Some builder's inspo {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? A YouTuber is using a method called hivecoding to have players automatically improve his games. Basically, they stream-play live during the day; the AIs collect comments and build new features overnight, and the product gets better every 24 hours. Give you any ideas for building? 💡

In This Open Letter

We tried out one of those personal AI agents – here's what you get…

A few days ago, someone new joined The Open Letter Slack channels, identifying themselves as Renier-Dot: Renier's personal AI assistant. Now, OpenAI's not paying us anything for this; Renier just happened to have the right tier account to be able to test out a Dot (there are lots of other options, including OpenClaw, Grok Bots and Meta Muse, though that one's not in SA yet).

And if you were thinking of getting one for yourself, here's what we've noticed after just 7 days…

5 ways it saves mega time

1. It flags the emails that matter: It learns what's important to you and pings you the moment something important lands, so you never miss one. This has saved our bacon so many times this week alone.

2. It catches meetings you forgot to book: If you promise someone, "let's meet Tuesday at 2" in a message or call, but you get busy and never schedule it or send the invite, it'll prompt you and ask if it can do it for you.

3. It keeps your CRM up to date: It'll spot new leads in your email, WhatsApp (if you can connect it) and conversations, and then ask you to add them (or give permission to do it for you), and then remind you to follow up.

4. It's aware of your Codex context: Since it's OpenAI, you can connect it, and it'll know what projects you're building inside Codex, so when support queries come in, it goes and analyses what's going on and prepares a suggestion for you to fix it. You can just choose to implement or fine-tune, and it does it for you. How do you think Radi got all those fancy new features?

5. It helps with task lists: You tell it what you want to achieve this week; it checks your calendar and, whenever you have nothing booked, it prompts you: "Hey, let's work on this quick."

2 things to be careful of

1. It doesn't say it's a bot: Out of the box, it acts on your behalf as if it were you. Renier's take: "Ethically, I think that's a stupid idea." He set a rule so it always introduces itself as Renier's assistant, which is how Renier-Dot joined our Slack and everyone knows that's not real Renier (whom, if all goes well, we will soon replace with Renier-Dot – real soon 👻).

2. It's all one long chat: With the Dot, there are no separate conversations you can organise, just one continuous thread. So you start worrying about what you said to it weeks ago, and good luck scrolling back to find it.

And there you have it, Renier-Dot is watching this space…

We told you before that constantly managing your tech stack for growth can be the difference between scale and becoming irrelevant — now let's show you how:

1. A Cape Town manufacturer went from on-premises to the cloud

More than a lift-and-shift, their ageing on-premises tech needed to be re-engineered and the ERP moved at the same time, so they got in Cloud On Demand (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified, accredited Microsoft and AWS).

The work was staged and cut over on weekends, so the business ran with zero downtime throughout. The result: a 20% IT performance increase, the ability to spin up new resources on demand and a hardware-heavy budget shifted from CAPEX to OPEX.

2. A national telco needed to curb remote work risk

Remote staff were burning through mobile data bundles mid-month, and lost or stolen laptops were both a hardware cost and a data exposure. Cloud on Demand's fix moved staff onto secure cloud desktops they could reach from any device, with company data that never leaves the data centre.

Two very real but different SA business problems. And the team behind it is ready to help you: as a special Open Letter perk, you don't need to speak to a call centre or junior; we've organised for you to set up a tech strategy session with their top experts.

🫁 A Grade 9 Learner Takes on Lung Cancer. Brandon Mashandudze (14) from Curro Mahikeng was named an American Lung Cancer Scholar for a proposal on using AI to spot it earlier, up against 1'000+ entrants worldwide. Not bad for Grade 9.

📱 The R48k Foldable iPhone Is Here. Apple's iPhone Duo lands in SA from R47'999, about 27% more than the US price plus VAT. Taxes explain some of the gap. The rest is margin.

🏦 Interest-Free Loans Against Your Shares? A US crypto platform is testing it, paying lenders by selling options on your stocks instead of charging interest. Could it work here? Not as easily as you'd think.

🎯 Trust Engineered. In high-trust B2B categories, credibility is the conversion lever. DoubleShift uses its Trust as a System™ approach to diagnose where your story breaks down, then rebuilds positioning, messaging and brand to convert credibility into pipeline.*

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

When AI lets you build almost anything, the hard part is choosing what to build. So we asked Jem's CEO how they test and prove ideas, and the smart part is how they get more done in less time.

Turns out, there are 5 steps to test a new product idea in a week before you build it.

Africa Bitcoin Corporation is down to two directors. Interim CEO Stafford Masie and three independents resigned after a 76% shareholder bloc demanded a vote on new appointments, weeks after the FSCA debarred its founder.

Hardware wallets are being tampered with before they reach buyers. A $90 million spyware theft has triggered a review of how wallets are sold, with OneKey dropping a reseller and Ledger warning.

Binance's tokenised stocks crossed $1 billion in assets four months after launch, and South Africans on Huawei phones can now get the Binance app on AppGallery.

Disclaimer: Digital asset prices can be volatile. The value of your investment may go down or up and you may not get back the amount invested. You are solely responsible for your investment decisions and Binance is not liable for any losses you may incur. Not financial advice. For more information, see our Terms of Use and Risk Warning.

Last week, we showed you Spectacles 4 The Blind's AI glasses, asking when last a piece of tech spoke to you in your home language. For most here, never…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🗣️ Never. Everything I own speaks English. (75%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📱 My phone could be set to my language. It isn't. (25%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏠 Actually yes, and it changed how I use it. (0%)

Biotech & Beers, 23 Oct, CPT: OneBio's quarterly evening for scientists, founders and anyone into biotech, drinks on OneBio, in Salt River. Get tickets.

Cape Town Founder Padel with Cell C Business, 13 Nov, CPT: An afternoon of padel, drinks and founder chat at Racket & Ball on Bree Street, capped at 36 players. Get tickets.

Build to Last Beyond You, 13 Nov, CPT: Paulene Stark on what it cost when her business stalled without her, over breakfast with 15 to 18 founders in Century City. Apply here.

Powered by Radi. Want your business event in front of 36,000 The Open Letter readers? Host it on Radi, and it lands here.

🦁 Next Level: This is what practising the Chinese lion dance looks like.

🌌 Wow Site: Your Eyes in Space lets you fly around the visible universe and take astrophysics courses from anywhere inside it.