Retail therapy {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? You don't need money to enjoy the thrill of shopping with this fun little app made by a local. Shop, wait for the driver and see how much you've saved. LOL. 🥸

Send this to a friend you want to confuse the heck out of. 🤭

In This Open Letter:

A few years ago, a small team inside Investec spent a weekend wiring up an API to the bank's card engine. Most banks would've buried it, but this one shipped it…

Out of that weekend came an impressive 3’200+ strong community of developers building real things on top of a bank, with one rule: Share early and often, all open source.

No fanfare, just a deliberate, slow-burning community that hand-picks its members and rewards them with access, not cash.

Community Lead Nick Benson says their secret was treating developers like adults, giving them a real product to build on and then getting out of the way.

The product they're building on is Investec's Programmable Banking, an editor that lives inside the banking login. You write a short function that sits between the swipe and the approval that gets to veto the payment on whatever logic you like. Block anything over R50 at a bakery or kill the card after 6 pm – whatever you want to enforce.

And here is what happens when you give a few thousand SA devs the ability to just cook:

For the love of it

For real money

131+ open-source builds and counting, all on GitHub.

Through the years, though, these devs have been making moves. Some are now founders, CTOs, ops leads or even finance heads, slowly and methodically helping build the companies that decide where the money sits.

It’s such a cool thing. And it’s only in SA.

We’re watching this space…

Who still panics through tax season alone?

TaxTim just launched TimAI, a free AI tax assistant on WhatsApp to help you manage your taxes in the app you use every day.

But here's what's really clever:

✅ Built with guardrails: if it doesn't know, it says so
✅ Free for all South Africans, not just TaxTim customers
✅ Human tax practitioners still handle the complex stuff

The WhatsApp version gives any South African fast, reliable tax guidance. The on-platform version becomes your personal tax assistant. When tax season opens on 13 July, it scans your history and knows your return, your history, your specifics.

What could you build on WhatsApp today?

If you've been meaning to "do something about AI" but don't want to gamble on the wrong tool (or sign a six-figure consulting retainer), this is the low-risk way in.

Kwanda's AI Roadmap is R10'000 once-off. You book online, spend an hour with their team, and within 48 business hours, you have a plain-English report: The 2-5 highest-value places to apply AI in your business, each with a build plan, the right tools, and the time and money you'd save.

Then you decide whether to build it yourself from the report, hand it to your own team, or have Kwanda build it for you. Either way, the map is yours — no retainer, no lock-in.

It's the missing middle between buying random tools and paying a global consultancy R100k a month: a senior, honest diagnosis, priced for a business that's serious but not made of money.

📡 SA's 5G Lie. SA users spend a laughably small % of time on 5G. Not because they don’t want to, but because of where operators chose to deploy it. So many expensive towers that almost no one can access is why we can’t have nice things.

🚭 $9bn Vape Market, Shut Down. Shopify is banning all vapes from its platform this week (every product, even FDA-authorised ones) after a year of pressure from 25 US state AGs. The US’s (mostly Chinese) illegal vape market runs at $9bn.

📱 Capitec's iPhone Play. Capitec Connect just slashed the iPhone 16e to R9'499 (down from R11'999) as its device sales division (launched October 2025) gains traction. The MVNO is lapping rivals in customer count. This bank wants everything.

🤖 AI Crime Outpaces Compliance. AI-powered financial crime in SA (fake identities, automated phishing, synthetic voice fraud) is now moving faster than the GACP framework can adapt. Here are 5 questions every board should be asking right now.

🌍 Thinking Offshore? For SA founders going global, the Isle of Man offers 0% corporate tax, 0% capital gains tax, 0% withholding tax, UK VAT access and a business-friendly legal system. Finance Isle of Man helps companies move, structure and scale internationally — sans the usual friction.*

📐 UX From the Inside. "Working with Isoflow is a fantastic experience. They always provide high-quality work and consistently surpass my expectations," says Enrico Ferigolli, Retail Executive of Omnichannel at Pick n Pay. The difference: they embed with your team instead of handing over a deck. See how they work.*

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

Yesterday, we showed you Abby Health’s workplace screening, asking if you'd use an Abby Health station. Most here leapt at it…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🩺 I'm first in the queue (50%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 📱 Only if my results stay on my phone, not HR's (38%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🗣️ I'd need someone to explain what the numbers mean (4%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🙈 I'd rather not know my numbers (4%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⏰ I keep meaning to do my annual check but never get round to it (4%)

Your 2 cents…

100% Lorna. In fact, everything should be available from vending machines at the office. 🚑

Few things waste a founder or operator's day faster than being ghosted. So we got an SA GTM engineer who's built 85+ AI sales systems to show us the simple reminder-and-warmth workflow he uses to stop the no-shows before they cost another afternoon.

And it turns out, there are 4 specific steps to stop prospects from ghosting your sales calls.

☝ Send this to a founder who gets blue-ticked too often.

Purpose-driven SA entrepreneur? Nedbank Business Ignite wants 15 finalists in WC and Gauteng — showcase live on 702 or Cape Talk, win R200k cash plus R200k in airtime. Closes 3 July. Enter now.

Need more than just advice? The Founder Collab bundles R40k+ in tools, cloud credits, legal sessions and a curated founder community into one membership for SA tech builders. Join now.

Young agri founder in an AU country? GoGettaz puts up to $50k behind agribusiness builders — pitch live in Rwanda in September. Closes 28 June. Apply now.

Want free AI skills training? Google Hustle Academy 2026 offers one-day bootcamps and 60-min webinars for SA entrepreneurs and SME owners. Zero cost. Register free.

🧩 Tool to Try: Vexlio lets you explain complex ideas with diagrams that people can click and explore.

💄 That's Interesting: The term "hypoallergenic" doesn't legally mean anything. The US’s FDA itself says there are no standards governing the term; it means whatever a company wants it to mean. Check your bathroom shelf.

🔥 Next Level: Did you know you could use outboard engines to put out a fire?

💰 Wow Site: WhatsElonWorth show you how rich Elon Musk really is.