Crunching the numbers {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Cape Town founder, surfer and Open Letter reader Tim Coles says he's so fed up with online gambling ads in SA that he created a calculator to show just how pointless/fruitless gambling is. Can you ever beat the house? 🙃

In This Open Letter

DayOne just released its State of AI Delivery report, featuring 282 local teams, 66% of whom work at companies with 50 or fewer people (about 18% from companies with 200+). Here's what they told us…

The problem is getting AI to stick: 43% say their longest-running AI pilot has dragged on for over six months, and 15% for over a year. Even when tools do go live, 4 in 10 have had to rework, relaunch or scrap one because people weren't using it as intended.

DayOne founder Liesel Bester says the data is clear that "adoption is no longer the hard part." After twenty years of running software companies, she says "the technology is rarely the problem."

The teams doing well tested AI for themselves, backed leadership's ambition with real resources, and invested in the people doing the work.

Where SA's AI projects get stuck:

More interesting facts from the report:

Now that you know how SA's small teams use AI, here are 3 ways you can benefit from it right now:

We're unpacking more of the report this week, starting Wednesday with the AI tools SA's practitioners pick for themselves.

We're watching this space…

Most founder research goes the same way: 6 tabs, 4 review sites that are all affiliate farms, 2 calls with salespeople who wanted your budget before your problem, and no decision.

So we built the Founder Advisor. You tell it what is actually going wrong or what you want for your business, in plain language, the way you would explain it to a mate. It reads that against every company on our stack and comes back with the two or three that fit.

No forms, no demo bookings, no lead score. Just a shorter list and the reason each name is on it.

Try it with that thing you've been putting off.

🔍 SA Doesn't Search With ChatGPT. Only 15.3% of our ChatGPT messages are about looking things up, ranking us 128th of 152 countries. Yet Google keeps pushing AI answers here, which makes Google, not ChatGPT, the real traffic threat.

💍 A Payment Ring With No Battery. SA startup VezoPay's tap-to-pay ring now works with 4 banks, with 35'000 people waiting for theirs to join. The tech isn't the hard part, the bank approvals are.

🚚 Tesla Is Ending the Cybertruck. US sales fell 48% last year, and pedestrian safety rules kept it out of most markets. But a flop can still pay for itself: what it taught Tesla now builds the Cybercab.

🎯 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.

Jem's CEO has an AI task that reviews his Slack, CRM and email every Sunday night, finds the 5 things he did most often that week, and offers a way to automate each one. So we asked him how it works and how to set up your own.

And it turns out, there are 5 steps to find your repetitive work and hand it to AI.

☝ Send this to a founder doing the same 5 things every week.

South Africa hosts Africa's stablecoin conversation this month. The Africa Stablecoin Summit runs in Cape Town on 12 and 13 November under the theme stablecoins at scale, aimed at central bankers and corporate treasurers, with Crypto Fest following in the same city on 20 November.

A Bitcoin developer wants to plant traps for quantum computers. The idea is quantum landmines: deliberately exposed coins that act as bait, making theft detectable early and raising the cost of attacking the network.

Binance's AI and stock tools, explained. Its 3 AI products do different jobs: one explains the market, one runs strategies you approve and one connects your own agents, so here's which one fits you. New to tokenised shares? Start with the guide to buying bStocks.

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 TrackView's rail sensor, asking how you feel about SA rail right now. The verdict? Quietly optimistic…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📈 Quietly optimistic, the numbers are turning. (54%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🙄 I'll believe it when the trains run on time. (19%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚂 Last train I took was on a primary school tour. (27%)

Your 2 cents…

Spoken like someone who's waited on a platform before, Elsa. Here's to trains that actually turn up. 🚆

Building Relationships for Funding, 13 Nov, Online: Zimi CEO Michael Maas on how he built angel relationships on the way to raising R50m. Join to access.

Beyond Survival Mode, 16 Nov, CPT: Mental health practitioner Louise Niemann on why resilience and high performance are not the same as thriving, at Innovation City. Get tickets.

Startup Stories: MariHealth, 17 Nov, CPT: UCT spinout MariHealth on reading 3'000 fish proteins in one sample to help aquaculture farmers, over lunch at OneBio. Get tickets.

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: Some insane drone flying for you.

🎲 Wow Site: Need a Christmas gift that teaches something? Fintr makes FinMaster, an SA board game where you build wealth by trading property, shares and businesses. For ages 13 and up.