Kicking it {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? So this morning, Jason jumps on Slack and tunes Elvorne about why there haven't been any awesome robot videos this week. Then Renier shared this beauty of a store bot going into full combat mode on a client in Russia. LOLz. 🦾

In This Open Letter

Companies will spend $86 billion on CRM software (R1.3tr) this year, and 55% of rollouts will fail, but this ex-banker's got a fix inspired by a hack he used to get into Wall Street…

The problem with CRMs is you spend on it, only to watch it turn into a half-empty database nobody even opens anymore. If you're lucky, you have one eager team member who keeps it updated religiously. But most likely the CRM becomes another time sink you need to feed.

A bigger problem is, perhaps, that the best salespeople take the best relationships with them when they leave. So, haven't you ever wished, as a founder, customer data could be way simpler to manage, so that you could keep a finger on it yourself?

Well, an ex-banker built it by accident

Former banker Ben Moskoff didn't even remotely set out to fix CRMs. He'd gotten the opportunity to attend a business school in Rochester in the US. It was great, especially since it was closer to where he really wanted to be, Wall Street, than working as a banker at Standard Bank here in SA. But he did have another problem: no Wall Street bank recruited from the school in Rochester. So he made a plan…

He was gonna set up coffee chats with strategic people in the right places, and then take a six-hour bus to New York over 3 months. He set up 87 chats over 13 trips, and to help himself run the whole thing (who to meet, when, where, what they said), he built an Excel sheet that tracked every conversation.

It paid off: Ben actually got a job offer from Credit Suisse, and other students who wanted the same thing would ask Ben, not for advice, but for that spreadsheet. So, years later, Ben and two engineers spent 15 months building that same sheet into a tool any SA business can use…

The WhatsApp number running your most important relationships

PineChat is a proactive AI relationship teammate that lives entirely inside WhatsApp. You save one number, connect your accounts, and it starts briefing you before meetings, nudging you to reply, telling you who's gone quiet, without you asking.

It plugs into the tools you already use, but never messages on your behalf; it gives you drafts to review and forward yourself. You can also hand it the messier stuff. Drop a voice note after a meeting, and it files the details against the right person.

We like that the human stays in the loop; it meets South Africans where they are (WhatsApp), and the founder really lived the problem before building it.

We're watching this space…

Have your say…

Many companies assume their strongest developer is the obvious choice to step into management. But technical excellence and people leadership are two very different skill sets. That's why our friends at OfferZen asked fractional CTO Riaan Nel how to spot genuine leadership potential and make the transition without losing a great developer.

Before you promote your best developer, hear what Riaan thinks makes someone ready to lead.

🛒 A Tenth of All Retail. SA online retail is heading for R159bn in 2026, up 22.5% and about 10% of total retail turnover for the first time. Takealot still leads at 35.3%, with Shein second. Delivery is the retention play now.

🏦 Discovery Banks a Profit. Discovery Bank turned its first full-year profit, R370m, against a R68m loss last year, with clients up 26% to 1.57 million. The super bank lands in October. Though 70% of new clients hold nothing else Discovery sells.

🚗 Uber Exits Two More. Uber has closed Nigeria and Uganda, leaving just SA, Kenya, Ghana and Egypt, and cut 3'300 jobs globally. Not a shrinking business, bookings are up 24%. It's pouring $10bn into self-driving instead.

💰 Why So Old School? SA’s Competition Commission did its first-ever report on the rural and township economy, finding that only 11% of township businesses sell online. It seems to think it’s because of a lack of access, but their own data shows the truth: not all business models need the sale to occur digitally; the opportunity is elsewhere. Very interesting…

📊 Books Sorted. Spreadsheets don't scale. Xero runs invoicing, bank reconciliation, VAT, expenses and reporting from one cloud dashboard, with direct feeds into FNB, Absa, Standard Bank and Nedbank. TOL readers get 90% off for the first 6 months.*

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

We asked the co-founder of one of SA's most prolific early-stage VCs what makes an investor want to invest in your business. And the answer is two things that every founder needs to hear…

We interview operators all the time on our socials — come enjoy the vibez.

And if you want more real SA funding insights, Sizwe is speaking at our Joburg event on 17 September. And he’s gonna bring all the juice:

Yesterday, we showed you the Wherehouse marketplace tool, asking how your online selling is actually set up. Most are everywhere at once and drowning in it…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥚 All in on one marketplace (18%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤹 Everywhere at once, and the admin is eating me alive (64%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧘 Multi-channel and it all just hums (18%)

🛠️ Senior Product Engineer @ Jem

⚙️ Platform Engineer @ The Awareness Company

☁️ Microsoft Solutions Architect @ Cloud on Demand

💻 Senior Software Engineer @ iKhokha

💰 Fund Head @ Edge Growth

Building Iconic South African Companies, 17 Sep, Sandton: Barry Swartzberg on scaling Discovery and Vitality globally, plus 3CV's Sizwe Nxumalo. Get tickets.

TUNL Talks x Veldskoen: How To Generate International Demand, 17 Sep, Cape Town: How a proudly SA shoe brand built real demand overseas without losing what makes it local. Register free.

Buying Back SA Tech from Durban, 1 Oct, Ballito: Gumtree's business lead on why a Durban group bought a 25-year-old classifieds brand back from offshore. Get in early.

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: Viso Now lets you build, deploy and scale AI vision from any camera in minutes.

⚱️ That's Interesting: The Crypt of Civilisation is a 1940 time capsule that will only be opened around 8113. Inside is a mini windmill to power the electronic artefacts, just in case electricity no longer exists ~6’000 years from now.