👔 650k Jobs to Bail Out Eskom…

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Flippered overlords? Scientists were rather stumped when they thought they’d discovered a dolphin with a “thumb” off the coast of a Greek island. Turns out they were wrong – it has two thumbs.

In this Open Letter:

• Real growth: What 650k devs could solve.
• 1 car per minute, le big Apple & loadshedding wrapped.
• Inside track: How to get your first B2B sale.
• Your bakkie of choice: The results are in.
• Tell someone: Share this & get free business tools.

TRENDING NOW

650k Jobs Big Enough to Bail Out Eskom

Plus stimulate so much new growth…

Speak to any SA tech startup founder and they’ll tell you finding good devs is a nightmare. 

Between not being able to pay as well as corporates, and then requiring devs to do some really complicated hack jobs, you’re looking for a unicorn. 

Now, that problem’s not unique to SA startups. But the difference is that places like the US and India just have way more developers than we do, so your chances of finding those unicorns are just so much higher.

And this marketplace imbalance is as old as the software industry itself. Supply just never seems to keep up with demand. 

How does SA stack up?

South Africa has roughly 150’000 software developers. That’s 2.4 devs for every 1 thousand citizens (not quite 1 in a million, but close). Compare that to the USA, where there are 13.29 developers for every 1;000 citizens. We’re somewhat behind – by that ratio, we should have ±800’000 developers by now. 

Now we know, USA’s GDP is 50+ times that of SA, so they’ll have more dev jobs. But considering that many SA developers and dev firms do work for foreign companies, that 800k number is likely more accurate than not. And it means we’re 650k short.

What will 650k dev jobs do?

Dev job marketplace OfferZen’s research shows the average salary of a software developer with 2–4 years of experience is between R30 000 and R35 000 per month (depending on where you stay, Cape Tonians earn more ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). 

And someone earning R35k per month pays roughly R75k a year in Pay As You Earn (PAYE) taxes. Now, we’re not saying SARS should convince government to train more devs… wait, yes we are – they absolutely should. Adding 650’000 software developers at that pay generates an extra R48.75 billion in PAYE per year. That’s enough to bail out Eskom… a few times over…

But making devs isn’t easy

SA doesn’t have the best education rep. And expensive universities aren’t helping. 

Want to study computer science at Stellenbosch? Well, the course alone will set you back R60k per year, add another R60k for accommodation, money to stay alive, and, and, and... 

4 years and R600k later you can hit the job market and start paying off that student debt – yikes! 

Passive learning also seems a bit silly for a skill best learnt by doing. And with such a massive shortage, perhaps fast-tracking devs to practical experience is the way to go. 

That’s where platforms like Zaio come in. Having recently announced strategic financing by E Squared, Zaio is an accredited developer training program that gets those wanting to code going within 6 months for as little as R 6’950. 

WeThinkCode is another innovative company that does on-the-job training for devs. They even offer the course for free + give developers a stipend, because the stuff they learn on is actual real-world developer work. Noice!

Whilst both these companies are making great progress, we’re still a long shot from closing the gap – and perhaps there is a case to be made to get the government to fund these initiatives more aggressively. 

Either way, at sub R10k vs R600k for your education, it’s definitely something to think about. 

Now before you @ us, we know a bachelor of science is not the same as an NQF5 qualification. But perhaps NQF5 is enough to get most devs going?

Besides, at a few hundred BSc CompSci graduates per year, it's going to take centuries for SA to fill the gap, at which point whatever comes after AI will do the job, right?

IN SHORT

⚡️Loadshedding Wrapped. The lekker okes at EskomSePush have Wrapped Loadshedding for us this year. With some cool stats and insights for SA as a whole and your area in particular (see your area in-app for deets), it’s a fun data spin on a not-so-lekker topic.

⛰️ Cape Ai. Some folks had some AI fun with Cape Town this week - reimagine what Cape Town Suburbs would look like as action figures. Among others, there were: Fish Hoek, Obz, Constantia, Bo-Kaap, Sea Point, Athlone, Bellville and Stellenbosch. Did your ‘burb make the list?

🚙 One in 60 Seconds. 2ndhand car platform WeBuyCars sold 1 car every 60 seconds from the 24th to the 30th of November – with 864 cars sold on Black Friday alone. Looks like the 2nd hand car market is on the rise again – with the number of vehicles WBC sold in 2023 increasing by 13%.

🍏 Comparing Apples with French Fries. Tech behemoth Apple is slowly but surely gaining on the French stock market’s market value. With the companies (including Louis Vuitton & Hermes) listed in Paris’ combined market value of around $3.2 trillion – Apple is breathing down its neck at around $3.1 trillion.

😎 Meta Bans. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses have received a shiny new update and will start rolling out its multimodal AI features. Demo’ed by Zuck on Instagram – it showed how it can help you pick out the right pair of pants for a shirt, write a funny caption for a pic, identify an object in an image, and translate text.

HOW WOULD YOU BUILD IT?

Getting Your First 10, 20 B2B Sales

If you’re building with an eye on targeting companies and enterprise clients, this week’s podcast is for you. We spoke to Heine Bellingan, founder of JOBJACK, who just raised R46m, about their mission and, most importantly, how to get your first few sales as a B2B startup in SA.

1. No 1 sales secret: Persist & celebrate publicly

Getting those first sales is super hard, but Heine says there’s magic in being able to approach a new prospect when you refer to having done work with another big-name company. 

They did pilot projects and would share them on LinkedIn, making a big deal about it (even though there’s no cash yet), and this would create the impression that big brands are hiring JOBJACK. The snowball effect is that getting the next meeting becomes much easier – and, from there on, it's just persistence.

2. Never underestimate the value of cold calling

If you want to learn what’ll work, fast, Heine says the way to go is to cold call. Because when you actually speak to people you get immediate insights into what they want, need and what they’ll respond to.

If you’re targeting the kind of client whose contact details can be easily sourced, get on the phone and be prepared to make a fool of yourself for the first 10 or so calls. You’ll learn so much from that, you’ll be able to go back and adapt your script, approach and proposal, so you’re fine-tuning the process for your first hit.

3. It gets easier, but the hard yards come first

As Heine explains here, landing that first client requires working up the willingness to phone 100 people, dead cold, in a matter of a week, getting rejected by 99 of them and maybe getting a “yes” from just one.

However, once you’ve broken that barrier, it gets a lot easier.

Like our podcast? Remember to subscribe and never miss an episode.

THE RESULTS

We asked what your bakkie of choice is, and we have the Hilux in pole position, with Cybertruck close on its heels, followed by a decidedly no-bakkie crowd…

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Give me that Cybertruck now (22%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Hilux (27%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Ford Ranger (10%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Land Cruiser (10%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Isuzu (3%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Corsa Bakkie (2%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Tupperware Bakkie (5%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ I don’t Bakkie (21%)

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