On track {{ FIRSTNAME }}? You might have heard that China rolled out thousands of driverless delivery trucks over the holidays. And they’re running into a few funny real-world snags. Here’s a compilation to enjoy. 🤭

It’s a special day! We recently had our 3rd birthday, receiving many requests to tell our own startup story, so today’s a special edition on the what, why and how of The Open Letter itself — hope you enjoy it.

In This Open Letter

SA today has one of the largest tech startup ecosystems in Africa. But that wasn’t always the case…

Twenty years ago, as the first e-commerce platforms matured and telecoms democratised (2000s), the Seacom submarine cable was launched, and a Stellenbosch company called 4i Mobile, founded by Renier Kriel in 2009, started building some of the country’s first apps.

In 2010, Silicon Cape was founded, venture capital (VC, funding for startups) initiatives arrived in SA by the mid-2010s and our first big startups (SnapScan, etc.) from 2013 onwards.

By 2020, tech was advancing at a pace and COVID was poised to accelerate digital transformation, but the ecosystem itself needed to take one more crucial growth step…

Bridging SA’s startup divide

See, people have tried to fuel SA’s ecosystem with events to bring startups and investors together – a lot of good’s been done in that space. But no one’s bridged the gap between startups and the people that ought to buy from them, i.e. other businesses, large corporates and even consumers, because they don’t know these startups exist. 

One way to address this is with media. We know this from how the US uses distribution (media exposure) to leverage venture growth. VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, for example, uses media to fuel its startups via podcasts (2014) and media properties (2010), officially launching a dedicated media division in 2025. For startups, that distribution isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a matter of life and death.

Now, whilst there are great media companies in SA, they tend to focus more on established businesses, with very little startup focus. And the problem with that is, arguably, startups don’t need funding as much as they need visibility and customers. 

Customers bring validation, income and feedback they can use to iterate quickly, which helps them grow. And only in that growth stage does funding really play a role.

So, in late 2022, three friends in Cape Town had a crazy idea…

The newsletter connecting the dots in SA startup

The Open Letter (as if you don’t know) is a free daily newsletter that champions SA founders and startups, to give them the early visibility and traction they need to reach a place that justifies funding, so they can grow into actual, successful money-making businesses.

Going from virtually zero startup news to a new startup every weekday took Renier Kriel (who exited 4i in 2017), Elvorne Palmer and Jason Mill to bootstrap (self-fund) The Open Letter from absolute zero in Nov 2022 to where it is today.

And it’s working: We were read 2.4 million times in 2025, 2 out of 3 startups report getting funded, striking a partnership or getting new customers after we feature them, and we are growing fast. In just the last 4 weeks, we added 5’000+ new readers. We are at 30k readers now and on track to hit 100k at the end of the year. 

Beyond the newsletter, we’re planning 6 Open Letter events this year: 2 in Stellenbosch, 2 in Cape Town and 2 in Joburg (members of our community, The Founder Collab get free tickets to all of them!) as well as lots of smaller, regional events and other interesting projects in this space.

One thing you can be sure of is that we’ll continue to champion SA founders and their ventures.

Thanks for following the journey.

Thanks for engaging with the startups we feature.

Keep watching this space…

SA women’s fashion and lifestyle brand Poetry are masters of lifestyle storytelling on Instagram and Facebook. Their curated exclusivity and powerful personal stories have always been a winning recipe for driving sales.

So, when Chat Inc came on board with the idea of taking it next level on SA’s No 1 platform for personal connections, WhatsApp, the team were cautiously optimistic — Chat Inc had planned a delightful mix of ways to connect over an upcoming sale.

The results? Targeting 61k SA women, Chat Inc helped bring 14.8k to the shop (24%), resulting in R1.58 million in sales, a 269% return on Poetry’s investment.

Want the same?

