Enough worth? Elon Musk’s been benefiting from Trump’s US win — the former boy from Pretoria now has a net worth that eclipses South Africa’s GDP by almost R600bn, sheez!

Anyway, forget Friday the 13th, it’s Fast-Five-Friday and we have a list of awesome startups doing great things — let’s go…

1. ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

Underneath the Christmas tree…

Named the world’s most valuable toy brand for the 10th year in a row, LEGO is beloved by kids, parents and adult collectors alike. Chances are there’s a LEGO set or two on Santa’s letter this year.

However, some brand-new sets can also have a pretty heavy price tag (like this Star Wars Millennium Falcon, which costs a cool R16199). Not unlike everything else, LEGO can't escape price increases due to inflation, with an average increase of around 5%.

Enter BLOCK Shop, an online LEGO store started by Anton de Kock and his family during COVID Lockdown. They sell pre-loved, rare, and retired LEGO sets, Minifigures, individual bricks, and other LEGO pieces. 

So, whether you’re keen building a set from scratch or need some individual pieces to create something from your imagination, BLOCK Shop might just be the right place to look…

Lego Wolverine…we didn’t know it existed

2. RUNNING REPAIRS

Mobile mechanics at your service…

In last week’s Fast Five Friday, we had a car maintenance riddle for you. While the answer we were looking for was Michanic, our friend DJ put us onto another startup in the space, making some moves called Fixxr. It’s a mobile mechanic platform that services cars at your home or office (or wherever you are, really). 

There’s probably a good reason why startups like these are finding customers. Over the last 5 years, roughly 2.4 million new cars were sold, totalling an estimated 13.1 million cars on the road. That means that more than 80% of the cars on the road in SA are older than 5 years and likely out of service plans.

Also, if you stick to guidelines, cars need to be serviced annually, meaning there are over 10 million services up for grabs.

Narrowing it down even further, an estimated 54% of workers still work hybrid, meaning servicing a car at home while you work from home could be very convenient. Assuming that all of the people who work hybrid have cars (and that they own all the new cars), that means that roughly 1.25 million of the car services out there per year could likely be interested in a home-based car service. At R1000 a service, that’s R1.25 billion market.

Talk about a perfect storm of conditions to make a business viable…

3. KEEP AN EYE ON THESE

Housing SA’s Class of 2025…

In 2023, over 2.5 million students enrolled across all of SA’s tertiary institutions. Which is great. But for a significant chunk of these students, trying to find student accommodation is a real headache – in fact, there’s only accommodation for about 20% of those who enrolled in universities (never mind those at other tertiary places of study)… 

Founded back in 2018, DigsConnect is Africa's largest student accommodation marketplace. It connects landlords, estate agents, and property managers with students searching for housing, making the process of finding and offering student accommodation simple and seamless.

They’ve already connected 161,000+ landlords and tenants across Cape Town, Pretoria, and Jozi, so if someone you know is heading to university in February 2025 and still looking for a place to stay, check them out.

4. FROM THE OPEN COLLAB COMMUNITY

Locals supporting locals…

We’ve written about SA’s semigration trend before (mid-2023 to be exact). Big city slickers finding the allure of small-town living enough to move their whole family to coastal areas and small towns across SA.

While things like Fibre Internet or Herotel have made it possible for people to work from anywhere, big-city comforts like MrD, Uber Eats, and even grocery delivery are in short supply in smaller towns (if any).

New local player, Bzaar is making it easier to buy from local shops, artisans, restaurants and other services in your local community and get it delivered to your doorstep. It’s big city convenience with a small town touch.

And we think Gustav and Elouise might be on to something… just check how something similar played out in the USA into a $20m a year business.

Instagram post by @bzaarza

Want to build with founders like Bzaar’s Gustav and Elouise? Come join SA’s premium community for tech startup and scale-up founders.

5. A TEAM OF ENGINEERS TO HELP YOU BUILD

Build with the leaders

The more complex the problems you solve, the higher the likelihood of great margins. And with margins on SaaS businesses under pressure due to AI making it easier than ever to code, many are shifting their attention to hardware.

But hardware’s a different ball game, an engineer’s game, in fact…

And most SA founders don’t have direct access to that level of hardcore engineering talent. It’s normally reserved for the big guns developing aerospace or deep tech in Stellenbosch.

Until now, that is…

The venture engineers (so-called because, well, they are all actual engineers) at Octoco, whose outsourced CTO work normally only aligns with big players that want to build serious new tech, have just launched Yenza, a new venture studio that helps founders with a vision go from zero to the stratosphere in record time.

Octoco team in Stellenbosch

It’s like having a team of hardcore engineers join your team, so it's a definite must for founders with SpaceX-level dreams to get going.

We’d try to get in early because people are going to be clamouring to get accepted – apply here.

IN SHORT

Something juicy for the road…

🌿 Green Tech Gear Up. Local hardware tech incubator Savant has just launched the 3rd Cohort for its Build Programme, a 6-month accelerator aimed at early-stage startups solving complex green economy challenges through science and engineering-based technology. Apply now.

🤖 Google’s 2nd Gemini. Google has released a new version of its AI model: Gemini 2.0. It’s said to be twice as fast as its predecessor, will power virtual agents and can generate images and audio across languages. Google also launched “Deep Research” which allows users to use Gemini to dive into topics with detailed reports.

🔎 What We Searched For. SA’s Year In Search 2024 was released and showed the stuff nearest to our hearts, and Google Search trends. From “Dricus du Plessis” in Athletes to “Baby Reinder” and “Inside Out 2” in TV and Movies, South Africans liked to stay in the know, keeping their finger on the pulse of events like both SA & US Elections, the peanut butter recall, the ANC coalition and the two pot system.

💻 DStv Byting Back. MultiChoice revealed some DStv Stream data from the last year, with users streaming over 560 petabytes of content. The recent Bok game against Scotland was the most-streamed live sports event, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” the most-watched movie, and “Yellowstone” and “My Brother’s Keeper” the most streamed international and local series respectively.

🏗️ CAT’s out the Bag. SA construction equipment company Barloworld has received a R22.8 billion offer from Saudi Arabian heavy machinery group Zahid Group and its local partners. Barloworld is the official Caterpillar dealer in several African nations including Zambia, the DRC, Malawi, Angola and South Africa.

🎯 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with the best in business strategy with Metavolve, investment, offshoring and startup legal insights with Dommisse Attorneys and 12 more vital startup tools & services.

JOBS IN TECH

We know it’s Friday the 13th, but do ya feel lucky?

🧱 Senior Product Manager — Ecommerce @ Yoco

👨‍💻 Solutions Architect @ FlySafair

🤝 Co-Founder @ Veevo

⚡️Product Engineer, Technical Procurement Agent and Hardware Engineer @ Plentify * who we featured in the newsletter on Tuesday)

Hiring? Get in touch, and we will feature it here.

GAME TIME

3 Lies and a Truth