Big cat? One robot’s encounter with a real lion cost an AI company half a million dollars when it developed a bad case of zoophobia. Miaow. 🦁

In This Open Letter

With employee benefits becoming a major differentiator in the war for top talent, this SA startup’s helping companies compete beyond salary and health on the furry family member front, too…

Only 1% of SA’s 18 million dogs and cats have health insurance.

This, despite unexpected surgeries and medical expenses for pets reaching as much as R25’000.

An eye-watering amount when you consider how pricey some purebred pooches can fetch:

So 99% of pet owners lack a financial safety net when emergencies strike, rolling the dice on their pets' well-being.

The big financial exposure

Faced with a massive medical bill, cash-strapped families have a pretty heavy choice: Fork over the cash or say goodbye to an otherwise healthy beloved furry family member.

So why hasn’t pet insurance gained local traction?

Global companies have recognised the benefit of expanding employee benefits to Family Care Benefits, which, for some families, extends to their pets.

Post-COVID, just under a quarter of US employers offer pet insurance as an employee benefit. Considering SA’s pet‑loving population (45% of adults own pets), we could be primed for the same shift.

The startup leading the way

FurSure provides employer-friendly, household-level pet insurance as a staff benefit. Employers can choose to fully fund, co-fund or simply enable a voluntary, payroll-deducted model. But, crucially, every client gets a digital portal, enabling both employees and HR to monitor status, claims and policies with ease.

We caught up with Nathan Mengel, Co-Founder of FurSure, who, from a background in corporate benefits and pet-related ventures, saw two blind spots in the local landscape: The lack of pet insurance uptake and the administrative pain of benefits rollouts – something that might make Jane in HR file the pitch deck in File 13. 

To overcome this, Nathan and team pre-built polls and surveys that HR teams can use to test employee interest in pet insurance easily.

If there’s uptake, a ready-to-go onboarding doc smooths the rollout, stripping away the admin friction that usually kills new benefits before they start. (A serious insight for anyone wanting to get into the employee benefits game.)

And while it’s still early days (they’ve only just officially launched), FurSure is already building out a supporting ecosystem to offer users more than just pet insurance. Think free grooming and discounted dog-hotel stays to partnerships with pet psychologists and doggy trainers.

We’re watching this space.

Who says only big brands can have power WhatsApp tech?

Most new and small businesses don’t have time to sit through demos or figure out clunky enterprise software. You’ve got products to ship, customers to talk to and zero patience for red tape.

But what if you could just… start?

That’s why flEX by Chat Inc is such a game-changer:

✅ The first pure SaaS WhatsApp marketing platform in SA
✅ No subscriptions. No platform fees. No gatekeeping.
✅ You sign up, connect your WhatsApp channel, get credits and send

Whether you’re a boutique store, local brand, or solo founder, flEX gives you the same broadcast and automation tools the big brands use — without needing a whole IT team to run it.

👑 Tesla Topdog’s Trillionaire Trajectory. Elon Musk might soon be crowned the world’s first trillionaire as his new Tesla pay package could skyrocket. It comes with some pretty ambitious corporate goals, though, including a 25-fold increase in Tesla’s net profit and an eight-fold increase in its stock market value. Jinne.

🔥 Burn Baby Burn. OpenAI's spending spree is set to hit a staggering $115 billion (some 2 trillion in Rondts) by 2029 as the company goes full throttle into tech innovation and development. With numbers like $8 billion this year alone, they’re even planning their own chips to tame those sky-high costs. Cue founders updating their pitch decks with a comparison slide.

⚽️ Look Again. SA is set to fork over R82M on bringing VAR technology to its football fields, hoping to boost match fairness and upgrade stadium systems. With pressing concerns over occasional questionable calls, this tech upgrade feels more like a digital referee intervention. Play on.

🚄 On Track To World Class. The Gautrain has been given an A rating by the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE), making it the only piece of infrastructure considered world-class in SA, streaks ahead of the D to E infrastructure rating it’s given the rest of SA. Come on, let's add in a couple more, hey?

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools and suppliers. That’s why our Founder’s Stack gives you full-funnel tech performance marketing by Stream, hardware, software, acceleration and funding for remarkable builds with Octoco and loads more vital startup tools & services.

