Holding it {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? The astronauts aboard NASA's Artemis II moon fly-by mission travelled further from Earth than any human before. The only problem? Their toilet malfunctioned for 5 out of their 10-day mission. Good news, it’s fixed and they’re heading back home now. 🚽

In Today’s Open Letter

In 2024, SA's National Financial Ombud handled 35’855 complaints against insurers and banks, 56% for denying claims, recovering only R328.5 million for consumers – this venture wants to help SA understand their policies easier…

Most of those disputes aren't fraud. They’re communication breakdown: People paying premiums for years, then discovering at claim time that the massive document they never really read says something they never expected.

And reading it might not even help. A University of Michigan study found that people given their actual policy wording were no better at determining coverage than people guessing without it. The document designed to protect you is actively working against you.

R700 million for the insurer's side of the table

SA has over 100 insurtech startups. Last year, Naked raised R700 million — the largest insurtech raise in Africa. But look where the money flows: faster underwriting, smarter claims processing, better fraud detection. Almost all of it is built for the insurer's side. Nobody's building for you, the consumer.

The local insurtech built for the other side

Insure110 is an AI-powered platform that lets you upload your insurance policy and get a plain-language breakdown of what it actually says.

The system extracts every clause, runs it through AI to translate the legalese, and flags coverage confirmations, exclusions, ambiguous language and gotcha traps — the stuff you only discover when you're already filing a claim. The whole document gets a coverage health score.

There's also a chat interface where you can interrogate your own policy: "Am I covered if my geyser bursts?" with answers pinned strictly to what's in your document.

Founded by Samashan Pillay, who spent over a decade inside the insurance industry, seeing exactly what happens on the other side of a declined claim, and decided to build the intelligence layer that ordinary South Africans should have had all along.

Insure110 doesn't give financial advice; it gives you the information you should've had before you signed. In a market where SA accounts for 70% of Africa's insurance industry (an industry sitting on R3 trillion in assets), the consumer-focused tooling has been essentially zero. But that changes now.

We're watching this space…

Can one person build a $1.8bn (R30bn) company? Matthew Gallagher launched a telehealth startup with $20'000, a dozen AI tools and zero employees. 18 months later, Medvi is on track for $1.8 billion in sales with a 16.2% net margin. See the full tech stack here.

Is AI making us intellectually lazy? A new study found 80% of people accepted bad answers from AI, while AI users rated their confidence 11.7% higher than non-users — researchers are calling it "cognitive surrender." Read more here.

Want an AI intern that actually works? Notis is a managed AI assistant that integrates with 800+ tools straight from WhatsApp, iMessage, Slack and Telegram — no tinkering, no security headaches. Try it here.

When Luno launched tokenised US stocks in August 2025, the question was whether South African investors would actually use them. Six months later, the numbers answer clearly: over 45’000 investors have bought in, with Tesla tokenised stock holdings alone approaching R24 million in value.

The appeal is practical. Tokenised stocks let you buy fractional ownership of US-listed companies ( Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, the full list) directly in rands. No forex conversions. No offshore allowances. No waiting for US trading hours. Each tokenised stock is fully backed by a real share held in regulated custody.

Luno now offers 61 US stocks and ETFs this way, and the new Blue Chip+ Bundle packages seven of the biggest into a single purchase alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum.

On trust: Luno was rated the most secure crypto platform globally in 2025 by Upguard, holds ISO27001 certification, is the 2025 Crypto Exchange of the Year and publishes independently verified proof of reserve reports every month. It's also a licensed financial services provider in South Africa (FSP No. 53314).

The infrastructure for South Africans to invest globally through a single app isn't theoretical. It's already being used at scale.

💰 7 VCs Writing Cheques Into SA. From Partech leading two $14.5M fintech deals in one week to the PIC backing AI startups through Hlayisani's R500M Fund II, we mapped the seven VCs funding SA startups right now and where the money's actually flowing.

🛒 Temu Comes Clean On The Price Tag. E-commerce giant Temu has started including VAT and import duties at checkout for SA shoppers, meaning the price you see is now the price you pay as SA authorities tighten the screws on cross-border e-commerce loopholes. Interesting.

🛵 On Yer Bike. As if SA roads aren't busy enough with what feels like every second vehicle a delivery bike, Uber plans on adding 300’000 new motorcycles into the mix as part of its Uber Moto offering, a key part of its R5 billion SA investment over the next 10 years. Meep meep.

🗣️ Talk To Me, Baby. Google has launched an offline-first dictation app called Google AI Edge Eloquent. Once you’ve downloaded the Gemma-based automatic speech recognition (ASR) models, you can hit record, see the live transcription, and it even filters out filler words. Lekker man.

💬 Sales, Not Spam. Poetry already had the brand and the audience. So Chat Inc turned WhatsApp into a high-conversion sales channel that pulled in 14.8k shoppers to generate R1.58 million in revenue at 269% ROI. Ask them to do the same for you.*

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

Yesterday, we showed you Social Light’s media monitoring, asking whether you trust what's trending online. For most, it’s a hard no…

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💯 Yes, I'd bet the farm (3%) 

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🙅 Hells no (33%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🧐 Sometimes it has a good handle on the collective view (27%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🗡️ The opinions expressed on the line are those of knaves (13%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ ☑️ Only if they are verified (24%)

Your 2 cents…

When even picking between "no" and "probably also no" feels like a philosophical dilemma, you know the internet's done its job, Ruan. 😂

SA imports its fuel; now, the Middle East crisis imports the pain.

Since 2020, three of SA's six refineries have shut down, halving capacity and leaving the country importing roughly two-thirds of its refined fuel:

💡 Over half of SA's imported diesel in 2024 came from Oman, the UAE and Bahrain; regions directly exposed to the Middle East conflict and Strait of Hormuz disruptions.

💡 Petrol jumped R3.06/l and diesel surged R7.51/l from 1 April, even after the government's temporary R3/l fuel levy cut — the largest single-month hike in years.

💡 46% of SA's petrol imports and ~95% of jet fuel come from Gulf states, making every escalation in the Iran conflict a direct hit on SA's transport and logistics costs.

With inflation expected to push near 4% and rate cuts now unlikely before mid-2026, SA's refinery gap is an economic vulnerability operators need to factor in.

🧩 Tool to Try: Simmerce lets e-commerce teams run customer simulations to validate features before launch.

🤼 That's Interesting: Old US president Abraham Lincoln invented wrestling’s chokeslam when he won a fight against gang leader Jack Armstrong in 1831.

🚢 Next Level: See a 1:1 scale recreation of the Titanic using 1'000 drones.

🌙 Wow Site: Kids Storyteller lets you paste in a bedtime story and choose from 30+ voices to read it aloud.

🧠 Work Smarter: Codie Sanchez says the biggest breaks don't come from grinding in silence; they come from increasing your luck surface area with more conversations, rooms and shots on goal.