Profit efficiency {{ FIRSTNAME }}? Some new online detective work suggests that Valve, the owner of online gaming hub Steam, has only 350 employees, yet generates $17bn per year. If that’s true, they are more than 10x more revenue efficient per employee than any company in the world.

In Today’s Open Letter

The global fiction market is skewed against non-US authors – but this SA startup’s flipping the script…

Software Engineer by day, and SciFi writer by night, Marius Myburg did what most writers only threaten to do… He got tired of those “one-click, here’s your book” AI tools and built his own GhostWriting system.

Fast forward to just over a week ago, when he launched a South African-made platform that looks to solve a unique pain for budding authors…

The big publishing dilemma(s)…

Globally, the fiction books market is worth $11bn (R189bn), with sci-fi and fantasy making up about 10-20% of that (so R18–R36bn?). But the traditional author-agent-publisher model is an exclusive club: The global books pipeline is built to run from the US and European countries (input) through their markets and down into the rest of the world (output).

So it’s extremely difficult to get an actual book contract from SA, especially if you’re working a full-time job or trying to build a business.

Now, self-publishing is growing fast (more than double from a decade ago), ‘cos people are craving unique voices – and there are some notable success stories.

Here’s the thing: traditional writers get only 10-15% of royalties on book sales, self-published authors get up to 70%. So, the game is really just producing decent quality books in high enough volume and unique niches and then finding a way to reach a big enough audience.

And AI can help

The writing industry can’t agree on whether AI is a threat or a tool. Publishers don’t want AI manuscripts, but 45% of authors already use generative AI in their work anyway.

But existing AI tools are approaching things wrong: No one wants to relinquish full control to the AI, ‘cos that’s just slop. But a guided, assisted experience, where you’re still in control of the story and the AI just does some of the heavy lifting, now that could be something…

The local startup keeping authors in the driver's seat.…

GhostWriter is an AI-assisted writing platform for novels, screenplays, game scripts and more. But it’s the antithesis of AI writing tools because it’s not a “submit a sentence and get a full novel”... Authors actually guide GhostWriter to where the story must end up.

Pick the genre, tone, characters and locations, specify the type of narrative the story should follow, give the AI rules to obey: proper publishing standards we’re talking about here – check out Marius’ own GhostWriter titles Anatomy of the Unknown.

Gemini sits under the hood and the platform features novel-to-audiobook conversion and a “Writing Academy” that teaches authors about the writing process and will score your writing to help you improve.

It has a simple pricing model: Buy credits (no recurring fees) and about $10 (R172) lets you generate a standard-length novel. Marius even added a marketplace where readers can purchase your book(s).

It’s early days, but GhostWriter is trying to keep writers at the helm in the age of AI, and we’re watching this space…

Who says you can’t do a little good to get new customers?

Brazil’s biggest private bank, Itaú, used WhatsApp to distribute books (free children’s books as PDFs) straight to families who couldn’t access physical copies.

But here’s what’s really clever:

✅ Books as WhatsApp media messages got great reach
✅ Ads that click to WhatsApp pulled parents into a chat
✅ More than 2 million books sent and 800’000 people reached

For many communities in Brazil’s rural regions, WhatsApp became the new library. And the campaign meant the bank got warm intros to a lot of parents who need financial services.

What would you build on WhatsApp today?

The Founder Collab is where South African founders help each other build successful businesses, and we’ve got a Mega deal where you get R40’000’s worth of business-building tools at 85% off for the whole year…

Total value: R40k+

Black Friday deal: Get it all now for just R6’000 (85% off!) + the first 10 peeps to claim the deal get a free business book bundle. Access is limited — claim before Monday, 1 December 2025, to qualify.

💰 Welcome to the New Age. Stokvel Academy has landed funding from E Squared Investments to run an 18-month pilot to digitise more than 3’400 stokvels, and bring community financial education to more than 28’000 stokvel members. Very nice.

⌚ The Nurse on Your Wrist. The Netcare hospital group is keeping closer tabs on their patients thanks to a partnership with Dutch medical technology company Corsano Health. They’ll be able to get continuous, clinical-grade monitoring of all key vital signs 24/7 thanks to wearable devices. Very cool.

🌏 Earth’s Space Hole Gets Smaller. This year’s hole in the ozone layer is the 5th smallest since the international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals took effect in 1992. Well done for using less Axe body and Glade toilet spray err’body…

🍀 Lucky Number 4. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is inching closer to the $4 trillion valuation mark, looking to be only the 4th company to ever do so. Alphabet stocks have climbed 70% this year so far, giving them a market cap of $3.82-trillion. Sjoe, hey…

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools, so our Founder’s Stack gives you company setup and compliance with Govchain, trust-building brand & comms with DoubleShift and more.

When you share, we give you cool free stuff.

Yesterday, we showed you how Sudor is helping triple fitfluencer income, asking which fitness influencers you follow. And most here follow founder-first…

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🕵️‍♂️ That guy who exposes shady fitness influencers (15%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👟 Never actually exercising, but always selling something (15%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 💪 SA’s very own, Daddy Noel (32%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥩 The Liver King… still somehow showing up (0)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🎯 That guy who only trains Founders over 40 (38%)

Want to speak on SA’s biggest software stage? Devconf 2026 is calling for diverse speakers: from first-timers to seasoned pros. If your message belongs in front of SA’s tech community, apply by 30 Nov. Apply here.

Deep tech founder? Hello Tomorrow Challenge offers €100k equity-free for startups in advanced computing & cybersecurity. Apply by 30 Nov. Apply here.

Biotech innovators: SA–Cuba Biotechnology Collaboration Call invites R&D partnerships on therapies for chronic and neurodegenerative diseases. Apply by 5 Dec. Details here.

Eco-entrepreneurs (16–28): Mercedes-Benz Fellowship funds 1'000 young innovators tackling environmental challenges. Apply by 12 Jan. Apply here.

Want to promote your event/programme here? Let us know.

💡 Tool to Try: Product Huntr lets you mine thousands of ProductHunt.com launches for validated startup ideas.

🐊 That’s Interesting: In 1973, two freshwater crocodiles escaped from an Australian zoo by climbing a 2.5-meter fence. Officials first thought the crocs must have been stolen, ‘cos no one believed crocs could climb that high. (They can.)

🌋 Next Level: Watch lava flows in Iceland captured from a passenger plane a few days ago.

📋 Hack: Turn on clipboard history on Windows or Android to unlock multi-item copy/paste.

🎖️ Wow Site: Linked-X lets you instantly add LinkedIn-style badges to your X profile.

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