Lucky guess? A woman used ChatGPT as a random number generator and won R2.5 million in the lottery. And she’s donating all of it to charity.

In Today’s Open Letter

Big Tech’s got reach, but not so helpful when it comes to local discovery – this startup’s making a play for how South Africans trade and share…

With 79% of SA online, you’d think it’d be easier to find what you’re really looking for. But 26 years at the top of tech, and Google Search still mostly delivers lists of mainly generic, irrelevant, sponsored results, biased toward advertising/SEO.

Most “near me” results still surface whoever shouts loudest, not what’s actually useful right now.

Why? Well, we’ve written about the unfairness of search for SA brands before, but this is more a case of hyper-local insights usually beating out globalised assumptions – like Lekkeslaap just having better on-the-ground insights than Booking.com.

And Google still processes around 5 trillion searches per day, but search is evolving.

The changing tide of search

With the rise of Generative AI, search behaviour is shifting from keywords to conversation: People want “burger under R100, open late, close to this suburb”, not some generic list.

It’s changing how we search. For years, most of us have defaulted to Google Search, rarely going over to the dark side of other search engines (wait, there are others). But GenAI platforms are being included in the conversation more and more.

The startup looking to help you find it on your doorstep

FoundIt is a hyper-local discovery app that connects users with deals, events, jobs and services near them. Coupled with a built-in marketplace for buy-and-sell, student jobs, business profiles and paid placements.

The interface is simple: Users ask specific questions and receive AI-driven results connecting them with relevant, local results – everything from drink specials to hot restaurants.

We caught up with Josh Northend, co-founder of FoundIt, and while they’re fully operational in Stellenbosch for now, they’ve got big plans to hit similar geographic locations around SA with a white-label franchise model for other regions.

Rather than yet another review site, FoundIt aims to use AI to connect a user’s real search intent with relevant hyper-local context, with escrow-style payments to reduce marketplace scams and tighter verification to keep noise down, all on the roadmap.

The network game

It’s naturally an awesome move, but the big play here would be nailing the distribution on this: Getting peeps to forego current behaviour and default to your app is a risk – but obviously MEGA if you pull it off.

If FoundIt can pull that off, get adoption and deliver fresh, verifiable and spam-light results, it’ll be a major SA move. 

We’re watching this space…

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Think of your workweek as a story….

In the opening scene, the cast is encouraged to ask the hard questions instead of staying politely quiet. Then comes the pilot episode: One small, low-cost experiment where the only KPI is what you learn.

The plot thickens when a customer voice enters, reframing the challenge and showing that the real villain isn’t “resources” but friction. In the writers’ room, ideas flow from finance, operations, vendors, even customers and everyone adds richness to the script.

And finally, the twist: someone asks, “Why not?”, and a default is suddenly challenged.

That’s how everyday work can shift from routine to momentum

To make these habits stick, leaders need structure and practice. Red & Yellow Creative School of Business’s Postgraduate Diploma in Creative Leadership is designed to:

✅ Embed these behaviours
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🇿🇦 Flying the Flag. Meta's 2025 Llama Impact Grant has crowned five winners across Sub-Saharan Africa, with two hailing from South Africa. Each gets a cool $20,000, mentorship, and global network access. Nice one, Vambo AI and PropelMapper…

📵 SA’s Spam Struggles. Spam calls in SA have now gotten so bad that people are outright ignoring calls, with between 80-90% of calls flagged as spam. Aaaaand block!

🗨️ WhatsApp's Linguistic Leap. WhatsApp is gradually letting users translate messages on the fly, with a “Translate” feature rolling out in more than six languages on Android and 19 languages on iOS. Very cool.

🤑 FNB's Lending Spree. FNB is cranking up its lending gears as it eyes growth, especially intensifying its focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises to grow its earnings. Hopefully means a growth rocket ship for SMEs.

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools and suppliers. That’s why our Founder’s Stack gives you company setup and compliance in one place with Govchain, brand and communications that build trust with DoubleShift, and loads more vital startup tools & services.

On Tuesday, we showed you how Fintura is enabling smarter accounting in SA, asking what admin task you’d happily forego. Most would ditch customer support calls…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧾 Filing tax returns (24%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📊 Updating spreadsheets (10%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔑 Remembering endless passwords (15%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⏰ Tracking deadlines you’ll probably miss (2%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📞 Sitting on hold with customer support (49%)

In just five years, gambling has overtaken sport and culture in SA’s personal services economy.

Stats SA’s latest survey reveals:

💡 Income from bookmakers and online gambling services ballooned from R10.1 billion in 2018 to R152.6 billion in 2023.

💡 Gambling and betting now make up over 90% of income in the sports and recreation services category — R191 billion of R209 billion total.

💡 Personal services as a whole generated R688 billion in 2023, with 37% now coming from recreation and gambling — up from 20% five years ago.

Once a small slice of the pie, and still virtually unregulated, gambling has become the defining force in South Africa’s leisure economy.

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📜 That’s Interesting: The longest year in history lasted 445 days. And we have Julius Caesar to thank for it.

🚢 Next Level: This is what it’s like standing on a ship being blown in half.

⚠️ Hack: If a video is exactly 8 seconds, it’s probably AI-generated.

🌊 Wow Site: Adrift lets you share, read and discuss anonymous doubts and dreams, drifting in a tranquil sea of uncertainty.

Hey, Renier here 👋, co-founder of The Open Letter.

I’ve spent 17 years in SA tech and seen hundreds of startups rise and fall. The ones that made it all had one thing in common: a strong community.

That’s why I started The Founder Collab — a space where 100+ SA founders connect for:

☕ Meetups & events

🎓 Weekly masterclasses

📚 35+ expert sessions on-demand

🤝 A network unlike anything else

Come build your startup alongside me and 100+ other SA founders in The Founder Collab.

Spaces are limited — new founders join weekly.

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.