End of corruption? Albania is the world’s first country to have an AI cabinet minister. Diella will handle all the nation’s tenders and public procurement. Why not? 🤖

In This Open Letter

SA’s R39bn property sector lumps most of the risk onto buyers every year – this startup wants to change that with data transparency… 

Buying a home in South Africa is still a leap in the dark. 

Valuations arrive as static PDFs, with risk factors like crime and traffic living in separate silos. Agents often hold the upper hand through information asymmetry, controlling pricing, viewing patterns and what info gets disclosed to whom. 

This information gap skews outcomes in favour of agents, meaning that ordinary buyers and even seasoned investors are left asking:  “How much should I offer?”, “Is this neighbourhood risky?”, “Will this property deliver as an investment?”

The opportunity in the data

There’s a rising demand for transparency against hidden risks and pricing, with recent policy change recommendations to mitigate the information asymmetry in SA real estate.

The rise of AI and its ability to churn through huge amounts of data and make sense of it, coupled with tech like APIs and satellite imagery, now makes it possible (at a pretty low cost) to gather and normalise data that used to be siloed, disconnected or manual.

The local startup joining the dots

Proply is a PropTech building a transparent AI-powered intelligence engine for SA homes, neighbourhoods and, consequently, property investments.

It started out as a tool for analysing short-term rental investment properties built on a hefty spreadsheet of Proply Founder Wesley Roos’s own property portfolio, featuring scraped together data and various financial models.

And it piqued friends and family’s interest with early sales coming purely from that. But, naturally, that spreadsheet wasn’t scalable, needing a ton of manual TLC. 

So Proply evolved into three main product verticals, with their Deal Score product, the arrowhead.

Deal Score is a public, web-based property reporting product where users can run an address, see valuation, comparable sales, forecasts, risk indices and rental yield for both short-term and long-term. It also integrates factors like traffic and crime, with more coming soon. 

Check out this sample report as an example.

You can see whether you’re getting a good deal with the asking price compared to the estimated market value. And if it’s for an investment property, see the potential yields of the property – including what you could charge per night on Airbnb, as well as the monthly projected revenue.

And they’ve got even more plans in the pipeline. So we’re watching this space…

For some companies, it’s worth even more than their shares…

Did you know: When Covid halted aviation, United Airlines used customer data from its frequent-flyer programme as collateral for a $5bn (R88bn) loan. 

Wait, can companies do that?

Yes. And you can too. The Isle of Man is developing a world-first marketplace that treats your data assets as financial instruments, so you can trade certified data or use it as collateral for finance deals, within a governed market.

How does this work?

✅ Organisations in the Isle of Man can register as foundations.
✅ The foundation holds your data — this makes it tradeable (an intangible asset).
✅ Once certified, your data can be sold, shared or bartered in a public marketplace.

Want to explore what this could mean for your business?

💥 Local E-commerce Boom. Mzansi's online shopping is set to hit a whopping R130 billion at the end of 2025, up from R96 billion last year, accounting for 10% of all retail spend in SA. Boom boom indeed.

🎲 Roll The Dice. Nearly 55% of South Africans’ fun budget is spent on gambling, despite SA’s tough economic climate. Hmmmm.

📱 Wanna Buy an iPhone (17)? Apple’s iPhone 17 series and the iPhone Air prices for SA have landed, starting from a cool R20’799. Pre-orders will ship by 19 September. Interesting.

📦 Still In The Driving Seat. With SA’s e-commerce sector set to set records this year, Takealot is still holding on to its commanding 31.9% market share, despite pressure from international Temu and Amazon. Nice one.

✅ 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.

Ads that actually convert. We had a masterclass on how to run ads that convert at scale, and it was extremely illuminating for getting new leads.

Design, decided. The community helped Thijan find a source of vetted referrals to brand/CI designers, fast.

The ultra-thin reveal. We fell over backwards learning the real reason Apple managed to get the new iPhone Air so thin.

Crowdfunding, local. We explored a SA-first seed crowdfunding model, how it could work, who’d want to invest and whether the market’s ready for it.

New tech-only channel. We launched a brand-new space that is 100% technical for builders, devs and tech teams.

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 told you about the kidult trend in SA, where adults buy toys for themselves, asking about your collectable poison. Most don’t splurge that much on themselves…

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🧱 LEGO stash (31%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🎲 Board Games (29%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🕹️ Old School gaming consoles (2%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👾 Funky Funko Pop (0)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⚔️ Lightsaber replica (2%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 👎 Nah, not for me (36%)

Your 2 cents…

Oh, wow, Sandile! We checked out Incuva, Morabaraba and Diketo and agree — they should be on toy store shelves. 🎲

Awesome, Elijah! Now we know where to go for game night. 🧩

Democratising SA’s financial access — JHB 18 Sep, 18:00 — Hear Charles Savage on tech unlocking access; meet founders and investors. Use code TOL50 for R50 off. Book here.

Dell Young Leaders leadership symposium — Stellenbosch 16 Sep, 09:00 — See top students solve real-world challenges; meet future-ready talent. RSVP here.

Using community to scale your business growth — CPT 18 Sep, 17:30 — Mark Birch shares the Community-in-a-Box playbook: flywheel, 11-step launch and metrics to grow without ad spend. From R50. Book here.

Founders at Work Summit — JHB 16 Oct — One day, 200 founders. Scale smarter in the AI era; tools, frameworks and an AI readiness report. Free; limited seats. Register here.

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

🛠 Tool to Try: Idea Harvester finds real SaaS problems in Reddit threads so you can validate demand fast (free in beta).

🤔 That’s Interesting: The acupuncture flying needle blood-draw technique looks unreal — blink and you’ll miss it.

🔥 Next Level: Watch her morph into Jack Sparrow, Avril Lavigne, Scarlett Johansson and more.

🍔 Hack: Make the right choice the easy choice — design your environment (shoes by the door, water by the bed) so habits happen.

🌐 Wow Site: Colorif turns your photos into printable black-and-white colouring pages.

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