Smell that {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Researchers are creating a new way to use smell in VR experiences: Skipping creating real aromas altogether and beaming ultrasound straight into the olfactory centre of your brain.

Send this to a friend who needs their olfactory bulbs tickled 🌼.

In Today’s Open Letter

South Africa has 1.9 million informal businesses (one-person operations built on hustle, word of mouth, and WhatsApp), most of them invisible online due to costs — this venture wants to cure that for R69 a month…

A third of SA’s small businesses say they need marketing support, so the demand is there. The on-ramp hasn't been.

The local startup putting small businesses on the map

Lekker Build is an AI-powered website builder that lets any South African small business owner build a professional, mobile-ready website in under 60 seconds. We timed it.

No technical knowledge, setup fees or login required; you just drop in your business name, a brief description, pick a colour, choose how customers should reach you (most pick WhatsApp), and the AI builds a complete one-page site with a live preview. 

From there, you iterate free style with natural language edits ("I don't like blue, try red"), images and social links. Like what you see? Then you go live on your own domain for R69 a month.

More on the way soon

Founder Anthony van Tonder set out to make a decent website builder, but users are already asking for more – they've already shipped custom email and simplified analytics. The roadmap includes invoices, one-click Google My Business integration and an e-commerce layer being built with payments partner iKhokha.

But the feature we're most excited about is still in testing: Chat to Build, a WhatsApp-native interface that lets users create and manage their entire site through conversation, in any language. Start in Zulu, get a website in English. No browser required.

(We managed to secure early beta access to Chat to Build for Open Letter readers to test.)

With 350+ websites built in just over a month since going live and a UWC Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation partnership to build off, Lekker Build looks set to tackle business infrastructure where SA's SMEs already are.

We're watching this space…

What if anyone could design like a pro? Anthropic's Claude Design lets you create polished pitch decks, prototypes and one-pagers in plain English — Figma's stock dropped 7% on launch day. See how it works here.

Can you turn a photo into an editable 3D world? Tencent open-sourced HY-World 2.0, a model that converts text, images or video into 3D scenes you can drop straight into Unity, Unreal or Blender — full commercial licence included. Try the demo here.

Need a full exec team but can't afford one? VenturOS gives you AI versions of a CFO, CMO, CTO and COO that turn your notes and docs into operating plans, PRDs, launch copy and OKRs in minutes. Check it out here.

🇿🇦 Flying The Flag. Two SA startups, Loop and Vambo AI, join 13 other African startups for the 10th cohort of the Google for Startups Accelerator Africa, a hybrid accelerator programme selected from nearly 2’600 applications. LET’S GOOOOOOOOO!

🧮 Mzansi’s Mini Maths Maven. An SA Grade 5 student just broke the Mathletics World Record by solving 143 problems in one minute. Kairav Chetty also beat 30k global students to become the No. 1 ranked in this year’s World Maths Day competition. Absolute machine.

🛵 Retail Turnaround. It’s hard to imagine that a mere 6 years ago, the Shoprite Group’s performance looked to be tanking. Today, their share price tells a different story. What happened? See how Shoprite’s market cap doubled since Sixty60.

💾 Excelling At It. The US issued a warning about a 17-year-old Excel vulnerability affecting Microsoft Office Excel 2000 through 2007 that lets bad actors gain control of entire systems. Sadly, the announcement was made on Microsoft Teams, hence the slow uptake on upgrades…

📊 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.*

📢 Pipeline's Got a Blind Spot? FDC has helped 300+ professionals turn LinkedIn into a lead generation engine — 12'000+ opportunities and counting. If your team's not visible, your pipeline's missing out.*

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

Most early-stage products in South Africa fail because users just don’t get what they’re supposed to do or how using them would be different/better from what they’re already doing. So we got an SA UX specialist with half a decade in top-flight brand design to come and show us the secret sauce.

Turns out, there are 5 super-logical steps the South African pros use to find your product’s core value action before taking it to market.

Yesterday, we showed you Champions Link sports sponsorships, asking whether the Springboks are commercially underleveraged. Most say only the top performers do well…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💸 They're leaving serious money on the table (15%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🎯 The top guys are fine, the rest not so much (61%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤷 Honestly, never even thought about it (18%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏢 The brands are the problem, not the system (0%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌍 The real money is overseas anyway (6%)

Your 2 cents…

Fair point, N. What Premiership footballers earn is a different (commercial) game. ⚽💸

SA is cutting the cord — and pay TV's grip is slipping fast.

💡 Pay TV (like DStv) lost nearly 10% of its subscribers in 2025, down 20% from the 2022 peak.

💡 DStv Premium costs nearly R1'000/month, 4x Netflix Premium at R229/month.

💡 Sport remains DStv's strongest lock-in, but that moat is shrinking.

The bundle era is ending as vertical, direct-to-consumer plays attract all the momentum.

🧩 Tool to Try: InsideBnB lets you paste any property link to get instant revenue projections, cap rates and a buy/hold/avoid verdict for short-term rentals.

😴 That's Interesting: A 17-year-old girl once slept for 64 days straight due to Kleine-Levin Syndrome.

🛹 Next Level: Watch skateboarder Spencer Barton set the world record for the highest ollie: 117 cm (46 inches) of pure air.

🏟️ Wow Site: The Number Wall maps every sports jersey number to the legends who wore them.