Live forever {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Scientists discovered that a specific bacterium that lives in frog intestines kills cancer cells in mammals. Tests on mice have been remarkable, so this could be a whole new thing for fighting dread diseases.

In Today's Open Letter

Most startups die trying to build something nobody needs, and it’s even more dangerous now that anyone can build anything really fast with AI – which is where this new platform comes in…

Running out of cash is the reason 70% of startups fail. But that’s only the symptom. The real killer is building something that not enough people needed (or wanted) in the first place.

You can’t exactly ask your favourite AI tool and get a truly objective answer. That digital sycophant just nods and backs you 63.7% of the time, even when you're wrong. 

And the people who would challenge you (VCs) sit behind a door most founders never even reach.

Hitting the wall

It’s something founder Miles Marshall has seen too many times: As a seasoned founder and a former VP of technology on the venture side, he’s watched founders convince themselves to pursue “great ideas”, then pour months into it only to hit the ultimate brick wall: no one actually wants it (or wants to pay for it).

All because there was no one honest enough with them early enough. So Miles built a solution…

Made to kill bad ideas before you build them

Ekko is a validation platform that’s essentially a gut check for founders: Drop in your idea, and in about three minutes, it tells you whether it is worth building or whether you're about to waste a year.

It does a quick pre-mortem (3 minutes): A devil's-advocate engine hunts for every reason your idea will die, scores it, and hands you the five things to fix first.

Then it does something unique: Ekko doesn’t just reason around your idea (like a chatbot), it actually puts a landing page in front of real people and tracks who clicks and who signs up, so you have real data no AI can provide.

The same VC-level scrutiny, without the closed door

Ekko also scores your market fit, drafts a GTM plan, and hands you an investor-grade go/no-go. It even spins up a waitlist page that asks visitors what they'd actually pay, while tracking what up to ten rivals are charging, changing and shipping. And Miles says automatic pitch-deck creation is coming soon.

What we like: The landing-page test. Most "AI validation" tools just reason about your idea; Ekko puts it in front of real people and watches what they do. That, plus a founder who's done due diligence on startups from the venture side, gives it more substance than the average Product Hunt launch.

And in the spirit of the product, some honesty: idea-validation platforms are one of the most crowded categories out there, and most of them die. But we're big backers of tools built with local context, and that might be exactly the edge here.

We're watching this space…

Find, reach, and close your perfect deals — without juggling five tools or hiring more reps.

Apollo gives you everything you need to build real pipeline, fast. From inbound to outbound, first touch to close.

All in Apollo.

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Who still pays a third-party app 30% just to take a food order?

Keychat is a fully managed WhatsApp commerce platform that lets any food business take orders, bookings and payments through the chat customers already use, no app download, no middleman skimming a third of the price.

But here's what's really clever:

✅ Returning customers reorder in seconds, card on file, order history ready
✅ Beyond food: fills tables, runs loyalty, sells theatre tickets and water delivery
✅ The business owns the customer list, not a marketplace

A customer sends a WhatsApp, lands in a checkout that already knows them, and the order drops into the restaurant's existing flow.

What could you build on WhatsApp today?

🛒 SA's Retail AI War. Shoprite just dropped its first Pixie usage data (98% of Xtra Savings Plus members used it, 4M+ products swiped into baskets) just days after Pick n Pay launched Penny. And apparently Woolworths is working on a chef-flavoured AI launch soon. The grocery AI race is officially on.

🤝 X Wants to Be Nice. X head of product Nikita Bier tweaked the algorithm to boost "mutuals", people you follow who follow back. The aim is to make replies feel less like a battleground with strangers, helping interest clusters form more easily. Less chaos, more community. We'll see.

💰 EasyEquities Goes AI Shopping. Purple Group is acquiring Australia-based Telescope AI for R175m ($10.75m) to benefit from their tech that reaches 3M+ investors across 7 countries and 13 languages and expand EE’s AI Baskets across retail investing, retirement, fractional property and crypto.

📡 Openserve vs Its Own Customers. Telkom's wholesale fibre arm has launched its own ISP, selling uncapped fibre direct to consumers at greatly reduced rates. Problem is that it puts OpenServe directly in competition with the small army of ISPs that buy from them wholesale. Competing with your own customers is a bold move.

📊 Brand Clarity Secured. Stellenbosch's Sonic Fund and Sonic Trader needed to serve very different audiences without brand dilution. So DoubleShift built two distinct brand systems, giving both the clarity to scale globally with sharper investor and customer traction.*

* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.

Yesterday, we showed you EduFlare’s AI marking platform, asking about your most memorable test and exam marks. Most here were in the teachers’ good books…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥊 Got a mark so unfair I'd still fight that teacher today (23%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🎭 Let's just say being the teacher's pet paid dividends (39%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🙈 Cheated once and the mark is still on my report card (0%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤖 A robot could not have hated me more than that marker did (15%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧇 Padded an essay with pure waffle and got rewarded for it (23%)

Your 2 cents…

Oof, that’s a burning injustice, Help Moving. Case in point for EduFlare, though. If it had existed back then, the AI would've had receipts, and you would’ve gotten your 25/25. ❤️‍🔥

Contrary to popular belief, registering your company and domain doesn't give you exclusive brand rights. We got an SA IP lawyer who runs a firm's trademark practice to show us how to actually lock your brand down.

And it turns out, there are 4 specific steps to protect your brand with a trademark in SA before someone else cashes in on your name.

☝ Send this to a founder who's built a brand on a name they've never trademarked.

African game studio? Google Play's first-ever Indie Games Fund for Africa is offering $50k to $200k in equity-free capital to 10 studios across 32 countries. Applications close 31 July. Apply now.

Need more than just advice? The Founder Collab bundles R40k+ in tools, cloud credits, legal sessions and a curated founder community into one membership for SA tech builders. Join now.

Want free AI skills training? Google Hustle Academy 2026 offers one-day bootcamps and 60-min webinars for SA entrepreneurs and SME owners. Zero cost. Register free.

SA small business ready for the national stage? NSBC Small Business Awards are now open, with free entry for NSBC Platinum Members across 4 categories, including Startup Champion of the Year. Gala on 12 November. See details.

Research team solving alt-protein taste? Coefficient Giving is investing up to $10M in R&D grants ($100k to $1M each) for projects tackling off-flavour, fat alternatives, egg replacement and fish replication. Global applicants. Closes 10 August. Apply now.

🧩 Tool to Try: The Coin Lab lets you deploy your own crypto tokens in 60 seconds, live instantly on 12 blockchains.

🦸 That's Interesting: The very first Marvel comic and the very first DC comic were edited by the same person. Lloyd Jacquet was there when both universes were born.

💪 Next Level: In 2021, a police officer lifted a 1.5-ton car by hand to save a mother trapped underneath. Adrenaline is undefeated.

🎨 Wow Site: Creating a brand? Give Hueful two colours, and it’ll show you complete palette options, with the colour theory behind each pick.