A bit of panic {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? A Chinese restaurant robot recently malfunctioned mid-shift, smashing plates and dancing uncontrollably. Everyone seemed to take it with a pinch of salt, though. 🤖🪩

In Today’s Open Letter

Between 5 and 7 million SA households need a pet sitter, but there are only 3’000 in the country – this venture wants to connect SA with more sitters they can trust…

SA loves its pets: We have 10 million dogs and cats alone, and, since 2019, our spending on them has jumped by 23% to over R8 billion annually – allowing retail chains from Shoprite and SPAR to Food Lover’s Market to build out entire new offerings.

A few months back, we featured local pet ID platform Pet ConneX and even pet insurance as an employee benefit, FurSure. But new ideas don’t always have to be technical. Sometimes, the biggest need lies in asking the simplest questions.

Who’s looking after Fido when the fam’s away?

SA has 18.5 million households, 40-60% of which have at least one pet (that’s over 7.4 million households). And 27-40% of households go away over Easter, the June/July holidays and Christmas every year (around 4.9–7.4 million, each season).

And with the average trip away being 3-4 days and the average sitter charging R300-R600 per day, that quickly becomes a R6 billion seasonal market. 

And who’s looking after all those pets? SA has only 3’000-odd verified pet sitters, which is obvs way too few (unless they’re each sitting 2’500 pets at a time), so a lot of South Africans resort to posting on a neighbourhood WhatsApp group or their local Facebook page to find someone.

Problem is you never really know if you can trust this internet stranger with your little precious…

We’ve heard horror stories like that 2021 Hermanus animal abuse case, so isn’t there a better way?

The local venture to care for your pets

MyPetFriends is a hyper-local marketplace that connects pet owners with vetted neighbourhood pet sitters.

You simply enter your suburb and browse various pet sitting options near you. All the service types, rates, reviews and availability are transparent, and you can filter for specific needs – a senior or exotic pet.

And it works for pet sitters, too, by formalising your side-hustle and hopefully bringing in a steady supply of customers.

Though it’s currently in beta (soft Cape Town launch in Feb), MyPetFriends is already active across some of South Africa's major cities, with over 1’000 sitters already signed up. That says a lot about the trust it’s creating – and trust is, after all, the name of the game.

We’re watching this space…

Prefer seeing ideas instead of reading them? Claude can now generate interactive charts, diagrams and visual explainers directly inside chat, with a built-in whiteboard for visual thinking. It’s pretty mind-blowing as this human anatomy example shows.

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🪂 “Out here in the fields!” Local field sales platform Skynamo has been acquired by UK-headquartered ERP and business management software group Klipboard for an undisclosed amount. Find out more about how Skynamo founder Sam Clarke and the team scaled for sale.

✈️ Take It To The Skies. Local airliner FlySafair announced this week that it is now on Stitch to support Apple Pay and Google Pay in its app, enabling faster processing for high-value, high-intent transactions such as flight bookings. Learn how (and why it’s a pattern).

⚡Charging Ahead. Zero Carbon Charge (now CHARGE) and logistics aggregator Zimi have just entered a three-year partnership to electrify freight operations along the N3 corridor between Jozi and Durbs. Check what this means for the SA EV scene.

🤖 RoboRanger Activate. American robotics company Foundation has deployed its Phantom MK-1 humanoid robot to Ukraine to test it for combat conditions. While it isn't armed right now, the company assures us that’s the eventual plan. What. Could. Go. Wrong?

💬 Sales, Not Spam. Poetry already had the brand and the audience. So Chat Inc turned WhatsApp into a high-conversion sales channel that pulled in 14.8k shoppers to generate R1.58 million in revenue at 269% ROI. Ask them to do the same for you.*

Yesterday, we showed you the Kleo female and family health app, asking when you last were at the doc. For most, it’s an annual thang…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💪 I feel great, everything must be tip top (27%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤒 I’m sick so often, they do the annual check a few times a year (4%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⌚ Once a year, like clockwork (42%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🐔 That one time I got chicken pox in primary school (18%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🫣 I skip/delay appointments (9%)

Your 2 cents…

Shame, Michelle! But it’s true, you’re not really a parent until you’ve done that dance. ☝

South Africa’s economy grew 1.1% in 2025, but that’s still very far from its past momentum.

South Africa posted its strongest growth in three years in 2025, but the rebound remains weak:

💡 SA GDP grew 1.1% in 2025, missing Treasury’s 1.4% forecast and lagging the IMF’s global growth estimate of 3.3%.

💡 From 1994–2007, the economy averaged 3.6% annual growth, driven by the commodities boom, rising consumer demand and fiscal stability.

💡 Since the 2008 global financial crisis, growth has slowed sharply. Loadshedding, state capture and Covid pushed the 2008–2019 average down to about 1.6%.

The Government of National Unity has set a 3.5% growth target by 2030, but economists say structural reforms (especially in electricity, logistics and visas) will be key to pushing the economy closer to 2% growth in the near term.

🕵️ Tool to Try: Spydomo monitors competitors and sends you reports on what they're doing.

🏃 That’s Interesting: Humans are among the top species for endurance running on Earth. Our slow-twitch muscles and ability to sweat efficiently let us run long distances in hot weather.

🧱 Next Level: Someone designed an Ndebele hut LEGO set, and you can vote to make it a real product.

🐬 Hack: A quick guide to some of the world’s most common dolphins.

👽 Wow Site: The Drake Equation Calculator lets you estimate how many alien civilisations might exist in the Milky Way galaxy.