What’s louder than peeps mourning the deaths of their AI boyfriends when updates change personalities? People adding AI lovers, turning couples into AI trouples and even quadrouples. 🤷♂️
In This Open Letter
Game On: Meet the startup unlocking more local sport options.
Local: A stronger tech SMME space & more baby leave for SA.
Global: Neuralink’s fancy new credentials & Bitcoin’s all-time high.
Founder’s Corner: Instant business plans & upping conversions.
Today in history: Check out the world’s first transistor calculator.
Win tickets to AI Expo Africa!
Mindful Machines wants to help SA companies get the best out of AI. With focused AI training that helps ensure your teams use the tech constructively and in-depth AI audit processes to deliver solid, powerful AI integration roadmaps.
And they’re giving 2 Open Letter readers the chance to each win a ticket to AI Expo Africa (each worth R8’000!), one of the largest trade shows and conferences on the continent.
To win the chance to rub shoulders with some 3’000 African tech buyers at the event, follow Mindful Machines on LinkedIn and fill out this form 👇
TRENDING NOW
Giving SA Clubs a Sporting Chance
We don’t get to play everything at school and niche sport clubs are so hard to find – until this startup came along…
Out of the 32 current Summer Olympics sports codes, SA has won medals in only 11 of these categories.
Why? Well, many of these codes aren’t offered as school sports. And although there are 100s of sports clubs across the country offering all these Olympic sport codes (and 100s others), it’s close to impossible to actually find them and participate.
Discoverability suffers because sports clubs typically run on tiny budgets. Meaning it’s seldom viable to hire someone to run their web and online presence. When a club’s discoverable and active online, it’s normally ‘cos a member is skilled and willing to put in the time to make it happen.

Some clubs’ll do anything to attract more players…
The local club’s catch-22
Even if a club’s visible, discoverability is mega hard. How can you search for a sport you don’t even know exists?
This leaves most clubs in a deadlock: They struggle financially and have limited members. The more you look at it, enabling clubs to find more people who might be interested leads, the closer you get to making clubs the centre of a greater community (and better finances) again. A win for everyone involved.
The platform that brings sports to the people
Enter Unaffi (pronounced unify, cause they unify all sports on their platform). Brothers Rudi and Ivan Johannes loved various sports but found themselves frustrated at not being able to find local clubs or meet other enthusiasts to organise games.
So they built a platform that solves it.
Sports clubs can create a profile, create booking options and then be discoverable and take bookings online.
If you are familiar with Playtomic (Padel booking app), it’s similar, but local and for all kinds of sports. Currently offering anything from tennis courts, table tennis tournaments and chess games; if you are into sports and games communities, Unaffi is a great place to start.
They are also onboarding many new clubs, so if you’re part of a sports or games club, get them listed on Unaffi and grow your community by going here.
All SA sports easily findable? We’re watching this space.
FROM OUR FRIENDS AT DOUBLESHIFT
Break Free from the Bland
At DoubleShift, we believe that brands are the infrastructure that builds belief and trust. And in today’s FinTech world, trust is the ultimate differentiator.
We’re a strategic brand and communications partner for ambitious founders who don’t just want to look good; they want to build belief. Our work helps FinTechs move from competing on features to competing on faith: the conviction that investors, users and teams have in what you’re building.
We understand the balance of creativity and compliance — and how to turn clarity into capital. By translating complex ideas into simple, confident narratives, we help brands scale trust across every touchpoint.
Our approach is hands-on:
✅ We get inside your business
✅ Map the real trust gaps
✅ And co-create systems that shift perceptions and move markets.
If you’re ready to build a brand that’s not just seen — but believed in — we’d love to partner with you.

Connect directly with DoubleShift MD & Strategy Leader Kurt Schröder via email: [email protected] or phone: +27 84 428 0458.
IN SHORT
What’s shaking in tech & business…
🚀 Techpreneurs Turbocharged. Seacom and Sentech have signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen SA’s SMME ecosystem by providing mentorship, training, funding and access to shared innovation platforms. Very cool.
🧠 Neuralink's Big Reveal. Neuralink has just submitted its first scientific paper on brain implant patients to the New England Journal of Medicine. With a valuation soaring to $9 billion but no peer-reviewed data until now, the move is a leap towards credibility. Whoa.
🌕 Bitcoin’s Record High! Bitcoin reached a new high of $125’245.57 on Sunday, leaving its previous August peak in the (moon) dust. Noice.
🍼 Daddy Day Care. SA's Constitutional Court has ruled that differences in parental leave entitlements between moms and dads are discriminatory, championing equal rights for all parents. If you know anything about newborns, no one is getting any “leave”.
✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools and suppliers. That’s why our Founder’s Stack gives you your own CFO for a fraction of the cost with OCFO, WhatsApp marketing with 2'000% ROI powered by Chat Inc, and loads more vital startup tools & services.
LOVE IT?
FOUNDER’S CORNER
3 Things for SA Business Builders
Business plan in minutes. Govchain’s free generator turns your idea into a structured plan with steps, channels and metrics, super fat. Try it here.
When vibe-coded projects break. How To Solve It With Code teaches founders code fundamentals so your AI-generated projects don’t leave you stuck. Check it out.
What blocks conversions? Skippership shows session recordings, heatmaps and journey analysis to uncover user frustrations and up conversion. See more.
Lula proudly sponsors Founder’s Corner.
Lula is South Africa’s first business-only banking suite, offering fast, flexible funding and frictionless banking built exclusively for SMEs. Experience business-class banking and funding now.
WHAT YOU SAID
Editing genes…
Yesterday, we told you how Immobazyme’s working to up SA’s local enzyme production, asking what products you’re comfortable with using advanced BioTech. Most don’t mind it at all…
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🥛 Fermented foods (yoghurt, beer, bread) (41%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧴 Enzyme detergents & shampoos (2%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💊 Pharma-grade proteins (2%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🧬 “All of the above — just work, please” (54%)
Your 2 cents…
“Beer is your friend!”
We’ll drink to that, Why! 🍻
THIS DAY IN TECH HISTORY
World’s first transistor calculator
On 7 October 1954, a team at IBM took a vacuum-tube-powered IBM 604 and converted it to a transistor version.

It was one of those punch-card computers and the first mass-produced calculator ever…
The transistors didn’t shrink the machine (it needed 2200 of them) or make it compute any faster. But it did reduce power usage by 95%, spurring IBM to build the first fully transistor model commercially in 1958, the IBM 608.
AROUND THE WEB
🛠 Tool to Try: Double Click turns your blog posts into AI-readable pages that get cited by tools like ChatGPT.
🎭 That’s Interesting: Tom Cruise bans merchandise using his likeness. Funko tried their luck once, but Cruise had them recall every figure.
🧠 Next Level: Watch this 5-year-old recreate any font from memory.
🍺 Hack: A visual guide to questions that sharpen your critical thinking.
🌼 Wow Site: Have a Dandy Day will try to brighten your day, let you share the Dandy and even get Dandy Dan quotes. Yes, really.
THANKS FOR READING
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