Automate To Scale. We ran a hands-on session on how to automate your sales funnel end-to-end — from lead capture to scoring, nurture and clean handoffs.

Gauteng Goes Remote. We celebrated the Gauteng launch of Work From Reef with Benjamin — a directory for remote workers to book places and unlock venue perks.

Study Faster With BagLearning V2. We cheered Brett's updates on Bag Learning, it’s fast becoming the all-in-one study toolkit for students to get exam-ready.

Building For VCs. We dug into VC models and mapped high-leverage “picks and shovels” opportunities a bit.

Looking forward to learning how to use AI to create ads that actually convert, coming up at 12:00 this Friday…

Find your founder community. Join The Founder Collab, it’s where 100+ real SA founders help each other to build better, faster every day.

Last Friday, we speculated on how vibe coding’s enabling entirely different models for building startups, asking how you’d fund/grow your next venture. Most’ll bootstrap…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💸 Bootstrapping — earn early and smartly (69%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏢 Venture studio — get the hands you need to grow (8%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👼 VC/angels — it's Silicon Valley for me (3%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎓 Grants or crowdfunding — the community will back me (8%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😎 Actually, lemme give the NEXTORBIT guys a ring… (12%)

Your 2 cents…

Hey, Dominique, yeah, so many great ideas! Send a DM on this email and let’s see — we mos all build and share in The Founder Collab too, so can defs help you get started. 🎯

True dat, Msel! One extra opinion to entertain can be a serious drain. 📌

Democratising SA’s Financial Access — JHB 18 Sep, 18:00 — The Open Letter is hosting Charles Savage, founder of EasyEquities and CEO of the JSE-listed Purple Group, at our next Joburg event. Come network, get powerful insights and make valuable connections. Early bird tickets are R200, but use the code TOL50 to get an extra R50 off, exclusive to Open Letter readers. Book here.

Venture Summit — JHB 9 Sep, 09:00 — SA’s largest gathering of tech startups and scale-ups lands at Sandton Convention Centre. Learn from top founders, sharpen your GTM strategy, explore disruptive tech and AI trends, and get funding-ready. The Open Letter readers get free access to this event by using the code TOL when RSVPing here.

Founder story: Two Three Bird — CPT 11 Sep, 13:00 — How a niche cycling insurer became a global InsurTech platform across SA, the UK, the US and Australia. Join co-founders Theo Grobler and Aryna Edwards in conversation with Innovation City CEO Michelle Kleu for lessons in platform strategy, PMF and global growth. From R50. Book via Innovation City.

Dell Young Leaders leadership symposium — Stellenbosch 16 Sep, 09:00 — Meet exceptional Dell Young Leaders as they tackle real-world challenges (from food security to AI in public health), connect with employers tackling SA’s 24% young graduate unemployment and engage directly with future-ready talent for your hiring pipeline. Seats are limited. RSVP here.

Hosting a demo day, panel, founder meetup or tech event? Let us know, and we’ll feature it for FREE.

🛠 Tool to Try: Sick text-based AI chat? Athena AI makes chat visual with diagrams, videos, etc., powered by top-tier models.

🤔 That’s Interesting: A Canadian engineer YouTuber built a replica of Thor’s hammer that only engineers with the Iron Ring could lift — using a ring-triggered electromagnet.

🔥 Next Level: Watch Freddie Mercury warming up backstage at Knebworth (1986), Queen’s last-ever concert.

🍔 Hack: Load your dishwasher back-to-front so you barely pull the racks as it fills (less hassle, fewer snags).

🌐 Wow Site: BeerTuner lets you rate songs by how drunk you need to be to enjoy them.

Want to see a tool featured here? Let us know.

Hey, Renier here 👋, co-founder of The Open Letter.

I’ve spent 17 years in SA tech and seen hundreds of startups rise and fall. The ones that made it all had one thing in common: a strong community.

That’s why I started The Founder Collab — a space where 100+ SA founders connect for:

☕ Meetups & events

🎓 Weekly masterclasses

📚 35+ expert sessions on-demand

🤝 A network unlike anything else

Come build your startup alongside me and 100+ other SA founders in The Founder Collab.

Spaces are limited — new founders join weekly.

Help us make The Open Letter more useful to you.

Vote in the poll, leave a quick comment, or hit reply — we read every single one.