Fast track {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? The Nintendo Store in Sandton City has invited Joburgers to join its monthly Mario Kart tournaments to win awesome Super Mario hampers. 🍄

Send this to that friend who's always cheating in Mario Kart. 🏎️

In This Open Letter:

This year, we teamed up with our friends at Innovation City for the 2026 edition of Startup of the Year (previous winners including Botlhale AI, AI Diagnostics and Wamly), and this year sees some powerful entries…

Plus: As an Open Letter exclusive, you get to vote for this year’s People’s Choice winner – vote in the poll below… 

Bag Learning is a personalised study platform for SA university students, combining notes, assessment tools and AI tutoring into a single ecosystem bridging outdated university learning systems with the academic outcomes students actually need.

FindHomes is an AI-powered property intelligence platform that helps buyers, agents and originators go beyond listings, giving them access to real market data to make more informed property decisions.

Fintura replaces the patchwork of tools that SA accounting firms use to manage compliance, bringing CIPC filings, deadline tracking, and entity oversight into a single platform.

HirePro provides same-day staffing for hospitality venues, connecting bars, restaurants and events with pre-vetted workers at short notice, solving one of the sector's most persistent operational headaches.

OPUS Cactus farms Opuntia cactus at an industrial scale on semi-arid South African land, converting every part of the plant into commercial outputs, from fresh fruit and seed oil to biogas, animal feed and biomaterials.

Still Good turns near-expiry retail stock into discounted mystery bags, giving consumers a way to save on groceries while helping retailers recover value from food that would otherwise go to waste.

The Surgical Assistant connects underutilised and unemployed local doctors with surgeons who need theatre cover, improving surgical capacity, creating work for qualified professionals and keeping more doctors in SA.

TurnStay is building payments infrastructure specifically for the travel industry, solving the supplier payout and treasury headaches that most travel operators still manage through fragmented, outdated systems.

Taptic builds free notes and resource platforms for African K-12 students; no paywall, no friction, just curriculum-aligned content available whenever learners need it.

Udok is a connected care platform that lets patients consult with a GP or specialist on demand, making quality healthcare more accessible and affordable for cash-paying South Africans. Now also offering complete practice management to existing practices.

The prize: Amazing R500k+ up for grabs

But this is where you come in 👇

At the awards ceremony (remember to grab your tickets for Thursday, 6 pm), we’re also giving away The People’s Choice Award. The winner will get a R5’000 Johnson Workwear voucher and some free publicity in The Open Letter. And you are going to decide who that will be, right here, right now…

Did you know Paystack is the largest payments company in Africa? Over 200k businesses use it (from solopreneurs to large corporates and government bodies) and it processes a meaningful share of online commerce across the continent. It accepts cards, bank transfers, EFT, USSD, Apple Pay, Visa QR, mobile money, POS — you name it.

And it has the highest transaction success rates in the market.

It's also fully available to SA businesses, with no US entity required. You sign up as a local company, get settled into your local bank account and engage a local team for support.

As for credentials: Paystack was built in Africa, but went through Y Combinator, is backed by Visa and is part of the Stripe stable. In fact, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said PayStack is "highly technical and fanatically customer oriented."

In short, you get Stripe-grade infrastructure with an Africa-first product team.

🤖 SA's Secret Weapon In Cape Town. You won't believe what the co-founder behind SnapScan, Offerzen and JourneyApps is building with AI. Be at our next Cape Town event to find out. Grab your ticket.

📺 Bonjour, JSE. Canal+ is listing on the JSE on 3 June — the first French company to trade shares locally. This fast-track secondary inward listing is classified as domestic. Five months after MultiChoice delisted. We’ve come full circle.

📱 GoTyme's Million-User Sprint. GoTyme Bank (formerly TymeBank) has migrated 1 million users to its new app in just 3 months, backed by 27 dedicated Customer Hubs across Gauteng and Western Cape malls. Digital meets physical.

🚧 Your ID at the Boom Gate? It might soon be illegal for gated communities to ask for ID when entering booms. The regulator is publishing new POPIA guidelines that could change access control as we know it. Watch this space.

☁️ "Miles Ahead" is how Cyberlab describes Cloud on Demand's billing and provisioning experience. If you sell Microsoft licenses, run an MSP or build SaaS on Azure/AWS, their partner programme is built for you — local support, predictable pricing and a marketplace that finds you customers.*

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

Who still serves clients without an AI?

SA’s Ruka created Echo, a proprietary AI brain that powers an entire suite of small business tools (bookings, lead capture, abandoned order follow-ups, customer queries at 2 AM) all through WhatsApp.

But here's what's really clever:

✅ Drop in your business URL, tell Echo your goals and it gets to work
✅ One build deploys across any industry, winning clients via WhatsApp
✅ Use it for booking, lead capture or a quick daily business overview.

Building for where people already do business might just be the key to scaling.

What would you build on WhatsApp today?

Yesterday, we showed you Clxr rate dispute platform, asking about your relationship with your home loan. And would you believe most here have never disputed their interest rate…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🏠 Loyal payer, never questioned my rate (36%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📉 I've tried to get a rate review before (15%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤷 Honestly have no idea what rate I'm on (10%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔍 Hol' up, I'm checking (10%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 💸 This is future-me's problem, I'm currently renting (29%)

Your 2 cents…

Ai, sorry, Phillip. Guess that's the kind of pain Clxr’s tryna eliminate. 🏦

Got a big idea and a bold pitch? The Pitch by Deel is hunting for the world's next breakout startup — with a $1 million investment prize on the line. Apply from SA.

Building something early-stage? The Founder Collab gives SA tech founders R40k+ in tools, strategy sessions, cloud support, legal vetting and a high-trust community to build with. Join now.

African startup or MSME with a working MVP? GEC+Africa 2026 selects 10 finalists to pitch live in Cape Town in front of investors and ecosystem enablers. Register now.

Female founder building across Africa? The 2026 KPMG Female Founders in Africa Competition backs women-led ventures with resources, networks and mentorship. Apply now.

🧩 Tool to Try: Aera is an AI running coach that builds training through real conversation.

🎨 That's Interesting: The Mona Lisa's long-debated identity was confirmed in 2005 when a German researcher found a handwritten note in a book margin stating Leonardo was painting Lisa del Giocondo in 1503.

🖱️ Next Level: Watch this guy break the world mouse-clicking record.

🚀 Wow Site: Ask an Astronaut lets you explore thousands of Q&As between students and astronauts on the ISS.

🧠 Work Smarter: Forget billion-dollar AI ideas; try these tiny R10k/day AI businesses you can actually build right now and start earning.