Looking good {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? A software engineer got Claude Opus 5.5 to build this GTA V rendition with a single prompt in 50 minutes. Not the game, but not bad either. In fact, they built many versions with different AIs and models — compare them all here. 🤯

In This Open Letter

SA spends billions on getting the right people into the same room (one event alone added R690 million to our economy last year), but almost nothing goes into helping you connect with the right people while you're there — so this local startup built the WhatsApp fix…

Somewhere in almost every conference hall is a potential client, partner, key hire, or even the investor who could change the trajectory of your business. But you might never meet them, because event organisers don't optimise for it.

So you orbit the snack table, squint at a few lanyards, repeat the same three-minute chat a few times over, before leaving with a fistful of business cards of people you'll probs never email.

We know this all too well; that's why we started creating special WhatsApp experiences at our Open Letter events (if you know, you know) to break the ice a little and guide you to work the room. But a local startup is taking it to a whole new level…

The WhatsApp number that finds you a better room to walk into

Kernections finds you the right events to show up to, then helps you meet the right people once you're there. You chat to it on WhatsApp, creating your profile and telling it your interests. Then every Monday it sends five event picks straight to your chat. Nothing to download, no login.

Then, at the event itself, an app layer shows you who else is in the room by industry and interest, and lets you message them without handing over your actual number.

We caught up with Kernections co-founders Scott Eyono and Omesan Naidoo recently, who shared the story of an early user who was stranded at a dud conference in Joburg. She opened up Kernections and found another event nearby, turning a wasted trip around, without trawling Quicket, Facebook and three other sites to do it. Whoa.

A bigger data play

Scott (who works in market research by day) tells us the larger plan is gathering enough data from users to help event organisers know which topics people actually want, where those people are, and when to run those specific events.

We love that it tackles a true pain in a niche segment (only organisers will know), in that the potentially most powerful element of your event (the human element) is the one you have the least control over. We personally hope Kernections brings you to all our Open Letter events and introduces you to the exact right people, every time.

We're watching this space…

Quick one: the free Tourism Tech Talk in Stellenbosch is on Tuesday, and it's a room of forty. If you've been meaning to register, this is the nudge.

Half a day on the tech side of tourism: AI, automation, digital marketing, and what to do with the customer data you already have. Hosted by the Western Cape’s Department of Economic Development and Tourism (DEDAT) at the SU LaunchLab, featuring:

08:30 to 13:00, Tuesday 6 October, Hammanshand Road. It’s free, but seats are limited to 40. If you sell anything to travellers in this province, book before the last seats go.

An employee kept losing time every day re-explaining their role, rules and tone to ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini at the start of every single new chat. So they built Backstory, a free Chrome extension that saves that background once and drops it into a new chat with one click.

The lekker clever part:

✅ No prompt engineering, no model tricks, just saved text in the right place
✅ Built for people who use AI for business but don't want to learn the craft
✅ He's upfront that it isn't clever, and that's exactly the point

What's your team building, and where are you hosting it?

Most SA founders prep a raise from their own side of the table: the deck, the story, the number they want. So we asked one of SA's longest-serving venture capitalists what the investor is actually working out while you talk.

And these are 5 things a VC wants you to know before you ever book the meeting.

📱 Selling the Same Phone Twice. SA's biggest Apple reseller is opening stores for used phones, and it's heading outside of SA’s metros. The business model behind it is sharper than it looks.

🔍 TrueCaller Is Coming for Local Scam Tech. The 500-million-user caller ID company just launched a free scam checker, and Africa's next on the list. That's exactly what SA startups are building. They've got one real defence.

🚨 389 Lives, Zero Vehicles. SA emergency platform Aura says it saved 389 lives in six months without owning a single response vehicle. Now it's selling that model to the UK and US, and the reason they're buying says a lot about SA.

📊 Brand Clarity Secured. Stellenbosch's Sonic Fund and Sonic Trader needed to serve very different audiences without brand dilution. So DoubleShift built two distinct brand systems, giving both the clarity to scale globally with sharper investor and customer traction.*

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

Yesterday, we featured Amesect's black soldier fly waste management, asking how close you'd sit to the fly box. Most would prefer a different postcode, thanks…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😎 Right next to it, smells fine (17%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🪟 Same building, different floor, thanks (25%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🛰️ I'd like to be in another province (58%)

Your 2 cents…

Fair enough. For the record, we'd also want that in writing. 🪰

On 29 September 1983, Microsoft shipped Word 1.0 for MS-DOS, its first word processor, and the first-ever to make extensive use of a computer mouse, which, not coincidentally, Microsoft had released for IBM-compatible PCs earlier that year.

A free demo version also came with a copy of PC World magazine, the first time a floppy disk was ever bundled with a printed mag.

Thrive Under 25, 1 Oct, Cape Town: Ben Morton, Rivar Maharaj and the Véraison AI founders on building real businesses before 25, moderated by Kieno Kammies at Innovation City. Get tickets.

Founders Café, 10 Oct, Cape Town: A half-day founder morning with micro-talks, 50 seats and a R4'000+ gift bag. Register free.

Scaling Globally, Managing Locally, 15 Oct, Cape Town: OCFO, Sudor, Ruby Digital and Travelstart on growing offshore without losing control at home. 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.

🎨 Next Level: Did you see Lionel Messi score another impossible set-piece goal last Sunday?

🕹️ Wow Site: BJJ Tournaments shows you all the upcoming Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournaments near you.