Delicious slop {{ FIRSTNAME }}? Food bloggers and online recipe sites are seeing an 80% drop in clicks as people turn to AI recipes. The problem? Most are inedible gobbledygook because AI doesn’t eat or cook. Here’s an actual cook trying out some disastrous AI recipes.

In Today’s Open Letter

We all generate so much data on our credit cards alone – now’s the time to unlock that data for financial health…

When Greg Flash moved from engineering to finance, it felt like “joining the dark side”, an industry with a bad rap of middlemen, extra fees and advisers who charge without adding real value.

Today, he’s Head of Wealth at Vault22, built to give savers the same guidance the industry reserves for clients with seven-figure portfolios.

Budget beginnings 

We don’t need to remind you of 2012 Cape Town FinTech 22seven, named CNBC’s & Statista’s World’s Top 200 FinTech Companies list in 2023 for its free consolidation and budgeting that gives users a single view of their money.

So tracking your daily coffee spend can help you save better/more.

In 2013, Old Mutual acquired it outright and by 2024, it was re-branded as Vault22 under a new holding structure (Dubai’s DIFC) and backed by Old Mutual, Next176 and SC Ventures to broaden from budgeting to holistic wealth advice.

But the jump for the inherited users posed an interesting challenge: Traditional wealth advisors can’t take on clients who don’t bring several million rand’s worth of investable assets to the table. So, what to do with peeps using the digital budgeting tool?

Turns out, many of them pay their bills on time yet sit with razor-thin credit files, so they either get declined or pay more than they should. And there lay the opportunity…

Closing the gap 

Vault22 is looking to narrow the difference at scale by combining Old Mutual’s 22seven with the robo advice platform developed with Standard Chartered Ventures, bringing its budgeting engine together with a licensed advice stack.

Locally, the app still connects to your accounts and categorises spend, but now layers on a guided journey asking you about financial goals and timelines, then narrows you to a small set of ETF-based portfolios. 

Vault22 earns its fee from advice, not brokerage, and charges the same whether a client lands in a Vault-branded portfolio or a third-party fund, with investing already live in South Africa and a soft-launch in Dubai. 

An Experian partnership will blend anonymised transactional data with bureau data so that thin-file clients can build stronger credit scores. An AI roadmap also includes a global support agent and a portfolio builder.

So, the data behind that daily coffee now contributes to a smart system that boosts your long-term wealth-building, too. Democratising great financial planning access? Count us in. 

We’re watching this space…

Bloated SaaS stack killing your burn? Leania audits your tools in 5 minutes and shows what to keep, kill or replace — with projected savings. Try it here.

Need instant recall of in-person meetings? Mira smart glasses record conversations and meetings, then surface answers in a private display. Pricey, but check them out here.

In BioTech and still waiting months for synthesis? Onepot AI uses autonomous labs and an AI chemist to deliver custom molecules in days, not 12 weeks. Try it here.

Why should only big brands have real WhatsApp tech?

Most new and small businesses don’t have time to sit through demos or figure out clunky enterprise software. You’ve got products to ship, customers to talk to, and zero patience for red tape.

But what if you could just… start?

That’s why flEX by Chat Inc is such a game-changer: It’s the first pure SaaS WhatsApp marketing platform in South Africa. No subscriptions. No platform fees. No gatekeeping.

You sign up. You connect your WhatsApp channel. You buy credits. You start sending.

Whether you’re a boutique store, local brand, or solo founder, flEX gives you the same broadcast and automation tools the big brands use — without needing a whole IT team to run it.

🎰 Rolling the Dice. Online gambling could be getting a 20% tax imposed on it in an attempt to curb the rise of online gambling and betting platforms in SA. Ok, but are our Temu spin and win wheels still safe?

🤖 Anti AI Ads. In the wave of AI-generated ad campaigns (and the backlash popular brands have received for using them), some brands are pushing back by pointing out that their ads are “human-made”. Interesting.

🌊 Ocean Drs Loading. Applications for the 7th OceanHub Africa accelerator have opened for African startups preserving and restoring ocean health. 24 ventures will be chosen for the 12-month acceleration programme, receiving hands-on support to accelerate growth. Nice.

🤓 Pay The Bill. The Gauteng Provincial Government is in a bit of a pickle with Microsoft for unpaid license fees to the tune of R344 million for the province's 24‘791 Microsoft users. Eina. All that cash to still have to use MS Teams…

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools, so our Founder’s Stack gives you real-time AI insights from Sidekick Lab, zero-monthly-fee bank accounts and business loans from Lula and more.

Every time you share The Open Letter, the stars shine a little brighter (and we give you cool stuff, too.)

Yesterday, we showed you the GhostWriter platform, asking what stops you from writing a book. Most here have the ideas, but not the…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⏳ No time, no chance (24%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📖 I freeze at “Chapter 1” (14%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🎉 Great ideas, zero follow-through (46%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😵 Plot holes the size of Gauteng (16%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔥 I’d write… if the tools weren’t so useless (0%)

Your 2 cents…

True dat, OG. In one sentence, you’ve summed up the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. 📚

Remittances from South Africa more than tripled in just eight years.

In 2024, people in SA sent R19.4 billion to 15 neighbouring countries, up from R5.9 billion in 2016:

💡 Zimbabwe, Malawi and Lesotho accounted for 84% of the total.

💡 Despite this growth, fees are steep: 15% from SA is double the G20 average (6.8%).

💡 Banks face stiff competition from WorldRemit, Flutterwave, Remitly, etc.

Digital disruptors aren’t just reducing fees; they redefined what’s possible in Africa’s remittance economy.

💡 Tool to Try: ReadingMinds helps you uncover customer emotions.

🗺️ That’s Interesting: In 1653, Dutch sailor Hendrick Hamel was shipwrecked on an Asian island for 13 years before escaping to Japan, where he wrote the first-ever Western account of Korea.

🪂 Next Level: Watch 104 skydivers set a new world record this past weekend.

🥇 Hack: A simple visual guide explains what different gold carat numbers actually mean.

🚋 Wow Site: Absurd Trolley Problems is a fun way to play through morality puzzles.

Help us make The Open Letter more useful to you.

Vote in the poll, leave a quick comment, or hit reply — we read every single one.