Never say never {{ FIRSTNAME }}? South African Matt C Smith always knew he was a sportsman, finding his rhythm while hitting the ski slopes. Smith started cross-country skiing just 3 years ago and is so good that he’ll be representing SA in the Winter Olympics in Italy next year. Go Matt! ⛷️

In This Open Letter

Qualification fraud has surged 158% from 2021 to 2024, with 1 in 2 applicants lying on their CVs – but this SA founder’s on the case…

Imagine waking up to find fraudsters impersonating you: Using your name and professional credentials to steal money from innocent people. And now those victims are coming after you.

Sounds pretty Hollywood. Unless you are attorney-turned-founder Stephen Logan.

While practising in the UK and South Africa, he began receiving calls from people who thought they had dealt with “Barrister Logan”... Except it wasn’t him.

Turns out fraudsters were using his credentials to run scams, the fallout landing at his door. But it was only after getting nowhere with SAPS and Interpol, Stephen realised we needed a better solution to stop people from faking qualifications and identities.

Desperate times…

SA’s a good test case for it. Our high unemployment drives many to falsify qualifications and professional credentials to land a job…

Out of 650’000+ qualification checks conducted in 2024, some 7.82% of matric certificates and 8.28% of short course qualifications were “misrepresented”. (At R50–R300 a pop per check, that alone is a R32 million – R1.9 billion market.)

Not to mention, between 35% and 50% of CVs contain some sort of lie. And AI is making it VERY easy to doctor PDFs, generate fake documents and spin up “plausible” career histories.

Putting trust back into qualifications

That’s why Stephen created PrivySeal, a way to let regulators and accredited professional bodies issue secure, instantly verifiable and dynamic digital credentials.

They turn verified qualifications, licences and memberships into live digital seals that sit on the issuer’s domain and can vanish the moment a status changes (a licence lapses, a membership expires, CPD points aren’t met or a qualification is revoked), the seal updates in real time.

And the seal can accompany work product, email signatures and documents via QR codes or links, making it easier to confirm that someone actually holds the qualifications they claim.

Named after the personal stamps that kings used to authenticate documents, PrivySeal is already in action across several professional bodies at home and further afield. Henley Business School Africa, for example, uses it to give its graduates shareable, validated CVs that employers can click and verify instantly.

Use cases everywhere

And with regulatory bodies for the medical field, engineering, accounting and more, there’s a lot of scope for a tool like this.

But it's not just regulatory bodies, educational institutions and employers that benefit from this. Stephen also created Verified-CV.com to give you and me the same trust advantage as institutions.

If a verified identity becomes as easy as a click, the days of “just send a certified copy” might finally be over.

We’re watching this space…

Revenue’s up, but cash still tight? You might have hidden profit leaks.

Finvoke’s latest insights show that money often slips away quietly: through slow billing, outdated pricing, unused subscriptions and unbilled client “favours.”

✅ Audit recurring costs; kill the software you never use
✅ Bill faster and tighten payment terms
✅ Charge for the real value you deliver

Finvoke helps founders see the full financial picture in real time. Their team blends accounting, tax and automation so you can spot leaks before they sink growth. From cloud bookkeeping to tax structuring, they’re the in-house finance team every serious business needs.

Plug the leaks. Grow your profits.

👀 Seeing Green. SA-born lithium-ion GreenTech, maxwell+spark, has closed its Series B funding round with a cool $15 million, in a round led by Klima, Chevron Technology Ventures (CTV) and Idemitsu, with the funding used to accelerate growth. Cool beans.

🎬 Aaand, Action. South Africa is rolling out a new digital visa system, the Screen Talent and Global Entertainment Scheme, that makes it possible for international film companies to get a film-related visa in under 24 hours. Nice one, DHA.

😎 SA’s Big Upgrade. South Africa landed its very first ratings upgrade in almost 20 years after S&P Global raised our foreign-currency long-term sovereign rating from “BB-“ to “BB”. Now that’s Blerrie Brilliant…

🦁 Bye-bye, Kuiper. Amazon’s satellite internet project, Project Kuiper, is getting a fresh coat of paint, being renamed to Amazon Leo. The name comes from where these satellites will be deployed — ie low-Earth orbit. Interesting…

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools, so our Founder’s Stack gives you company setup and compliance with Govchain, trust-building brand & comms with DoubleShift and more.

Every time you share, you get something cool in return.

Saving 15 or 20% of your income feels productive and disciplined. But the part no one says out loud is: Money without a purpose doesn’t stay saved for long.

Here’s the trick: Give every rand a job. Instead of letting your savings stack up in one place, decide what each portion is for: So much for retirement, so much for a home deposit, that dream trip you keep postponing.

Suddenly, it’s not just “savings,” it’s progress. When each amount has a label, you’re far less likely to raid it the next time something interesting pops up. It turns saving from a vague discipline game into a system that actually moves you forward.

Disclaimer: This content is for educational purposes only and should not be considered personalised financial, investment, tax or legal advice.

A gathering around tech, weekly office hours to share progress, wins and struggles, a Friday masterclass on B2B sales, and add to it a vibrant community of founders engaging live on WhatsApp, and you have a recipe for making progress faster, together.

These are some of the things we learnt this week in The Founder Collab:

1️⃣ When feedback bites, learn faster. Omar turned a harsh “this thing’s a scam” comment into a product upgrade: adding walkthroughs, autosave and tutorials. Every frustrated user is hidden gold.

2️⃣ The great AI breakup. ChatGPT’s disappointing performance lately had some looking for better alternatives: Gemini for automation, Claude for clarity and even Grok. AI stacks are fragmenting, and flexibility wins.

3️⃣ “Commission Breath”. Making your prospects run for the hills. We discussed the things to avoid doing when engaging your sales prospects.

Find your founder community. Join The Founder Collab, it’s where 120+ real SA founders help each other to build better, faster every day.

Last Friday, we showed you how Byron Rode built and sold his startup in less than a year, asking about your loyalty love language. Most play for the cashback rewards…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💰 Cashback (51%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ☕ Free coffee (19%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛍️ Discount vouchers (14%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎁 Points I’ll probably never redeem (11%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏖️ Exclusive deals like a VIP (5%)

Startup Fest — 19 Nov, Pretoria: Join founders, students and leaders for a one-day festival of innovation and entrepreneurship. Free. Register here

AI in Healthcare Summit — 20 Nov, Sandton: Explore how AI is transforming healthcare: from diagnostics to drug discovery. Book now.

Plato Coffee Founder Story — 20 Nov, CPT: Learn how a container coffee stand scaled to 100+ outlets with brand, ops and grit. R50. Join here.

SA FinTech Awards — 25 Nov, JHB: Celebrate South Africa’s top FinTech innovators and connect with leaders shaping the future of finance. Get tickets.

AfricArena Grand Summit — 2–3 Dec, CTICC: Watch 50+ top African startups pitch at the continent’s premier venture summit. Seed to growth stage. Get tickets.

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

⏱️ Tool to Try: CoreHour is a minimalist timeboxing app for power daily planning.

🛒 That’s Interesting: Famous American retailer Costco is a membership-only store ($65 per year subscription to shop there) and 65.5% of their profits come from membership fees, not product sales.

🏆 Next Level: 250 kids smashed the Guinness World Record for most jump-rope skips in one minute — the speed and coordination are unreal.

🥇 Hack: SA has the third-most unmined gold reserves in the world; see how it compares to other countries.

🌌 Wow Site: Trisolar Chaos is an editable simulator for exploring the Three-Body Problem.

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