Following the Space Race {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Everyone agrees the next big step in creating a space economy is robots that can build things by themselves out in orbit. Guess what: one just did. 😮

In Today’s Open Letter

SA has an estimated 7.5 million dogs and 2 million cats, and moving them (or any animal) anywhere in the country is an absolute nightmare – so this local team's built the fix…

Ever tried moving a pet or animal in or around SA (or especially overseas)? Then you probably also look 10 years older: a courier quotes the road, an airline the flight, a relocation agent the rest, the Department of Agriculture wants its own health certificates. Phew, four quotes and four handovers, and paperwork for the rest of your life.

Why such a schlep? SA needs to maintain biosecurity and control diseases (foot-and-mouth crisis = Exhibit A); combat wildlife trafficking and theft; and maintain the country's animal welfare and humane legislation.

There's a big difference between taking Fluffy along when you move down to the Western Cape and actually trying to smuggle illegal game, though, and a local team saw the gap…

It all started at a complex gate

Local founder Mahlatse "Naum" Modiba was an unemployed Wits BCom graduate who one day struck up a conversation with the security guard at her Centurion estate, Tshepho "Nats" Ngwenya, who was a poultry farmer working on a side-hustle moving animals for people.

It took a while for Naum to wrap her head around the idea, but the infrastructure gap and the need for better animal care during transport were clear, so for about a year they couriered birds on long-distance taxis and buses, with buyers collecting chickens at the nearest rank.

In October 2025, Naum's dad lent the two new co-founders his car, so they could expand to transporting dogs and cats (clearly there was demand), and a new venture was born…

The courier giving a travelling pet one point of contact

NATS Pets Courier is a pet transport platform that turns four quotes and four handovers into one booking, with a single accountable coordinator. Every trip requires vaccination records, travel paperwork and ensuring the animal's welfare, but the network they built up during their "taxi years" means they have an extended network of drivers to draw from as needed.

When we met Naum at LeaderX Venture Summit, we jokingly asked: "So, Uber for animal transport?" Turns out that was the plan, and she reckons one company building Uber for pets will shake up the whole industry.

We absolutely love that this is a younger, tech-savvy founder who combined their skills with the experience and connections of a real hands-on pro who might not have formalised so fast otherwise. SA defs needs more of this.

You know we're watching this space…

1'000 Claude agents just built a working operating system in 8 days. Anthropic's new Fable 5.2 started from an empty folder, coordinated over 1'000 sub-agents around the clock and produced an OS that boots on a laptop, with its own drivers, file storage and login screen. See how it works.

An AI is now running 3 real businesses. Skyfall AI bought 3 small online businesses and handed them to Steve, a team of AI agents that runs them day to day. So far, 1 has more than doubled its monthly revenue and 1 has dipped slightly. Read the story.

Not sure where AI fits in your business? Start with your own workflows. In Wellington, auditors Broodryk Kotzé Inc. and the FHBC Group ran a Praelexis workshop that took each team from demystifying AI to its own list of use cases. See how they did it.

Black Friday readiness starts before volumes begin to climb. With the right delivery capacity, technology and operational support in place, businesses can scale with demand while continuing to deliver the experience their customers expect.

TFS On-Demand provides the delivery layer: the driver network, scheduling, technology and customer support, already built and managed:

It enables food and retail businesses with nationwide footprints to scale e-commerce deliveries, giving access to scalable delivery capability while their teams remain focused on serving customers and growing the business.

Scaling delivery brings coverage, availability, technology and support together. Black Friday is two weeks away, and TFS On-Demand is built to move with demand.

🛒 Groceries on Payday Terms. Jem is piloting discounted groceries for deskless workers: buy a Pantry Club voucher on WhatsApp with pay you've already earned, at up to 55% off selected items. Just in time for the festive squeeze.

👩‍💻 She's the Power User. Women now send 56.2% of SA's ChatGPT messages, up from 47.9% 2 years ago and ahead of the 52.1% global share. Most of it is writing. AI training aimed only at developers is missing most of the room.

📡 No Signal, No Problem. Vodacom wants your ordinary phone talking to satellites by the end of 2027, most likely with AST SpaceMobile. Expect texts and limited data in dead zones first. Starlink still can't operate here.

📱 Products That Convert. You've probably tapped, swiped and touched their work without knowing it. For 16 years, Isoflow has been designing the UX and UI behind some of the world's biggest digital products — strategy, research and data turned into real business impact.*

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

If you're a founder building your first tech team, OfferZen can help you determine which roles to hire for based on your vision. And as a member of The Founder Collab, you can reach out to Matt directly for support.

Yesterday, we showed you how Databias manages email signatures for entire companies, asking if you know what's happening at the bottom of your team's emails. Most here say perfectly on-brand, thank you very much…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🎨 Perfectly on-brand, thank you very much (70%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📋 Copied a colleague's and changed the name (mostly) (20%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🦕 Still rocking the logo from two rebrands ago (10%)

Every new person on a team adds more lines of communication (i.e. complexity) than the last.

💡 Doubling a team from 5 to 10 more than quadruples the required comms lines, and that's where the meetings, handoffs and slow decisions come from.

💡 It's why Amazon runs on the two-pizza rule: if 2 pizzas can't feed the team, it's too big. 2 focused teams of 5 usually beat 1 team of 10.

Our take: keep teams small and give each one real ownership of a part of the business. The same logic applies to your AI agents, too, btw.

Building Relationships for Funding, 13 Nov, Online: Zimi CEO Michael Maas on building angel relationships to raise R50m, at noon tomorrow. More info.

Beyond Survival Mode, 16 Nov, CPT: Mental health practitioner Louise Niemann on why resilience and high performance are not the same as thriving, at Innovation City. Get tickets.

Powered by Radi. Want your business event in front of 36,000 The Open Letter readers? Host it on Radi, and it lands here.

🧩 Tool to Try: PineChat is an AI assistant on WhatsApp that preps you for client meetings, drafts your follow-up emails and warns you before a client goes quiet. Built in Cape Town.

🎸 That's Interesting: Aerosmith reportedly made more money from Guitar Hero than from any of their albums.