Nearing the end {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? A digital artist built a website to track possible nuclear apocalypses by analysing the movement of private jets. The thinking is that billionaires might be the first to know and start vacating city centres. Pessimistic but also funny. ✈️

Send this to the friends you want to survive the apocalypse with. 🏕️

In This Open Letter

SA's home security market is worth R8 billion and set to more than double by 2030. But the average home alarm is still about as smart as the keypad it shipped with. This Cape Town venture is changing that…

Our 609k active private security officers and 16k registered security companies far outnumber our 150k cops and 75k soldiers. 

Yet the alarms most of us have at home are laughably outdated.

Cape Town founder Justin Zondagh recently told us that, while staying at a guesthouse outside Colesberg on a drive up to Joburg, the owner told him she regularly has guests from Cape Town who arrive, spend the night, then have to turn around and drive home to switch off their alarm.

Farmers experience the same thing: No one wants to drive across the property at 2 am to check if four triggered zones mean a real breach or a false alarm. Ditto for retailers who want to arm and disarm stores without being on the premises.

The good news is, there is now a way…

The startup making your alarm system smart

Olarm is a platform that connects to your existing alarm and puts full control in your phone. Arm, disarm, bypass zones, even hit panic, all from an app that works with every major alarm brand in SA. It also integrates with your electric fence, with CCTV in beta.

Every signal goes over Wi-Fi and 4G simultaneously via multi-path routing, so if one network drops, a backup SIM kicks in within seconds. When someone hits panic, their signal goes through.

Run by Justin and four co-founders, Olarm works with 900+ installers and hundreds of armed response companies nationally. The team is around 75, with a new manufacturing ops centre in Cape Town to support expansion into the UK and Italy. 

They’re currently shipping 11 new products, including the first wireless alarm system, Olarm One, as well as an AI reminder (in beta) that learns your habits and nudges you when you forget. 😉

We're watching this space…

Have your say…

The hiring signals have shifted. AI fluency is table stakes now, and the old playbook of degrees, CVs and tech stack lists isn't cutting it anymore.

So what are the best engineering teams actually hiring for? And if you're a developer, how do you stand out when everyone's prompting the same models?

OfferZen is bringing together engineering leaders from Impact.com, Pollinate and their own team to unpack exactly that — how roles are evolving, what assessments now test for, and the gap between "uses AI" and "builds with AI."

Whether you're hiring engineers or you are one, this is the conversation that cuts through the noise.

Many founders apply for funding and get dejected when they're turned down, but venture firms often fund those same startups 6 months down the line. We got the co-founder of one of SA's most prominent VC firms to tell us how to get funded in SA.

And would you believe there are 5 steps to get a funding yes from a VC that already said no.

Send this to a friend who needs to get funded. 💸

🍽️ Yoco's Big Move. Yoco has acquired Dyner AI, the Cape Town-built AI-native operating system for restaurants, to roll AI ops tools out to 200'000+ SA independent businesses, extending Yoco beyond payments into full commerce and ops. Big play.

🏷️ AI Gets a Label. YouTube will now automatically label AI-generated videos, even if creators don't declare it themselves. Shoulda been doing it from the start, but let's just hope the detector's actually good.

📈 Rate Hike Bites. The SARB has hiked interest rates by 25 basis points to 7%, the first increase in 3 years in a divided 4-2 vote. Prime goes to 10.50%. Ouch.

🚗 China Takes the Crown. A Chinese car brand has been crowned SA Car of the Year for the first time. Gone are the Porsches, Fords and Toyotas. This year, the Jetour T2 takes the cake.

📱 Products That Convert. You've probably tapped, swiped and touched their work without knowing it. For 16 years, Isoflow has been designing the UX and UI behind some of the world's biggest digital products — strategy, research and data turned into real business impact.*

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

Get the best in SA tech and business news →

Yesterday, we showed you Salus Cloud’s DevOps platform, asking about your biggest DevOps stumbling block. Most here didn’t even know it was a thing…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🫠 We built it ourselves and now we're stuck maintaining it (20%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💸 We can't afford the senior engineers it actually requires (10%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤷 Honestly, don't even know where to start (10%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏃 Our best infra people left for remote international gigs (0%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🫣 Wait… we were supposed to have a DevOps setup? (60%)

⚙️ Senior DevOps Engineer

🔐 Senior DevSecOps Engineer

🔌 Senior Backend Developer

🛠️ Principal Software Engineer

💻 Software Developer (EI)

We asked one of SA's foremost builders for frontline workers if tech is serving every level of society — and the answer reveals some massive market gaps…

Don’t miss all the extra operator interviews and insights content we do on our social channels — come enjoy the vibez.

📬 Tool to Try: Haerly helps recruiters hire faster by revealing how candidates think.

💰 That's Interesting: A couple walking their dog found $10 million worth of gold coins. Just casually.

🪙 Next Level: Check this coin catcher's cat-like reflexes.

🍳 Wow Site: RecipeIQ is Rotten Tomatoes for recipes; insert a recipe URL, and it’ll use real reviews to gauge if it’ll actually work or not.

Oh, oh, our beloved Cape Town startup now has only 8 weeks of runway left to become a unicorn. Will they make it? Find out: There's a new comic strip every Friday, only in The Open Letter.

Got a favourite? Meet all the South of Series A characters here.

☝ Send this to a friend you'd build a startup with. 🦄