Plus: OpenExodus 🤖, Cape Town’s salty water plans, Meta’s AR specs & look who’s sponsoring our next event drinks.

Newsletter

September 27, 2024

‍

♨️ Using AI to Find the Best Prices...

Plus: OpenExodus 🤖, Cape Town’s salty water plans, Meta’s AR specs & look who’s sponsoring our next event drinks.

Ready to launch? Behold the most amazing exploding rocket video yet! This beauty comes to you courtesy of China’s Deep Blue Aerospace as the Hollywood-movie quality vid of their failed launch-and-land attempt.

In this Open Letter:

Game changer: Using AI for better food prices.
OpenExodus, Cape Town’s salty water plans & Meta’s AR specs.
Drinks on us: Grab your event ticket + check out our drinks sponsors.
What you like most about the Collab: The results are in.
Last chance: 24 Hours left to get 50% off The Open Collab.
Meet the Startup: The latest startup we bumped into at our event.

In partnership with

Did someone forward you this email? Join 13,006 South Africans reading The Open Letter by signing up here.

TRENDING NOW

Putting More Meat on This R100bn Industry’s Plate

It’s hard to imagine an industry more cut-throat than a restaurant. Complexities of managing staff and customers aside, restaurants operate on tiny margins of around 4.4% in South Africa.

It goes without saying then that planning leads to large amounts of food waste or something as simple as overpaying for some of the 700+ items they order and use can destroy profits, if not sink the operation.

Not to mention, most restaurants are likely still recovering from those nasty hard lockdowns, where more than 770 restaurants shut their doors.

‍

Margins like carpaccio…

This nearly R100 billion per annum industry operates through ±16’000 restaurants nationally. Half of these are quick-service restaurants, typically part of a franchise where central ordering and price negotiation take that burden off the franchise owner.

However, non-franchise restaurants typically order all of their stock themselves, buying from a large array of suppliers. On average, they spend about R500k on suppliers per month and, because of their lack of data, are often at the mercy of suppliers not overcharging.

This is a major risk for restauranteurs… overpaying by 10% could be the difference between making a profit or making a loss.

‍

Wouldn’t it be nice to know you’re paying a fair price?

Local startup HeadsUp built an AI-powered app that gives restaurants price transparency by comparing ingredient prices to market data from others’ invoice histories.

How it works is: restaurants send HeadsUp their supplier invoices via WhatsApp or email, and the AI organises and analyses the restaurant’s data, compares it with their other users’ invoice data, supplier info, products, and prices (they have thousands of data points to work with), and lets users know if they’re over-paying for specific products based on current market prices – and what this would cost you over the space of a year.

Restaurants can then decide to switch to another supplier (if they’re getting ripped off and there’s better value to be found elsewhere) or equip the restaurant with solid info to negotiate better prices.

HeadsUp charges a SaaS fee to restaurants, which they say is easily offset by the amount they save. They regularly find products being marked up by as much as 80%! And that’s likely why more than 200 customers are using the product.

We had Sven Tietz the CEO & Co-Founder of HeadsUp on this week’s episode of our “How Would You Build It” podcast. His passion for helping restaurants double their margins using HeadsUp is palpable, and he shares candidly about how they’re building HeadsUp. Check out the full episode, or catch these highlights:

Just how much product is HeadsUp tracking?
A photocopy paper box, a stack of printed invoices and how it all started.
Getting their first (non-familial) customer, and how they settled on pricing.
Getting your customer to “fire” their current solution and “hire” yours…

THE OPEN COLLAB ONLY

Get exclusive insights into this startup, the industry and other opportunities, PLUS join our community of founders who get access to free events and support in building their businesses and

Join the Open Collab

IN SHORT

Nuggets for the Weekend Braai

👋 Bye Bye OpenAI. Three top leaders from OpenAI have announced their departure from the company including CTO Mira Murati, VP of Research Barret Zoph and Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew. This comes after a string of OpenAI executive departures in May and August this year, amidst the company’s planned restructure to a for-profit benefit corporation where Sam Altman is said to receive 7% equity.

🚚 Special Delivery. The SA leg of the Last Mile Innovation Nexus held in Jozi on the 17th of October will see local logistics startups get the chance to pitch to and connect with over 100 supply chain leaders, including Woolworths, Pick n Pay, Massmart, Homechoice, Clicks Group, and more.

🤓 Orion’s Specs. Meta just launched Orion, (previously known as Project Nazare) to Meta employees and select external audiences. The AR glasses combine the look and feel of a regular pair of glasses with the immersive capabilities of augmented reality, with Meta calling Orion “the most advanced pair of AR glasses ever made”.

⚡️Blast from the Past. Longing for the late 90s listening to MP3s on your computer via Winamp? Well, they’ve just released Winamp’s complete source code on GitHub, inviting developers to help make some improvements to it.

🚰 Don’t be Salty. Remember Cape Town’s Day Zero in 2018 and talk about a desalination plant? Turns out the City of Cape Town (CoCT) has commenced its feasibility study on the proposed R5 billion, 22’000 m2 sea-water, reverse-osmosis desalination plant set to be ready by 2030.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with expert growth strategy help from Metavolve, fractional CTO for hardware & software from Octoco and 11 more vital startup tools & services.

CHECK THIS OUT

Unlock Referral Bonuses by Connecting Friends with Top Jobs

Why should company employees have all the fun with referral bonuses?

Meet Draftboard: A platform where referral bonuses are open to everyone. Share job opportunities from companies like SeatGeek, Via, Formlabs, Bilt, Triple Whale, and OneSignal with your network. Earn when your friends get hired.

Here’s How:

Seamless Sharing: Copy and share your unique referral link via text, email, or social media.
Diverse Companies: Access job postings from over 80 premier companies across multiple sectors.
Real-Time Updates: Track the progress of your referrals as they advance through the hiring process.

Join the Draftboard community and unlock your earning potential. It's free and easy!

HAPPENING SOON

This Tuesday in Stellenbosch

Want to learn how Vodacom saves billions per year using AI?

Or how The Daily Maverick uses AI to uncover corruption and fraud?

Then you don’t wanna miss our upcoming event on 1 October in Stellenbosch.

Only a few more tickets left — it’s R150 or free if you’re an Open Collab member.

Buy Tickets

If you aren’t in Stellenbosch, don’t despair; check out these cool events coming up, including taking your business offshore, why Mxit failed and mastering Sales.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

‍

In the last 48 hours alone, in our online community, we…

Thoroughly unpacked Meta’s Orion glasses play — taking no prisoners, dragging Apple and Epic Games into the ring too.
Got our tickets to the sweet-sweet next startup event in Stellenbosch.
Celebrated Gustav’s app launch on Apple!
Celebrated Danei’s pre-orders rolling in!
Discovered a ton of helpful payment gateway info.
Got the lowdown on startup showcase.
And had the entire community gang up to convince us to do pitch events, with pitch deck workshops beforehand… hmmm…

Coming Up Next Week

Wednesday 10-11: Office Hours, where we all log in and work together, + the whole Open Letter team is at members’ disposal.
New: Free monthly startup strategy calls for all Open Collab members.
Support: All day, every day: unlimited introductions, recruitment, service provider referrals and business-building insights.