Unfortunate name? A lawyer named Mark Zuckerberg is suing Meta because they keep taking down his profiles for “impersonating their founder”. ✍

In This Open Letter

Of the R7bn in toys SA gives away each year, 80% are destined for landfills – this startup’s helping parents put gifts toward your child’s future instead…

The yield of the birthday party. 

We’ve all seen it: Mom drops the square cake from Checkers on the table and everyone suffers through 15 seconds of off-key “Happy Birthday” while the candles are dripping into the icing. 

But it's all worth it… because over there in the corner is the real prize: The gift table. 

And if Mom kept the party packs cheap and the guest list strategic, the ROI is solid and you’re in the green. Score. 

Or did you? Let’s face it, kids mostly get things they don’t need, play with a few times or sometimes don’t end up using them at all. Studies show 80% of toys end up in landfills (in fact, they make up 6% of all landfill material around the globe). 

Gifts that actually make cents

But what if those small gifts can land the kid investment into his/her first business, or buy them a car, or be the seed capital to start investing in stocks? 

South Africans dropped nearly R7 billion in toys and games last year, most of it forgotten within weeks. Imagine if even a fraction of that became long-term assets for kids instead of clutter.

Now with much smoother payment means like PayShap, which allows interbank instant payments of up to R5’000 for very low fees, the payment tech might just be ready for something new….

The local startup turning gifts into growth

Squirrel Away is a FinTech platform transforming celebrations into investments.

Parents sign up, complete KYC, create child profiles, and then share unique payment links so anyone can contribute for birthdays, Christmas and more. Funds land in a Squirrel wallet and then go into a money-market account, earning your child 5.75% interest per year.

They’ve also baked in a really sweet emotional component, where each gift is accompanied by a written message from the gifter (with video notes supported soon), so every gift comes with a memory. 

We caught up with Squirrel Away founder, Sibongile Maputla, and her product bet is simple: Make it as easy (if not easier) to gift R200 into a child’s future as it is to buy a toy. And it’s something the ecosystem is getting behind: Octoco Group’s venture studio Yenza has just announced its investment in Squirrel Away.

With some more investment vehicles in the pipeline, like unit trusts and ETFs, optional auto-invest rules for every incoming gift and support for tax-free accounts, they’re helping families help kids build out a pretty diverse investment portfolio before they’ve even matriculated.

Just think about it: R2’000 squirrelled away every year (1k for Christmas and their birthday) could turn into R60k+ by the time they turn 18.

We’re watching this space.

Levelling up top SMEs. Lula & News24’s SME Excellence Awards put R300k in prizes up for grabs for standout small businesses. Enter here.

Build your own CRM fast. Pagense is a no-code platform that lets you spin up a fully custom CRM in minutes — fields, pages and data your way. Try it here.

Search your stuff naturally. EmbeddingGemma lets you ask plain-English questions across emails, notes and web pages — private, on-device, no cloud. Learn more.

The ultimate laptop, built into your business budget…

Your business needs to stay competitive. 

But large upfront tech costs tie up cash flow.

So how do you get the tools you need to thrive?

Exclusively for SA businesses, Digicape gives you the latest Apple technology — and all the massive productivity gains it delivers — with easy finance options.

And we’ve got an exciting limited offer…

Why not get a new Digicape MacBook Pro M4? You get:
✅ 24 hours of battery life
✅ AI-ready performance
✅ The security and scalability of the macOS ecosystem

From just R299 per month over 12-, 24-, 36- or 48 months – you choose. 

You get all the Mac power for a low monthly cost and, at the end of the term, you can choose to return, upgrade or keep the machine.

For a limited time only.

💡 Young Money. Young SA entrepreneurs can now tap into essential support and funding through the Orange Corners Designs Incubation programme. There’s up to R53’000 in grants and invaluable mentorship up for grabs. Apply by 10 October.

💔 BreakupGPT. Despite being hailed the “Godfather of AI”, Geoffrey Hinton might just rue his Nobel Prize-winning work on the tech. His long-term partner apparently used ChatGPT to break up with him. That must sting a little.

💰 Google’s Giant Giveaway. Google has just awarded the University of the Witwatersrand’s Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery (MIND) Institute with a cool $1 million in funding to boost MIND’s capacity development and networking-building programmes. Very nice.

🧘 Nepal Goes Full Zen. Nepal has banned 26 social media sites, including Meta’s platforms, Reddit and LinkedIn. This, after they failed to “register” with the Nepalese government. Cue LinkedIn influencers posting: “Here’s 10 things having LinkedIn banned in Nepal taught me about B2B SaaS sales…”

🧮 TaxTim Gets Snapped Up. South Africa’s digital tax assistant TaxTim has been acquired by a consortium led by Twofold Capital, which includes Octoco, for an undisclosed amount. TaxTim has processed more than R700 million in refunds since 2011. Nice one folks.

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools and suppliers. That’s why our Founder’s Stack gives you real-time AI insights and decision automation from Sidekick Lab, zero-monthly-fee bank accounts and business loans in 4 minutes from Lula, plus loads more vital startup tools & services.

Yesterday, we showed you how FurSure is bringing pets to employee benefits in SA, asking what you’d do faced with a R25k vet bill. And most would make the hard choice…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🐾 Cough up, pets are family (28%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😭 Cry, then find a loan (7%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💔 Hard choices… goodbye, furry friend (47%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛡️ Wouldn’t happen. I’ve got insurance (18%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤖 Skip the vet, ChatGPT can surely help? (0)

Your 2 cents…

So true, Jessy! Also wonder if people even trust vets in SA. 😢

Glad to hear the insurance helps, Wendy! Wonder how it will fare as employee benefits. 🐕

On 9 September 1947, a team of operators found an actual moth disrupting the operations of their Harvard Mark II (a massive calculator built by then-Harvard director Howard Aiken).

Although not the first use of the actual word “bug” relating to computers, removing the moth from a relay was the first time anyone used the term “debugging”.

🛠 Tool to Try: A global rainy-season tracker that shows where/when it pours — clean, instant, embeddable.

🤔 That’s Interesting: Chuck Feeney gave away 99% of his $6.3B fortune to education and died a modest millionaire in 2023.

🔥 Next Level: Once-in-a-lifetime shot: a shooting star streaks beside a red moon during Sunday night’s eclipse.

🍔 Hack: This handy guide helps you email like a boss — honest, clear, not a pushover.

🌐 Wow Site: Type a mood into Yscenes and get instant movie picks.

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