Hi {{ FIRSTNAME | there, }}
Selling hard? The Anthropic team just revealed the hilarious results of letting their AI run a real shop at their headquarters: It started a mini-fridge concierge service, sold Coke for $3 from the company’s free cold drinks fridge, ordered in actual tungsten (metal) cubes (with real company budget) and threatened to call security when no one believed it had signed a contract with The Simpsons. 😁
TRENDING NOW
Helping Startups 2x Their Returns
Startups have a high failure rate – we look at the local scale-up solution that boosts their success rates by 30%...
The startup game is a high-risk one… Roughly 90% don’t make it: 20% fail in the first two years, 45% don't see 5, and 65% fail before year 10. Even the flavour of the moment, AI startups, see 85% close up shop in the first 3 years.
Less than 1% of startups hit that sweet $1 billion valuation to become unicorns.
Why? Nearly 50% of startups fail due to money (surprise, surprise). They either don’t have, can’t raise, or run out due to poor financial planning. And even if you manage to bootstrap or survive Africa’s startup funding winter (2024 funding decreased to half of 2023 levels), you still need to wade through a million more startup roadblocks to survive.
The opportunity
The rise of the venture studio model presents a super interesting opportunity, though. Startups built with embedded teams (including designers, developers, marketers, and growth strategists) can dramatically reduce failure risk.
One can't argue with the fact that studio-backed startups tend to make bigger strides, quicker. Where traditional startups take about 3 years to raise seed, studio startups get there in 11 months. They also succeed 30% more often – and deliver 2x the returns.
So, how do we get more SA startups into venture studios?
And it’s quite a bit, actually…
Who’s solving the problem
The Delta is a venture ecosystem with a suite of solutions to help startups and founders bring their ideas to life. Founded in 2015, they combine capital, execution, and community into one ecosystem.
Their solutions include:
Delta Services: 150+ in-house product, tech, growth, legal, branding, and ops specialists.
Delta Studio: A multi‑partner startup studio that pairs operator-angels with founders, has launched 20+ ventures, with a self-proclaimed €5.4 billion+ portfolio valuation.
Delta Capital: An aligned investment arm that invests in standout ventures.
Delta Campus: Shared workspaces in Germany that enable studio founders with co-working, peer-learning, and collaboration.
Louis Buys, Founder & CEO at The Delta, joined us on the first episode of Season 2 of the How Would You Build It podcast to share insights on the importance of moulding young founders, growing a business in SA before taking it international and the impact of AI on the venture space…
WHATSAPP’S HOT
They Built What on WhatsApp?!?
Who wants to recharge their meter via the bank? It’s slow, time-consuming and there’s no support or fault reporting when the transaction fails. So, Prepaid24 built the ability to do everything via WhatsApp. Now South Africans can sign up, recharge their prepaid meter, buy airtime and data, pay municipal accounts, DStv or even purchase Netflix or Uber vouchers straight from a chat – check it out.
Bonus for Prepaid24: they can sommer run all their support via WhatsApp, too.
What other everyday task would you give a WhatsApp upgrade?
Chat Inc proudly sponsors WhatsApp’s Hot
The trusted WhatsApp people powering WhatsApp and Chat Commerce experiences for some of SA's largest and most respected brands, from Lead Acquisition, Outbound Direct Marketing and enterprise-grade transactional chatbot platforms.
Chat Inc started locally, and today it is trusted by brands globally.
IN SHORT
Something sharp for the water cooler…
💵 Cashing in on e-comm. Cash-first SAns can shop online thanks to a Mukuru and Payfast partnership. With MukuruPay (MPay), customers choose Mukuru at checkout, get a unique order number and pay in cash at any of Mukuru’s 11,000+ payment points nationwide. Very cool — especially when cash still costs the SA economy R30 billion a year.
🏡 Real Estate Boom. The Mother City continues to see an influx of South Africans from all over. And it’s driving house prices with an 8.7% increase, above the national average of 5.2%, the 7th year in a row, Cape Town’s real estate market outperformed the rest of SA. Good news for some, pain for others…
🔭 NASA and Chill? Netflix will welcome content from NASA to its platform later this year, including livestreams of rocket launches, astronaut spacewalks and live views of Earth from the ISS. Very interesting. Looks like Netflix is broadening its livestream horizons.
🥛 Milking it. SARS seems to have cashed in on South Africans cashing out a part of their retirement funds in the first 6 months of implementing the two-pot system. They collected a cool R12.9 billion in additional tax revenue. Hmmmm…
✅ The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with real-time AI insights and decision automation from Sidekicklab, zero-monthly-fee bank accounts and business loans in 4 minutes from Lula, plus loads more vital startup tools & services.
WHAT YOU SAID
Your move…
Yesterday, we asked what you’d do if your onboarding costs shot up by 6’500%, and most would look for a workaround…
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧃 Eat the cost like a champ (12%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📈 Push it downstream to users (28%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✂️ Slow growth and cut back (0)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🧙♂️ Hack it (DID, smart workarounds) (52%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤔 Got a spicier plan? Tell us 👇 (8%)
Your 2 cents…
“Onboarding a new client is expensive… a 6500% hike will kill small businesses, but won't affect the end user that much if they have to pay R10 per person to be onboarded.”
Indeed, Charmaine, and that’s probably what’s going to happen.
“There is a secondary queue for validation which runs after hours at a lower cost, maybe even 15 cents, so the R10 applies only to new clients who need to be validated in real time, or close to it. Daily checking of existing clients can be done overnight. It will be interesting to see what the DID services charge — unlikely to be 15c.”
Right you are, William, and it’s apparently only R1 per record, so a def option. 🧠
“You would need to clarify what’s driving the cost for any meaningful answer. That's my answer 😉.”
Ooh, yes, Clifford, we didn’t want to skinner but apparently SA’s low verification cost saw a lot of third party guys run checks and then sell it on to others at a premium — so many that it slowed things down and prompted the need for upgrades (hence the price hike). 🔍
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