to the tune of “stop buying Starbucks”.
And they might be onto something, with the price of a cappuccino ranging from R27.90 all the way up to R55.50 at SA’s favourite local destinations, coffee is pricey. Unless of course, you buy from Xpresso, which sells everything in their stores for R12.
Coffee is an estimated R12bn a year market and is set to grow to R15bn by 2025 and the likes of Food Lover’s Market are betting hard on coffee as a major area for growth in the next 5 years with another 245 Seattle Coffee shops.
Setting up shop
But when it comes to setting up your own coffee shop, the espresso machine and barista combo is the star of the show. And when you open 50 Coffee shops a year, you want affordable high-quality espresso machines and baristas that adhere to the quality requirements of your product.
That’s where local startup Henlo Coffee saw an opportunity. Their espresso machines are not only affordable (R169k vs R250k+ for imported machines) but get your cost of quality down using electronics all while being connected online.
Coffeemaking, gamified
Each machine has a built-in Barista Companion, measuring every step of the process of making your perfect cup of coffee. If the barista does anything that’s out of line with the perfect cup you ordered, the machine notifies them on the spot, allowing them to course-correct. Effectively gamifying quality and removing the need for ongoing barista training and quality checks.
What’s more, the data tracked gets passed back to a live dashboard giving owners oversight on the quality and quantity of coffees, which helps them fight losses (no more unpaid coffees going out) and plan better.
Finally, with the machine being connected online, it allows Henlo to perform remote maintenance and monitoring to ensure the machine is running in tip-top shape.
Instagram post by @coffee.henlo
For Henlo, this enables nice SaaS revenue on top of the margin made on the coffee machine itself… smart.
Although South Africans have all the ingredients to design and manufacture world-class hardware products (high-quality engineers, low labour cost and an economy big enough to launch into), many shy away due to the supply chain challenges of being on the southern tip of Africa.
But find a fast-growing market, an innovative product and a hardware supply chain with lots of fat in and you might just be in business. We love what Henlo is doing and watching this space (while sipping a cappuccino)...
IN SHORT
🤖 Health Bot. The local team behind GovChat has just launched Supple, an AI health chatbot to provide digital healthcare assistance to all 54 African Union members.
🏎️ Revving Up. Local payments orchestration platform Revio has changed to Precium to reflect its growth from a local processor to a global payments platform off the back of its $5.2 seed funding round at the end of 2023.
🇿🇦 Thriving Ecosystem. SA has landed the 52nd spot in StartupBlink’s Global Start-up Ecosystem Index 2024’s Top 100 Countries, with Cape Town (128th), Jozi (139th), Pretoria (426th), and Durban (547th) all cracking the Top 1’000 cities.
🥸 Discovered Data. Around 20 Discovery Insure clients have had their personal data extracted from the insurer by a fraudster including residential addresses and details of the items covered by the policies. This follows the massive TicketMaster breach where nearly 560 million customers' personal info was taken.
🏴☠️ Streaming Pirates. MultiChoice had a busy week, from taking action against the Waka TV streaming Kingpin who got arrested on Wednesday for “illegal sale of internet streaming pirate devices that allowed individuals to access MultiChoice content”, to the R125 per share cash offer from Canal+ to all shareholders.
🚀 Taking Off. Boeing’s Starliner (with 2 crew members on board) has docked with the International Space Station despite the discovery of 3 hydrogen leaks over the course of the launch and mission, as well as some thruster issues mid-mission.
100+ STARTUPS SA NEEDS RIGHT NOW
Looking for your next big business to build?
How bout tapping into over 20 months of active startup market and industry research… all at once…
Introducing our new stack of 100+ South African business ideas, complete with industry deep dives, market sizes and broader economic insights — all hand-picked and vetted by us.
Featuring multi-billion-Rand opportunities across 25 industries, including:
- 15 too-hot FinTech opportunities
- 12 Groundbreaking B2B & ecosystem ventures
- 11 Entertainment & Sport businesses waiting to be built
- 11 Insanely cool tech companies to start
- 9 Disruptive E-commerce plays to change the game
- Plus: PropTech, InsureTech, EdTech, HealthTech, Automotive…
The only thing we ask is that you refer 1 friend to The Open Letter. That’s it, just use your referral link below to share The Open Letter with someone you know will also unlock value from it, and all 100+ startup ideas are yours, for free, forever!
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HOW WOULD YOU BUILD IT?
How to Build a Killer Newsletter
If you’re looking to create a hyper-engaged audience for your product/business (you know, to lower CAC or up conversion rates), then this week's podcast is for you. Because, obviously, that’s exactly what we do! And that’s exactly what we’re doing here: Telling you how we built The Open Letter – enjoy!
Sizzling highlights
1. Finding the niche and getting the confidence to press GO
From walking around with an idea in your head for years to meeting the right people and suddenly BAM, 5 minutes later you’re in business, this is the value of pinpointing a niche where you can add value – get the insights here.
2. Email is the most valuable primary medium
Evolving from the stock-and-stale standard company email format to something truly unique, inspiring and personal – here’s what most people get wrong about email.
3. Growing your audience & beating the algorithms
Going from little-to-no engagement to record-setting open rates while maintaining a super high-quality audience – some serious insider secrets here.
4. Turning your haters into followers
The not-so-nice side of any direct engagement with a business audience, the right mindset to engage on a human level and flipping a potentially bad situation into a win – here’s how we turn haters into fans.
5. Keep adding value
Dev jobs, cool events and a focus on building really valuable businesses – get a taste of what's coming up next from The Open Letter.
You can also grab the Spotify and Apple Podcast links on our website here.
YOUR VOICE
We asked what you’d like to invest in, and startup’s the way...
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏢 Commercial property (18%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🦄. Local startups (32%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📊 More options of listed companies (6%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👑 Gold bullion, baby (17%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛰 Space tech and cool industrial projects (5%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤖 AI companies (12%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💪 I only invest in myself (9%)
Your 2 cents…
Lekker Wesley, yeh SunCash is the bomb — remember that time we interviewed with the Momint CEO?
Wise words, Panache! Upskill, try new things, push yourself and test boundaries — then you achieve the kind of success that allows you to invest.
You’re probably right, Vakele. In the last few weeks we’ve seen reports of how countries, from France to Dubai and even Mauritius are positioning themselves as the “AI hub” of their region — meaning they’re trying to attract AI companies to come put up headquarters in their country. SA should be doing the same in Africa, for sure!
ENTER TO WIN BIG!
We’ve extended the competition till Tuesday!
So you can still enter…
To celebrate our 10k subs and TroyGold’s launch of a first-of-its-kind subscription, we’re shaking things up and giving away R1’000’s worth of gold bullion with this week + a copy of SA startup must-read, The First Kudu (check out the new audiobook here).
To enter, simply refer one friend this week using your unique referral code.
That’s right, just one friend to sign up. Want more entries? Refer more friends and each referral will count as one entry into Friday’s draw.
(Note: In order to claim your prize you’ll need an active TroyGold account, which is free to create.)