☀️ Power Up. Local independent power producer SolarAfrica has landed R1.5 billion in funding to build SunCentral 2, a 114MW plant for its utility-scale solar development in the Northern Cape. Nice one.

🤝 Second Chance Free Rides. SA matric students who want to improve on their matric results can now get a free ride to their redo exam, thanks to the “Bolt Your Matric Comeback” initiative, with 1’000 free rides to students in Gauteng, KZN, Limpopo and Cape Town up for grabs. Love to see it.

💳 Stabilising Payments. Visa is looking at integrating stablecoins into its existing payments ecosystem. While Visa already has various stablecoin-related initiatives, it’s hoping this further integration will lock in its market leader advantage. Interesting.

⚓ Dropping Anchor in SA. Global legal AI platform Luminance is setting up shop on local shores. The move will establish SA as the regional hub, and comes off the back of a 66% increase in SA-based customers, with the platform setting its sights on further expansion into Kenya, Nigeria and more over time. Very cool.

⏱️ Payroll 8× Faster. When Cape Union Mart’s payroll team was stuck fixing errors, Deel Local Payroll, powered by PaySpace, brought in a cloud platform that cut payroll processing from 4 days to just half a day, eliminating downtime and freeing up the team for strategic work.*

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

Yesterday, we showed you how Inzalo is distilling a new SA take on tequila in the Karoo, asking about your drink of choice for a night out. For most, it’s red wine…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍺 Tried and tested (23%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥃 I like the fancy stuff (4%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥂 Only France’s finest Champagne for me (2%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🍷 A proudly SA red thank you very much (43%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🤔 This local agave stuff’s got my attention (28%)

Your 2 cents…

Sounds lekker, Opus. Pinkies up. 🍸

🩲 Software Developer (Durban) @ LexisNexis Shared Services

🧑‍💻 Senior Software Engineer II (JAVA & Microservices) @ LexisNexis Shared Services

💰 Senior Developer @ Pay At Services

👗 Data Analyst @ MyRunway

🪘 Senior Full Stack Developer @ BeatpulseLabs

🧑‍⚖️ Tech Lead @ LexisNexis Shared Services

Precious and industrial metals continued to rally into mid-January, with gold, silver and base metals hitting fresh highs.

EUROMET: +100.00%
ALPHAMIN: +16.04%
ARCMITTAL: +12.31%
JUBILEE: +11.63%
BALWIN: +10.75%

Data from Moneyweb (Fri 9 Jan 2026 → Thu 15 Jan 2026)

Gold finished slightly down after profit-taking near multi-year highs, amid a broader metals rally that saw prices hit record territory early in the week.

–0.55% (R 74 362.77 → R 75 572.59)

Data from Investing.com (Fri 9 Jan 2026 → Thu 15 Jan 2026)

Bitcoin showed modest weekly movement as prices hovered around strong technical levels near $95 000–$97 000, with a mid-week rally.

–0.51% (R 1 494 453 → R 1 586 140)

Want to get in on the Bitcoin action? Start investing via Binance today.

Ethereum pulled back after a strong mid-week surge, as traders booked profits following news of escalating blockchain adoption.

–0.49% (R 50 915.2 → R 54 764.4)

Get in on the Ethereum action by investing via Binance today.

💡 Tool to Try: SwapLoom lets you catalogue, grade, price and trade Pokémon cards from photos in one clean dashboard.

🛰 That’s Interesting: Astronauts on the ISS aren’t in zero gravity (at 400kms, the station still experiences 90% of Earth gravity), so why are they floating? Turns out their orbit keeps them in constant free fall, creating the zero-grav effect only.

🛠 Next Level: This backyard-built trike is our dream vehicle.

🌍 Hack: This map shows Africa’s 50 biggest cities by population.

⏱ Wow Site: Need to find the best meeting times with international teams? Zoneless stacks time zones vertically so you instantly find the best meeting overlap.

Vote in the poll, leave a quick comment, or hit reply — we read every single one.