Time to go {{ FIRSTNAME }}? A bot has set a new Guinness World Record by walking 106km non-stop for 3 days (hot-swapping batteries) from one province to another without help. 🦿

In This Open Letter

The R3bn global rugby headgear market is set for a boom as focus shifts to head safety – and this local startup’s bringing the tech…

Hot off October’s 2025 Rugby Championship victory, and the outgoing tour where the Boks klapped 4 of the Six Nations in their own backyards (including reigning champs France), SA’s riding a mega rugby high…

For SA’s over 800’000 registered rugby players at club, school, provincial and national levels, injuries are part and parcel of the game. But concussions and head injuries are of particular concern as a class-action lawsuit against World Rugby, with 1’100 former players claiming they weren’t protected from serious brain injuries. 

We’ve seen a tightening of the rules on head contact, leading to more red cards. Great in principle, but uncomfortable when legal tackles can force a team down to 14 players, only for the red card to be rescinded a week later – OK during a friendly, but what if it costs you a major tournament?

Very close to home

Some months ago, we told you about the trialling of a mouthguard with head-injury sensors at the Women’s Rugby World Cup, which inspired founder Marnus Coetsee to reach out and tell us about the new head impact reduction tech he’s building at Pro'Tech Rugby, right here in SA.

Marnus’s own rugby journey was sadly cut short due to concussions, but it became the fuel to build the next generation of data-driven protective headgear.

Head in the game

Pro’Tech’s reimagining what a scrum cap could be by working with biomechanics, medical and materials experts, combined with input from professional players, to build protection that actually mitigates impact forces.

Why headgear, though? Well, that’s kinda where your head is during play, and World Rugby’s own cap regulations seem to be more designed around reducing cuts, abrasions and cauliflower ears, rather than preventing concussions.

Pro’Tech’s headgear absorbs and disperses impact energy from tackles and collisions in a way that the materials absorb linear and rotational forces to reduce head acceleration. And it's testing at professional standards, meaning the gear serves everyone’s needs, from grassroots to elite-level.

While it’s still early days (they began filing patents in multiple rugby markets and preparing for a broader rollout in late 2024), the timing is key as player welfare is a key strategic priority for SA Rugby.

We’re watching this space.

Avoid the growth trap. Lula’s former Chief Growth Officer, Thomas McKinnon, explains why fast growth can sink an SME (and the 90-day fix). Listen here.

Automate any browser task. Ripplica watches you do a workflow once, then repeats it automatically, even inside old legacy systems. Try it here.

Auto-create client decks. Affint connects to your business apps and can then generate branded presentations from prompts using live, pulled-in data. See more.

“We’re burning through cash and can’t explain half the Azure bill…”

If you’re a SaaS founder in South Africa right now, you probably recognise this:

You’re not alone — most SaaS startups on Azure overpay by 10–30%. 

That’s why Cloud On Demand built a local Independent Software Vendor (ISV) program that gives SaaS startups a free, no-strings-attached cloud cost review, run by real Azure architects. They’ll show you exactly where you’re wasting money and what to change to fix it.

No lock-in. No bait-and-switch. Just clarity on where your cash is going.

If you’re bootstrapped, scaling, or watching margins, this is one of the smartest 30-minute calls you can make.

Do it now and get the review asap.

💰 Raise Me Up. Pan-African digital banking platform Zazu has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding to accelerate its rollout in South African and Moroccan entrepreneurs and SMEs. Nice one.

🥼 Dr's Visit. Johann Rupert’s Remgrow has set its sights on acquiring Mediclinic’s Southern Africa division, the third-largest private healthcare provider in the region. Interesting.

✔️ Wise Moves. Global FinTech Wise’s launch into SA is another step closer, following the conditional approval from the South African Reserve Bank to operate as a “Category 2 Authorised Dealer in Foreign Exchange with Limited Authority”. Hmmm.

🥷 Hi There, Dear. Looks like scams are big business, with 2024’s scam losses reaching over $1 trillion. Painfully, as little as 4% of victims actually fully recover their money. Now we’re wondering where that parcel we had to pay R18.22 to release is.

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools, so our Founder’s Stack gives you IP offshoring and global market access with Finance Isle of Man, VC and startup legal sorted by Dommisse Attorneys and more.

Every time you share, you get something cool in return.

Yesterday, we showed you how SB Card’s digital business card play, asking how you grab someone’s contact details. Most just capture on phone…

How do you grab someone’s contact details?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📲 I get them to ‘Missed Call’ me. (45%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🖊️ I write it down on a piece of paper. (13%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📇 Still grab the ol Business Card. (21%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤝 Promise to connect on LinkedIn. (19%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤑 Pay a small fortune for their email addy on a list. (2%)

Your 2 cents…

Lekke, Ted. We've had trouble with not all iPhones having the OS capabilities, so if you ever run into that (or someone with an Android phone), maybe give it a try. 🤖

Ooh, great idea, Danei. We’ll tip off SB Card and see what they come up with. 💡

On 2 December 1991, Apple released version 1 of QuickTime, the first multimedia extension that allowed you to play colour video on a home computer (you needed a special computer before this).

Fun fact: The company that Apple used to port QuickTime to Windows in 1992 was later hired by Microsoft to work on its video player, which miraculously suddenly developed QuickTime’s capabilities natively in 1993. Apple sued in 1994, leading to a massive legal battle that ended with Microsoft settling in 1997 and Gates going to Macworld Expo that year to announce the famous 5-year Apple-Microsoft truce.

💡 Tool to Try: InkFiction turns your journal entries into AI art.

💰 That’s Interesting: A Brazilian billionaire with no heirs allegedly left his entire $1 billion estate to football player Neymar simply because he admires his values.

🦀 Next Level: Watch millions of red crabs swarm across Christmas Island as they migrate from the forest to the sea.

🍳 Hack: This visual guide rounds up food hacks that actually rescue your cooking.

🌍 Wow Site: Wonders of Street View shows mind-blowing, bizarre and beautiful places and scenes hiding in Google Street View.

We are always keen to get reader feedback to help make The Open Letter the most useful of its kind for you. So please select