Blow out {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? This weekend, robot companies got together in China for World Games, and the internet's favourite part is the most dramatic robot fail we've seen so far. Ouch. 💥

In This Open Letter

SA has record numbers of marathon runners, but so many amateurs hit performance walls pretty quickly, so these two weekend warriors built them the unfair-fair advantage…

Something no one tells you about trail and marathon running is that fueling a body to perform at that level is an absolute science. The pros have teams helping them manage their carbs and glycogen levels. Our weekend warriors have none of that, leading to painful failures and sometimes serious injury.

It's a pain childhood friends Brad Spies and Scott Mullin know all too well. Like when Brad was prepping for the 2024 Skyrun (a gruelling 38 to 100km, self-supported, self-navigational mountain ultra trail race), the night before tryna memorise grams of carbs and sodium per hour like a matric pupil cramming for finals, only to sleep badly, forget his whole plan and end up nearly destroyed in the race and on IV drip instead of at the finish line.

That's when Brad and Scott hacked together a scrappy fix, a rough nutrition calculator tool built in Bolt, just to help them get through the next 50-mile trail race without dying. And considering no one ended the day on a drip this time, it looked like it was working…

The local guys with a fuelling plan that fits on a sports watch

FuelCue is a web-based race-fuelling planner for endurance athletes that lets you feed in routes and conditions with nutritional inputs and get a complete race plan on your nav tool (watch or Garmin, whatever).

There is also a coach's portal, built for the many SA running coaches still planning their athletes' fueling in Excel. And on the roadmap are: real-food categories, time-based cues to replace the current distance-based ones, dynamic mid-race adjustments if your pace drops, a push into the cycling market, and use cases stretching out to open-water swimming.

It's still early days: FuelCue is about a year old, built by a team of five who all still hold down day jobs. The platform already has around 70 early sign-ups so far, with roughly half of them coming back for another race.

We're watching this space…

You've sent this message how many times into a WhatsApp group or a DM and got maybe two replies: one name with no context and someone volunteering their brother-in-law.

The Founder Stack answers that question properly, with vetted SA business tools and suppliers you can trust to help grow your business.

Stop asking around.

Start from a list of guys that want to help you.

📡 Cell C Launches 5G. Cell C switched on 5G with no launch event, and claims the widest coverage in SA by roaming on both Vodacom and MTN. Roughly 28'000 roamed sites versus the 5'500 it once owned, on R810m capex while the incumbents spend billions.

🎥 When Will SA Cops Get Body Cams? The tender still hasn't been advertised, R14m sits unspent, and the national plan covers 450 cameras. Cape Town rolled out thousands by April, so what’s the hold-up?

🛰️ What's Really Holding Starlink Out of SA. SpaceX finally appeared before Icasa to press on the 30% equity rule, but that rule sits in the Act, not the regulations, so the regulator can't move it. Another deadlock with no scheduled fix.

📱 Why Are Phone Contracts Suddenly So Expensive? Contract prices rose 106-114% over a decade while retail prices climbed only 56-76%. A decade ago, contracts were 1% cheaper than cash; today they run 31-36% more. Some value’s getting lost in the financing here.

🌾 Operations Simplified. InteliGro struggled with fragmented data and manual admin in their agri software. So Octoco built a unified system that cut admin, standardised crop recommendations and enabled faster, data-driven decisions for farmers and advisors.*

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

Some SA businesses don't fail because the founder got it wrong; they fail because the whole model rested on things the founder never had a say in. We asked an SA founder who spotted it early, pivoted out, and has since raised around R50m how to run the same check.

And it turns out, there are 4 specific questions to spot the parts of your business you don't control before they decide your fate for you.

Bitcoin might be bitcoining again. BTC went from $64k to $77.5k in just 3 days last week, driving the best performance we've seen since 2024, causing some to get cautiously optimistic that BTC might be back again. Plausible, because…

Ethereum is doing even better. ETH is up about 29% to $2'430, a four-month high, beating bitcoin's 23%. On 20 August alone, it gained nearly 20%, its biggest day since May 2025.

Two ways Africa can win at crypto. Binance Africa's Larry Cooke says we need more financial literacy: young Africans will be 42% of the world's youth by 2030, but only ~27% of Sub-Saharan adults are financially literate. Secondly, regulation needs to step up; we're already the third fastest-growing crypto market.

Disclaimer: Digital asset prices can be volatile. The value of your investment may go down or up and you may not get back the amount invested. You are solely responsible for your investment decisions and Binance is not liable for any losses you may incur. Not financial advice. For more information, see our Terms of Use and Risk Warning.

Last week, we showed you Yoco's card-link loyalty for SMEs, asking how deep you are in the points game. Most here are slightly embarrassed about it…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💳 My wallet is mostly loyalty cards and quiet shame (68%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ☕ One free coffee and I'd switch shops instantly (25%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧠 I know my Smart Shopper number off by heart (7%)

Your 2 cents…

Interesting, Carola, that's a question we'd love to put to the Discovery founding team. Did you know one of the co-founders is a speaker at our next Joburg event? 🎤

Led By Her: Chill & Connect, 25 Aug, JHB: Women leaders, drinks, snacks and a whole-body cryotherapy reset with Kanya Middleton on why talented women still hesitate to be visible. Get tickets.

Beyond the Red-Green Loop, 26 Aug, Online: Schalk Neethling (17 years on the open web, 12 at Mozilla) on building the environment coding agents work inside, not just better prompts. Register free.

Indie Hackers #52, 27 Aug, CPT: Lean-coffee format, no keynotes, no pitching, just people building tech businesses that make money talking about what's actually hard. Join here.

Powered by Radi. Want your business event in front of 36,000 The Open Letter readers? Host it on Radi, and it lands here.

🤸 Next Level: The only thing crazier than her body control is the comment section.

📖 Wow Site: ClearRead helps you remember everything you read, one-off cost, no subscription.