All in one place {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Someone made a compilation video of little robot delivery trucks causing mayhem on city streets. The limping Wall-E one gets us every time. 🌱

In This Open Letter:

When Nathan Mengel's mom emigrated a few years ago, she left him her dogs and a stack of seemingly random papers that got thrown out. Turns out, they were the vaccination certificates – without which the dogs can't travel, go to doggy daycare or a pet hotel. So he’s building a better system than paper…

This small story reveals a massive gap. South Africa has 22 million pets and an R8 billion pet care market, but the infrastructure is disjointed. Your vet has your pet's medical records, the insurer has another set of data and the doggy daycare wants a physical vaccination certificate. 

But none of them talks to each other.

Most vet clinics operate as individual silos: No common standard, no shared infrastructure. And with less than 1% of dogs and cats in SA covered by pet insurance, the friction of claims and paperwork makes the whole system feel broken before you've started.

The local pet infrastructure play

Petsly is an app that centralises a pet's health records, tracks routine care and sits between the owner, the vet and the insurer so data can actually flow.

You may remember Nathan from our recent FurSure feature, his other pet venture (pets as employee benefits). After the vaccination certificate disaster, he built the fix: Digital records that replace the paper stack, vaccination and treatment reminders synced to your calendar, and a shareable pet profile for anyone helping with care.

The AI layer is where it gets interesting. Petsly's assistant, Harry, already knows your pet's age, breed and underlying conditions before you ask a question. So when you ask why your dog is eating grass, you get an answer about your pet specifically.

All of it rolls into a single health signal called the Pet Pulse Score, a number that tells you how on top of your pet's health you actually are.

Petsly is setting out to build SA's pet health record that can travel with the animal, no filing cabinets required.

We're watching this space…

Master the art of shutting up. Sales trainer Shelby Sapp went from knocking doors at 18 to training thousands of closers, earning $20k–$60k a month — here are her 9 frameworks for selling anything. Watch the breakdown.

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😶‍🌫️ How Clean Is Your Air? An app built by scientists at Wits University to measure air quality is launching later this year. It will use data from hundreds of air-monitoring systems, and can send out notifications to residents on protective measures. Keep it fresh.

🤖 Running Man Robot. A humanoid robot has just beaten the Beijing Half-Marathon record by nearly 7 minutes. Honor’s Lightning humanoid robot set the record time despite crashing into a barrier near the end of the race and needing human help to get back on track. But still…

💡 Dream On. Everyone’s hoping AI can help solve Africa’s education woes, but an EdTech founder with a continent-wide footprint says that will never happen. There are a few extremely specific reasons why AI can’t save African education — here’s what will, though…

🛌 Weekend Getaway. The world-famous prison where former president Nelson Mandela was housed, Robben Island, is getting a cool R70 million upgrade that’ll see former prison guards’ homes turned into accommodation for visitors. Hmmm.

🍏 New Apple Lead. Apple’s new CEO after Tim Cook will be their current head of hardware engineering, John Ternus. Ternus takes over when Cook stops baking on 1 September. Yes, but can he unveil products with Jobs’ flair? (‘Cos, let’s be honest, Cook never could.)

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💸 Faster VC Deals. Why does preparing funding deals take so much longer in SA? Well, the US and UK are speeding it up with templated processes. So Dommisse Attorneys and SAVCA created SA's first open-source model investment documents – see more here.*

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Yesterday, we featured Wamly’s SA hiring solutions, asking what's stressing you most about your next hire. Nearly half of you say dud hires…

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😩 Sifting through hundreds of irrelevant applications (18%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🎭 Candidates who interview well but can't deliver (45%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⚖️ SA labour law if the hire goes wrong (13%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤷 Finding anyone suitable at all (17%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤖 Figuring out which AI tools to actually trust (7%)

Your 2 cents…

Indeed, TheCapeGreek. If both sides feel the pain, meeting in the middle with async is the kind of pragmatism we love. 🤝

On 21 April 1988, Tandy Corporation announced plans to build clones of IBM's PS/2 system computers, right after IBM said it would license patents on key PC technologies.

Why? IBM realised it was losing control of the "IBM-compatible" market it had created — and figured it could make more money licensing than fighting.

Within five years, though, the clones outsold the originals. And by 2005, IBM had sold its entire PC division to Lenovo.

🧩 Tool to Try: NanoCart lets you sell with a single shareable checkout link.

🌍 That's Interesting: In 1897, an 8-year-old girl wrote to a newspaper asking if Santa was real. The editor's reply — Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus — became the most reprinted editorial in the English language.

🎨 Next Level: Watch the first time a 360 camera flies into a tornado.

🕹️ Wow Site: Drop a word into Rhyme It and it’ll give you loads of rhyming options.

🧠 Work Smarter: A former garbage collector turned $500 and a beat-up truck into a billion-dollar empire across trash, VHS rentals and car lots. Here's his repeatable operating system broken down step by step.