Lunar plumes {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Elon Musk's SpaceX accidentally made it to the moon for the first time on Wednesday. Part of a rocket fired in January 2025 surreptitiously crashed into the lunar surface this week, giving scientists a nice plume of dust to study. Boom. 🚀
In This Open Letter
Moving: The 60-second quote that makes moving fun.
Local: TeachMe2 hits TIME's global edtech top 100.
Global: The Big Mac says the rand should be R9.15.
Tech Jobs: 6 dev and engineering roles to grab now.
Raising: What you're really signing up for with VC.
Beyond: Where's the moat when AI can do everything?
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TRENDING NOW
Taking the stress (and some costs) outta moving
Moving house ranked as the 3rd most stressful life event (beating even childbirth, LOL), and this local team thinks they know why, so they built the 60-second fix…
Quick: How many boxes do you think your entire home's contents would fit into? "I don't know" is exactly the point, because no one would ever expect you to have that info on-hand. No one except for moving companies — just try and get a "quick" quote without filling out a detailed inventory list first.
That’s if you have someone to pass the list onto, of course…
Those wasted hours of senseless worry and effort are exactly what Thinus Pretorius (whom you may remember from our previous feature on Flyte transport management) teamed up with Johan Hattingh to solve. See, Johan had just come back from 4 years running Amazon's cross-border marketplace in London, where he picked up on the importance of customer obsession.
And smoothing the pain of the moving process in SA seemed a worthy cause, so they built a solution together…
The platform that prices the job before you've packed a single box
GoMove is an on-demand moving platform that lets you book and price a house move online in about a minute, then build your inventory list gradually, right up to the day before.
That means no surprise "stair fees" or "complex access" charges. You get your price up front, then build your inventory list live over WhatsApp (chat and voice note) while you're packing, all the way up to 24 hours before moving day.
GoMove empowers the supply side too: You can't sign up to drive for GoMove; they source from established small movers, vetted and trained by GoMove to create an awesome customer experience, before getting sent out in GoMove pink.
Building on the affordability angle
Moving house is a cash-flow bomb, with deposits and transfer costs forcing many to seek cheap alternatives.
But seeing the trend of BNPL making its way into industries like transport, GoMove lets you spread the cost.
Its newly launched Move Now Pay Later, run with Float, splits payment over two to six months, interest-free.
Btw: Johan tells us GoMove's bright pink branding is pulling its weight: One customer threatened to go public when it wasn't a pink truck pulling up in their driveway on moving day.
At a glance
Live since end-March, added Joburg in July
More than 10'000 moves under the founding team's belt, 4.8 across 500-plus Google reviews
Next: Switching on video-walkthrough inventory, an insurance layer, the same quick pricing built out for long distance, eventually international, and in time a move-anything platform in every town
Moving may never be fun, but nothing says it has to be miserable.
We're watching this space…
Have your say…
CHECK THIS OUT
Your support ticket is asleep in California
You logged a ticket for a vital SaaS tool at 09:14 SA time. They replied only at 21:40, asking you to confirm something you had already confirmed, and then went quiet until the next morning.
It’s not bad service, just geography. The US's business hours are not your business hours, and your outage does not move their queue. SA is a small market for them, so they can't afford to assign many resources to your problem.
That's why it helps to have local suppliers: It's not only cheaper, you can actually pick up the phone and talk to a human who is awake, knows what SARS and Home Affairs are, and can be on your side of the problem before lunch.
Every company on our stack is South African; you can actually reach them and get support when you need it.
RAISING IN SA
What you're really signing up for when you take VC money
Taking venture money changes two things most founders underestimate: your time horizon and your definition of success. You're signing up for the better part of a decade, all-in, with the destination narrowed to one thing: an exit big enough to matter to a fund.
Sizwe Nxumalo's blunt reminder in this month's piece: decide whether you want that life before the cheque clears, not after. And keep an eye on how much you raise, because investors get paid before founders do.
IN SHORT
Easing you into the weekend…
🎓 SA Tops the EdTech List. Teach Me 2 has landed 76th on TIME's World's Top EdTech Companies 2026, the highest-placed SA company on a 500-deep global ranking. Founder Nick Miller says SA founders keep assuming a Stanford degree means someone's operating a level above them. It isn't.
🍔 Burgernomics Says R9.15. The Big Mac Index puts the rand's implied value at R9.15 to the dollar, roughly 44% below where it actually trades. Adjust for GDP per capita and the gap halves to about R11, while economists put fair value nearer R16, almost exactly where it's sitting.
🗺️ 22 Years in the Making. New SA spatial data standards took effect at the end of June, 22 years after the Act that called for them. If you sell data services, logistics, insurance or property analytics into the public sector, this is about to become a procurement question. Getting there early is cheap.
🛍️ One Website, 100 Shops. TFG has identified 300 underperforming stores and closed 100 while its Bash platform grew 49%. The number that explains everything: the extra R1.1bn Bash brought in would have needed 100+ new stores and around R500m in capex the old way. Once online margins match store margins, every retail lease in the country gets repriced.
🚀 NaaS Lands in SA. The Open Letter team has rebranded Stream to create SA's first full-stack Newsletter as a Service (NaaS) product: Strategy, editorial, platform and growth, all in one package for B2B techs to own their audience and build trusted distribution.*
🏗️ Growth-Proof Architecture. Most agencies can write code. Very few can tell you whether your architecture will survive the next twelve months of growth, and then do the work to make sure it does. That's why we're looking at Octoco, an engineering firm built for exactly that moment.*
* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.
WHAT YOU SAID
Only the lonely...
Yesterday, we showed you the Meetable friendship app, asking how you actually meet new people these days. Just over half of you have quietly given up…
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 👯 Friends of friends, the classic warm intro. (48%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎉 Made a new one at last week's Open Letter event. (0%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 😬 I've kind of stopped trying. (52%)
Your 2 cents…
"Work, golf & church"
Three institutions, zero apps. Honestly, Ludwig might be onto something. ⛳
READY FOR A MOVE?
Jobs in Tech
OfferZen proudly sponsors Jobs in Tech
The name in SA tech employment for over a decade, OfferZen needs no introduction, and their ability to get you placed is only as legendary as the time, energy and money they save employers in finding top skills.
BEYOND THE NEWSLETTER
If AI can do anything, where's the moat?
We asked one of SA's power B2B2C founders if AI can do anything, where the moat is for your business. And her answer gives anyone in business something to think about…
Don't miss all the extra operator interviews and insights content we do on our social channels — come enjoy the vibez.
LOOKING TO NETWORK?
SA business events coming up
FinMaster Friday, 7 Aug, Stellenbosch: A money-themed board game night where you buy spaza shops, survive load shedding and out-net-worth the table. Get tickets.
Work Rewired: Hiring, Skills and Careers in the AI Economy, 13 Aug, Cape Town: What future-ready talent actually looks like when CVs stop being the signal. Register for free.
Digital Divas Summit 2026, 28 Aug, Cape Town: Women across business, tech and the creative industries on career growth, AI and visibility. 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.
AROUND THE WEB
Have some fun…
🐻 Next Level: This cat sommer fends off an actual bear.
🎰 Wow Site: Spin or Starve pulls up actual restaurants near you and spins a wheel to pick one.
