Go take a look {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? An amateur pilot thinks he’s found Amelia Earhart’s plane wreckage via Google Earth. No mission’s been announced yet, but it’d be cool to solve the 90+ year mystery. ✈️

* In yesterday’s letter, we accidentally said SA has 18M instead of 2.7M private sec officers. Nope, 1 in 3 people aren’t security guards. Sorry, it was late at night, and our dumb fingers missed the full stop and hit 1 and 8 instead of the 2 and 7 keys right next to them. 😔

In Today’s Open Letter

As many as 2.25 million “small” SA landlords self-manage – this platform greatly simplifies small-scale rental management…

Around 4.5 million South African households rent their homes. And, though we don’t have specific SA stats, globally, 50% of landlords tend to self-manage (versus using rental agencies).

So, pretty safe to assume that around 2.25 million SA rentals are managed by someone with a spreadsheet and a vague understanding of SARS’s rules around rental property.

The small-scale landlord’s dilemma

Tax is a big deal in property: There’s rental income taxes, a list of deductibles (bond interest, rates and taxes, levies, repairs, insurance, etc.) that old-hat landlords might know, but can be a hard lesson for new landlords just starting out.

And management agencies aren’t cheap. They typically charge 7–12% of rental income, and in SA rentals average R 9’400 per month. That’s R12’000+ in annual fees – not great in a highly competitive market.

We need a way to help smaller, new landlords compete…

Making a big impact for the little landlord

Local property management platform Little Landlord handles the monthly admin: invoice generation, payment tracking, expense recording and annual extract structured to support your SARS submission, so smaller landlords don’t need an agent.

It’s deliberately built for ease of use: Onboard your property, set up your lease, and the system guides you through complexities like passing the water bill to the client, generating an invoice (ten seconds, maybe less).

It’s not a tax advisor, but it’ll prep everything your accountant needs.

We spoke to founder Riaan Nel, himself a small-scale landlord, who built it to replace his Excel template, and is now making it available to others.

Little Landlord is geared for growth, too: It has a portfolio dashboard for tracking occupancy, income, expenses, lease agreements, bond interest, etc., when you start adding properties to the mix. With features like property inspections coming soon.

Quick sums: If our 50% self-managed assumption holds, that’s 2.25 million little landlords in SA. Capture just 0.1%, and you have 2’250 at R149 per month — a R4 million per year business.

We’re watching this space…

Who still builds the same grocery list across 5 different apps?

We Need Milk gives South Africans a single grocery list that compares prices across Spar, Checkers, Pick n Pay and Woolworths — with a simplified WhatsApp layer incoming.

Here’s what’s really clever:
✅ One list compares your full basket across major retailers
✅ Shop by recipes or specific ingredients, not just products
✅ Soon: build your list by chatting on WhatsApp

Instead of jumping between apps for deals, WhatsApp now becomes the front door of your grocery run.

What would you build on WhatsApp today?

⛲ Investment property plays: See how to double a boutique hotel’s value.

📈 Business automation for scale: Check out this teardown of automation tools for costs at scale.

What tools or skills would you like to see here? Reply to this email and let us know…

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🐟 Swimming Into a Bigger Pond. Local FinTech littlefish has just raised a $9.5 million Series A round led by global tech investment firm Partech, and comes 1 year after littlefish closed its seed investment round. Very well done, team littlefish.

🚌 Meep Meep. Local EV player GoMetro has given a Cape Town launch date for the eKamva electric minibus taxis. Two years after its official 2024 launch, the EV mini-bus taxis should hit Century City routes in Cape Town in October this year. Nice one.

🛰️ Namibia Says No. The Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia has denied Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink’s application for a telecoms service licence and access to radio spectrum. Interesting.

📱 Fired Up With AI. More than 10 years after its birth, Amazon looks to be reviving its ill-fated Fire Phone. Replete with a bunch of Alexa’s lekker AI functions, it looks to be called Transformer. Well. Hopefully doesn't go up in Smoke…

🚀 NaaS Lands in SA. The Open Letter team has rebranded Stream to create SA’s first full-stack Newsletter as a Service (NaaS) product: Strategy, editorial, platform and growth – all in one package for B2B techs to own their audience and build trusted distribution.

Get the best in SA tech and business news →

Yesterday, we showed you Safeza’s AI camera security system, asking what you think about AI’s role in surveillance. Most don’t mind, if it works…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 👮 If it helps catch the bad guys quicker, lekker (53%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👀 Who's watching the watchers? (25%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤖 Hmmm, this makes me feel some feels (8%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤷 Sounds cool, but I'm not hopeful looking at the broader system (6%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤔 Interested to know about the other applications (8%)

Your 2 cents…

Love that show! Well, if it keeps us safe… 📺🤖

Win $1m? Startup World Cup Johannesburg finale takes place in June — pitch your startup for a shot at the global finals. Apply before 18 May.

3+ years revenue? Africa’s Business Heroes Prize offers up to $300k from a $1.5m grant pool plus global exposure. Apply from 3 Mar.

Want to win $1m? The Pitch by Deel is a global startup competition with a $1 million investment prize — apply from SA now.

📊 Tool to Try: Mentiq helps SaaS teams detect churn risk.

🧠 That’s Interesting: The human brain only reaches adulthood at age 32.

🪐 Wow Site: Rovers lets you explore Curiosity’s 13-year journey on Mars.