No such thing as too far {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? An AI startup is planning to buy a running concern (with human employees) so it can employ an AI CEO, just to see what would happen. The founders just exited to Microsoft a few years back, so they've got cash and are offering $1M.

In This Open Letter

Pepkor just merged Flash and Shop2Shop into one FinTech giant. R21.3 billion, a 57.1% controlling stake, headed for its own listing. Everyone's calling it a payments story. It's actually the newest move in a 20-year migration, and the most interesting company in it isn't even in the deal. It's Shoprite.

Shoprite invented this. It launched Money Market in 1998 and added money transfer in 2006, and built something clever: financial services that doubled as a footfall engine. You'd travel to Shoprite to send cash or collect a grant, and walk out with bread and airtime. The transaction pulled the basket. It worked so well that it created a whole new money-transfer that’s now worth $11bn to $13bn a year.

Then the counter moved. Everything you used to do at that Shoprite till (send money, pay a bill, buy electricity, cash out a grant) is exactly what a Flash or Kazang device now does on the spaza counter down your street. Closer. Open later. Run by someone you know.

Flash and Kazang didn't invent the model. They unbundled it from the supermarket and moved it 500 metres closer to you.

And now the counter is acting like a bank. Transacting is the old game. Owning the account is the new one, and everyone's jumping at once:

On throughput, Lesaka is already at R270bn+ against Pepkor's R200bn. This deal doesn't put Pepkor ahead. It pulls it level.

So where does this leave Shoprite? Not in trouble. Its financial services are still growing, and it saw this coming early: four million bank accounts opened since 2020, and it first floated the banking idea 25 years ago under Whitey Basson.

But it's the one to watch. Shoprite spent 20 years using financial services to pull people into stores. The counter that model leaned on is quietly moving to the customer's street. Owning the account, not the till, is how you stay in the game when the counter walks off without you.

And the twist: through Usave, Shoprite increasingly wants to supply those same spaza shops with stock. It could end up the wholesaler to the very counters nibbling at its own footfall.

The machine on the spaza counter is small. The fight over it is anything but.

We're watching this space…

Have your say…

You've seen the numbers: Studio 88 uses Chat Inc Grow to capture hundreds of thousands of leads across their brands with a simple flow any employee can build (no developer required).

Grow lives inside Chat Inc's flEX platform, and its Flow Builder lets you create your lead capture flow from scratch: Add screens, configure fields, set welcome and thank-you messages, attach T&Cs, and preview exactly what your customer will see.

When you're ready, generate a QR code, assign it to a store or campaign, and go live.

Every lead that comes through lands in the flEX CDP with full attributes, name, contact details, preferences, categories, segmented and ready to target. No CSV exports and no waiting for a developer to connect the dots.

Whether it's competition entries, loyalty sign-ups, event registrations, or general lead acquisition, Grow turns a 30-second QR scan into a rich, targetable contact.

There's a difference, and VCs care about it more than they care about your idea. A startup, in venture terms, isn't a "tech business." It's one built to grow very fast: real demand at scale, served without your headcount climbing one-for-one with every new customer.

Sizwe's quick gut-check from this month's piece: if you had to win ten times more customers next month, would your team need to grow ten times too? If the answer is yes, you've got a one-for-one business, and that's usually not VC-shaped. Which is completely fine.

💰 Rates On Hold. The SARB's MPC has voted 4-2 to hold interest rates at 7%, keeping prime at 10.50%. Inflation came in hot at 5% (driven by fuel), but growth beat expectations. Phew, can we finally unclench now?

🤖 Monday's Monday. Monday.com has cut 20% of its workforce, about 630 people, to refocus on its AI Work Platform. Wait, if AI helps 1 person do 10 people's work, doesn't that mean every 100 people you let go is like losing 1’000?

⚡ New Crisis, Same Grid. Load shedding might be over, but a new energy crisis is emerging: tariff hikes, monopolised power structures and private solar reshaping the market faster than regulation can keep up. So our only choices are no power or monopolised power?

🛍️ Mr Price Goes Big. Mr Price has taken control of over 2'000 stores across 7 countries by buying out its franchise partner Studio 88's minority stake. Lekker to see SA companies grow abroad and take risks; hope the shareholders agree.

🤖 AI, Implemented. Most companies talk about AI. Few know where to start. Praelexis AI is an advisory and implementation partner that identifies high-impact use cases, fixes your data foundation and builds bespoke ML, predictive analytics and GenAI solutions that actually ship.*

🏗️ Growth-Proof Architecture. Most agencies can write code. Very few can tell you whether your architecture will survive the next twelve months of growth, and then do the work to make sure it does. That's why we're looking at Octoco, an engineering firm built for exactly that moment.*

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

Yesterday, we featured Clinch’s WhatsApp directory, asking if you've ever tried to find a service provider on WhatsApp. Turns out most are already shopping there…

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🪠 I've been ghosted by more plumbers than Tinder dates (31%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📸 Brb, snapping my broken geyser to see what happens (23%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🛒 I once bought boerewors off a WhatsApp status. No regrets (46%)

Your 2 cents…

Close enough, Madelein. We’ll allow it. ☕

🛠️ Senior OutSystems Developer

🔌 Intermediate Backend Developer

🧪 QA/Test Engineer

☕ Senior Java Spring Boot

👥 .Net Team Lead

🛠️ Senior Product Engineer

The Blind Man With Vision, 28 Jul, Cape Town: Born blind, completed the Ironman and set the Blind Land Speed Record twice. Get tickets.

Faith in the Workplace, 29 Jul, Stellenbosch: Honest conversations on integrating faith with purpose in business. Get tickets.

Building & Scaling Venture-Backed Businesses, 30 Jul, Stellenbosch: Orca Fraud's founder journey and Hlayisani Capital on backing SA builders. 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: BingeTracker lets you know when shows are renewed, cancelled or returning.

⚽ That's Interesting: Argentina was the reason for football's yellow/red card system. In 1966, their captain refused an expulsion, later blaming language barriers, so the universal colour-coded system was born so that anyone could understand it.

⚽ Next Level: This 8-year-old goalkeeper got bored, so he went and scored by himself.

📏 Wow Site: WhatHeight lets you compare the height and size of animals, sports stars, fantasy creatures, buildings — you name it.

Hodl the phone!… our beloved Cape Town startup now only has 2 weeks of runway left to become a unicorn. Will they make it? Find out: There's a new comic strip every Friday, only in The Open Letter.