Making moves {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? South African Neil Human won Make.com’s Global Community Challenge with a small business toolkit that uses MCP integration with an AI-powered CRM that lets small businesses deploy a website in 2 minutes, just with chat, and then manage leads automatically. Well done, Neil! 🥇

In This Open Letter

Uber and Wanatu are great for short distances, but SA needs a better inter-city solution…

Travelling long-distance in SA is tricky stuff: Fuel prices are set to increase in April, if you own a car, and ride shares like Uber and Wanatu don’t work so well for the long road (drivers often want extra to cover the return trip).

Flying’s an option if you’re travelling between main hubs, but prices have risen 55% since 2019, and, hit with the same fuel price problems, even local airlines have announced temporary fuel surcharges.

The bus is a little cheaper, but trip times can be up to 40% longer, so you’re left with a long-trip taxi or hitting up Gumtree or Facebook groups with an awkward: “Hey, anyone going from Robert Sobukwe Town to KuGompo City this week?”

SA’s empty seat problem

With over 12 million vehicles zipping around on our roads, 66% of which are passenger vehicles (so 8 million), usually with 2–3 open seats, you’re looking at 8–24 million in unused transport capacity per day. 

An untapped opportunity in plain sight.

Getting a lift via WhatsApp

CrabaRide is a WhatsApp-integrated carpooling platform that connects verified drivers with passengers to share long-distance travel costs.

By acting as a lift-sharing club and capping what drivers can charge at R2.50 per kilo (based on SARS rates), they avoid the need for commercial transport permits (PrDPs) and semi-automate ID verification with a pre-ride upload, while the back-end system tracks every km of the trip for safety and transparency.

Both drivers and riders activate a trip by simply sending a WhatsApp voice note, and the system does the rest.

How well can this work?

For drivers, the average car uses about 7 litres of fuel per 100km. So, on a 300km trip, your fuel + tolls should be around R620. At R2.50 per km, that’s R750, so R130 profit for some padkos along the way.

We don’t know CrabaRide’s fee structure, though. Which adds another question: With 8–24 million vehicles, capturing 0.1% of the market gives you between 8’000 and 24’000 vehicles. If all of those do 300km trips, that’s R60–180 million’s worth of trips.

An additional use case is festivals: Last year, Crabaride partnered with Rocking the Daisies to transport peeps from all around SA. 

It’s an interesting play, and we’re watching this space…

1 year of building in public. Founder Collab member Omar Kinnear shared the journey of building Learn About Me — from a rough first launch to 100+ books sold in a month and a new Tributes feature. A great reminder that iteration beats perfection. See his post.

Sales & GTM standup. Our bi-weekly Founder Collab session is where members swap tools, tactics and accountability to move go-to-market faster. Bring your wins, blockers or questions and learn from other founders in the room. Join here.

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📦 What’s In The Box? Local EdTech Resolute Education has developed and launched a new robotics Business-in-Box franchise model, allowing anyone to start their own robotics club or programme.

🎾 Game. Set. Match (For Humanity). Chinese robotics company Unitree’s humanoid G1 robot just stepped onto a tennis court to play a couple of rounds against actual humans thanks to a new system that helps it mimic "imperfect" human motion data. We done messed up, Aaron…

🚀 Making Big Moves. Newly JSE-listed, AI-powered FinTech Optasia has released its full-year results for 2025, showing a 76% revenue increase to $265 million, thanks to its user base exploding past 432 million (a 43% increase). Goodness.

🏉 Play On. If the shuttering of Showmax by MultiChoice’s new owner got you worried about SuperSport, rest assured. Canal+ and SA Rugby reportedly have plans to continue the partnership with SuperSport. Awesome.

🌍 Taking SA Companies Global. Seeing how hard it is for SA founders to take companies global, Dommisse Attorneys worked with the SA SME Fund, SAVCA and Endeavor to create an open-source framework to establish your IP offshore called IP Strategy Flow.*

Yesterday, we told you about SolarSaver’s zero-capex solar installations, asking if you’d switch if there were no deposit for solar?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🚀 Immediately (43%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 🤔 Maybe — depends on the contract (36%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📊 Need to run the numbers (21%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⚡ Happy staying on grid (0)

Your 2 cents…

Of course, Karel! Modern setups will likely be way easier (and transparent). 🤝

On 17 March 1958, the US launched the Vanguard 1 satellite, the fourth human-made object in space after Russia’s Sputnik 1 and 2 and the Explorer 1. And, many say, the first sign that tides were turning in the space race.

See, Vanguard 1 was remarkably advanced compared to its contemporaries: It was the world’s first solar-powered satellite, and it’s only one of the four that’s still up there (the oldest man-made object in space). It’s expected to stay in orbit until late in the 22nd century.

🎵 Tool to Try: Tone is a music streaming service where fans can buy and trade shares tied to an artist’s streaming royalties.

💐 That’s Interesting: Taylor Swift reportedly sends Kelly Clarkson flowers after every album re-release to thank her for suggesting Taylor re-record the albums she didn’t own the masters for.

🌋 Next Level: Watch what happens when lava meets snow.

🔤 Hack: A guide to the fonts used by famous global brands.

🥁 Wow Site: Drumhaus is a browser-based drum machine.