Time to move {{ FIRSTNAME }}? SpaceX’s IPO will likely only happen in June, but a $12bn fund called Powerlaw Corp is planning to give retail investors early access to SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic shares right now. 🚀
In This Open Letter
Snack Attack: SA’s own fully customised vending machines.
Local: Good news for SMEs & Discovery’s big banking boom.
Global: Africa’s lithium woes & smart glass spy detectors.
Tech Jobs: New engineering jobs, systems analysts & more.
Better Business: The most important lesson in business.
New: 🔒 Want the executive layer? TAM analysis. Opportunity insights. Exec-only signal. Every Friday. Now in The Brief.
Two of the world's biggest…
When Shola Akinlade built Paystack, one of the continent's biggest tech success stories, he got seriously connected with Stripe, eventually selling Paystack to them for R3bn+.
So we asked ourselves, if we fly Shola to SA, who would we want to be in the same room as the guy who knows everyone at the largest private FinTech in the world?
The answer: The biggest AI company in the world, of course.
That’s right, Shola and OpenAI are at our next Joburg event.
TRENDING NOW
A R3.7 Billion Snack-Time Play
Vending is big money worldwide, but SA’s not cashing in yet – this local team’s bringing some exciting convenience automations to the table…
Vending machines are set to become a $104.02 billion global market by 2033 (jip, R1.6 trillion).
It’s really big in Japan, whose four million machines mean there’s 1 for every 30 people (it’s 1 to 50-ish in the US, with millions deployed).
SA’s own vending market is smaller, with a few thousand machines, but set to grow roughly 7.5% per year through 2031 as more spaces look for 24/7 retail solutions.
And that’s the thing: Countless offices, hospitals, universities and public spaces with serious daily foot traffic are missing out on the automated convenience that is proven to attract the business of around 10% of passersby. The market’s wide open.
Make it smart
SA’s on-demand habits are definitely shifting (hello, grocery delivery and booming e-commerce sectors!). And the local smart vending machine market is expected to reach R3.7 billion+ by 2032 as automation and cashless payments become the norm.
But who’s ready to capitalise?
The local venture bringing snack time closer
Innovative Vending Solutions is a South African rental, sales and customisation supplier that helps organisations match the right machine and location, supplies the hardware and payment support (including cashless) for machines, from snack and drink machines to bespoke automated dispensers.
On a recent Founder Coffee and Walk event in Stellenbosch, we met founder Janneman van der Merwe, who says he started with a single bubble-gum machine in 2015 and used his two decades of experience to build a company that supplies and supports vending solutions across Cape Town and beyond.
Use cases range from providing food and drinks to the public or after-hours staff without having to figure out how to run or contract an on-site tuck shop, to fully customised machines for unique product activations, like they recently did for Revlon – ladies who enter their details got a free sample… 
And events and activations might be ready for this
In 2025, with digital advertising becoming crowded and less effective, 78% of marketers said they plan to increase budgets for live, immersive and in-person event activations.
The vending channel may look humble, but unexplored as it is in SA, it might be a real answer to a very apparent gap and changing consumer behaviour.
We are watching this space…
Have your say…
CHECK THIS OUT
Stop Googling answers that other founders already have
The Founder Collab is a paid community where real South African founders and operators help each other build better and faster. But the membership pays for itself before you even show up to your first free event.
The moment you join, you unlock the Founder Toolkit: R40’000’s worth of business-building tools and services. We’re talking free cloud architecture services worth R21k, free technical vetting for your first hire, free legal sessions on fundraising and IP, free data, free tickets to every Open Letter event this year and more.
Then there's the weekly rhythm: office hours, sales standups, masterclasses, pitch sessions and a WhatsApp group where 120+ founders trade real advice in real time.
This week alone, members are hearing from Chantelle Bowyer on how to make your business show up on Google in the age of AI.
You don't need another course. You need to get into the right room.
IN SHORT
Easing you into the weekend…
🪫 Charging Issues. Africa’s largest lithium producer, Zimbabwe, has suspended all raw minerals and lithium concentrates exports with immediate effect, sparking concerns over supply disruptions. Goodness.
🥸 Spy Glasses Detected. A new app that warns users when a pair of smart glasses is nearby has just launched. Nearby Glasses uses smart glasses’ Bluetooth signals to detect if a pair is close by, sending a push notification to the app user. Hahaha. Cool.
🚀 SA Business Heyday. ICYMI: South Africa’s Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s 2026 Budget Speech caused some ripples of excitement across SA this week, with some of the key announcements for local businesses. See 5+ big wins for small businesses.
🏦 Take It To The Bank. Discovery Bank is adding 1’500 customers every day, with the bank expecting to see profits increase anywhere between R210 million and R230 million for the first half of the 2026 financial year. Sjoe, hey.
🌾 Operations Simplified. InteliGro struggled with fragmented data and manual admin in their agri software. So Octoco built a unified system that cut admin, standardised crop recommendations and enabled faster, data-driven decisions for farmers and advisors.*
* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.
WHAT YOU SAID
Sheets happen…
Yesterday, we showed you how Exakt's bringing 800 times faster insurance quotes to SA, asking how long till chaos if your critical pricing workbook vanished. Most say total blackout…
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⚡ Business as usual — we've already moved to production APIs (25%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧠 Minor headache — long weekend of recoding, but we'd survive (0%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💀 Total blackout — the logic only lives in those cells (42%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📞 I gotta find Shirley… who even owns our automations? (0%)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🔥 Wait… that spreadsheet is the business?? (33%)
Your 2 cents…
"The issue is that there are like 25 approved spreadsheets 😂 … if it were only one, cannot even imagine."
25 spreadsheets, Ludwig?! That's not a blackout waiting to happen; that's Stage 600 load-shedding. 💀📊
READY FOR A MOVE?
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BEYOND THE NEWSLETTER
The No. 1 business lesson in the age of AI
We asked one of SA’s top hardware venture builders and investors for one piece of early-stage advice for building in the age of AI…
Don’t miss all the extra operator interviews and insights content we do on our social channels — come enjoy the vibez.
AROUND THE WEB
Have some fun…
🎭 Tool to Try: EmotionDropZone gives you emotional support to handle any situation.
🎹 That's Interesting: When recording various instruments’ sounds for the first electro-mechanical music sampler, the Mellotron, the artist recording the cello sounds refused to down-tune the cello, saying the company should pay a bassist to record actual bass sounds. They put an ad out and, when the bassist arrived, it was the same guy. What an operator.
🚀 Next Level: This guy built a camera that can film light travelling at 2 billion fps.
🍳 Hack: A cool guide to common kitchen mistakes to avoid.
📡 Wow Site: Wifi Live shows WiFi speeds at co-working spaces worldwide in real-time.
