Rough weekend? We thought Trump was tough for surviving the US’s first assassination attempt on a presidential hopeful in 52 years this weekend. But that was only till we saw these two African lion brothers (one of them an amputee!) swim 1.5km through crocodile and hippo-infested waters at midnight, all in the name of love.
In this Open Letter:
Massive market: Securing 361 billion messages per day.
SA’s Wimbledon gold, Gauteng’s state bank & African investment roots.
What you need help remembering: The poll results are in.
Big plays: Share this and get 100 SA business ideas.
Together with WigWag
TRENDING NOW
Securing 361 Billion Messages Per Day
Around 4.48 billion people send an average of 361.6 billion emails globally every day.
It’s become integral in how businesses function and is still one of the most convenient and effective ways to engage customers or communities.
We delivered 556.2k emails in the last 12 months!
But email was never perfect – it had a serious design flaw from day one.
You see, because emails get sent from so many different servers using the same domain (think how Hubspot, Salesforce, 365, beehiiv and G-suite all use your domain to send when you use it), receivers can’t reliably verify the sender’s true identity (and whether they’re authorised to send from the claimed domain).
Which opens the door to unscrupulous individuals who want to pretend to be you and intercept transactions, etc., leading to 96% of phishing attacks arriving via email (an estimated 3.4 billion+ malicious emails are sent daily).
What do these look like?
Intercepting transactions to send an email that looks like yours but with altered bank account details — you will likely be liable (ENSAfrica was recently in a high court ruling).
Pretending to be a service provider to you, asking for details, while using the actual domain name of the company to email you.
Acting on your behalf for all kinds of malicious activity using social engineering.
The email conundrum
So, email hit a crossroads. Either make it a secure channel through which to communicate, or we could see the end of this democratized communication protocol.
The latter is quite a big deal considering email is free and open to use as opposed to Whatsapp, which is free to use, but owned by Meta (not a good idea, trust us).
So, the only option was to try to make email even more secure.
Sure, SPF (sender policy framework) and DKIM (DomainKey Identified Mail) were already in place, but receiving servers often didn’t know what to do with emails that didn’t meet these standards, so they ended up landing in your inbox… until now.
Oh what a glorious day
Enter DMARC
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) is an email authentication protocol that instructs email receivers what to do with an email that doesn’t meet security standards and then reports on it.
Whilst it’s actually been around since 2012, and many have used it over the years, it really shot to prominence lately when Google and Yahoo announced that bulk senders have to use DMARC from February 2024 onwards.
By June of this year, all DMARC requirements have become mandatory. This means that if your email sent doesn’t comply, it will not be delivered to Yahoo or Google mail inboxes or in the best case scenario, land in the spam inboxes.
It's massive
In South Africa alone, there are roughly 200’000 businesses that likely use email daily, and they will eventually need to set up and comply with DMARC to get their emails to hit inboxes. Globally, it’s even enormous!
That’s where local startup Sendmarc is in a great position to capitalise. They offer a range of solutions for everyone, from small businesses all the way up to enterprises, that manage your email settings to comply. All of which:
Improve email delivery (making sure your customers get your emails).
Improve domain authority (so that you are less likely to end up in spam folders).
Protect against spoofing and spam (so people can’t pretend to be you).
Collect XML reports and analyse them to help improve all of the above.
With 4.48 billion people using email, this might just be one of the biggest markets there is, and this South African company has the goods to take on the big players globally. We are watching this space.
PS: Navigo Solutions, a Sendmarc distributor, has made it easy for you to secure your email. Wanna analyse your email address’s vulnerability score? Check it out using their interactive tool.
Get a deep dive into this trend and the startup’s strategy when you join the Open Letter Pro. PLUS join our community of 30+ South African founders building high-value tech-enabled businesses.
IN SHORT
🌍 Travel Money. Local travel-focused FinTech TurnStay has secured over R5.4 million in funding from investors in Silicon Valley and New York to expand into Africa.
📈 Growing Deeper Roots. Nigerian investment platform Bamboo has expanded its offering into South Africa after receiving its financial services provider licence from SA’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA).
💰 Banking on Gauteng. Looks like Gauteng could be getting its own provincial state-owned bank which will aim to invest in infrastructure projects including in areas of ICT, business information centres and township-based enterprises
🏆 Winning Wimbledon. Local tennis hero Kgothatso Montjane won the wheelchair women’s doubles final at Wimbledon on Sunday with Japan’s Yui Kamiji. Nicely done Kgothatso.
😎 The Stack. Founders need great tools and service providers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack. It is packed with collaborative design tools like Figma and Metavolve, which help companies avoid stress by scaling well.
CHECK THIS OUT
EFT is just not a thing for them…
We call it electronic funds transfer (EFT), some call it a wire, and some plainly refuse to do any of it…getting paid from abroad is a pain. And even if a client agrees to do a transfer directly into your bank account:
Getting paid takes ages, or even worse, it’s unpredictable how long it takes.
The fees can be ridiculous.
Sometimes, the funds get stuck, and a very manual process of releasing the funds goes lost in communication (hello bank call centre)
As a freelancer, you wanna keep things admin light…
But what if there is a better way?
Meet Melissa Raath, an international award-winning conceptual art director.
Melissa does work for clients across the world and mostly faces the same issues with payment:
“The awesome thing about working for myself and remotely is that I get to work with clients from all across the world. The not-so-awesome side is that some international clients prefer to pay by card or opt to do wire transfers and this comes at a bit of a cost”
But there is an easy way to get around that Melissa started using:
“Wigwag has made the whole process incredibly smooth and easy. I signed up and was vetted the same day, and their customer support went above and beyond to assist me with a tricky international payment. As an art director, I also appreciate the simple, intuitive UX and super fun brand identity. Plus, their fees are the lowest I've found 😚👌”
Ready to get paid instantly from anywhere in the world?
WigWag is offering The Open Letter readers:
That’s zero fees in your first month!
ENGAGE
What You Missed in the TOL Community
The Open Letter community is only one week old, but more than 20 founders and builders have already joined. Here is what wen down thus far…
We got to know each other a little better on Wednesday in our weekly office hours!
We had a lively discussion around this CEO’s LinkedIn post announcing they’re the world’s first “HR solution” for AI employees…
Coming Up This Week
Wednesday 10-11: Office Hours, where we all log in and work together, + the whole Open Letter team is at members’ disposal.
Friday 12-13:00: Online Gathering: we all get together for an online AMA-style session on mastering growth metrics.
Plus: All day, every day: unlimited introductions, recruitment, service provider referrals and business-building insights.
Want to join a group of South Africans building high-value tech-enabled startups? Start your free trial now!
What You Said…
We asked what you always need help remembering, and it’s what your fellow builders are developing…
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🌱 The names of all the new startups at networking events (23%)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 📬 Replying to emails before they become ancient history (18%)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🔑 Where I left my car keys. Every. Single. Day (18%)
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 🥱 To actually take breaks and not just talk about them (20%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🙉 The punchline of that great joke I heard last week (12%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏆 To help me win every single argument (9%)
Your 2 cents…
“For a kasi broer not really exposed to the tech world in my daily life, the open letter has been phenomenal, love reading and staying up to date.”
Hey, Nelson, glad to hear you like and appreciate it — here’s hoping some tech inspiration brings your next big business idea!
