Is it real {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? TikTok joker/personality Frankie Lapenna released a video claiming to be the first robot vs human MMA fight. Ja, Terminator kicks him across the ring, but it seems a bit staged. What do you think? 🥊

PS: With Heritage Day tomorrow, we’re taking a braai break for the rest of the week. Enjoy and see you again bright and early on Monday!

In Today's Open Letter

SA's venture ecosystem still tops Africa in VC deals (most of which return on par with the US and Europe) — so this Heritage Day, we celebrate the ecosystem…

From September 2025 to September 2026, the SA ecosystem saw some 71 funding deals, valued at $387.2m (~R6.4bn) in disclosed funds alone (which means it's probably quite a bit more). There were also 16 exit deals, but only 5 were disclosed: at $548.3m (~R9bn), you know the total is way higher.

You won't want us to showcase them all here again, so here's a special Heritage Day highlights reel…

1 SolarSaver, $60m led by Inspired Evolution's Evolution III Fund: Featured as one of Stellenbosch's biggest raises, SolarSaver builds, owns and operates rooftop solar systems for African businesses so they can get affordable power without the capital expenditure.

2 SwiftVEE, R173m Series A co-led by HAVAÍC and Exeo Capital: Africa's biggest online livestock auctions, moving more than R1.6bn of cattle, sheep, goats and game a year across five countries.

3 AI Diagnostics, R85m pre-Series A led by The Steele Foundation for Hope: For their digital stethoscope that listens to your lungs and flags TB on the spot.

4 Zimi, R50m Series A led by the Development Bank of Southern Africa: Sells the whole EV package on one monthly bill: vehicles, chargers, solar and software, cutting energy cost per kilometre by up to 90%. Plus: See the founder's tips for funding your business.

5 Orca Fraud, R38m seed led by Norrsken22: Two former Stitch engineers built fraud detection for mobile wallets and agent banking instead of cards, and now screen over R80bn in payments a month across 70 countries. Plus: See the founder's tips for raising by creating FOMO.

Now for the exits…

1 SmsPortal, up to $145m to LINK Mobility: Two students started it in a garage in 2002 and grew it into Africa's biggest A2P messaging platform, turning over R1bn a year before Oslo-listed LINK bought it as its first move outside Europe.

2 Walletdoc, R400m to Capitec: Ten years of building the full payment gateway between merchants and their money, the one piece SA's biggest bank by customers didn't own.

3 Quro Medical, R121m for a controlling stake to Netcare: Africa's first reimbursable hospital-at-home, streaming patients' vitals to clinical teams so they recover in their own beds at half the cost of a ward.

4 Dyner.ai, undisclosed to Yoco: Yoco's first acquisition, buying the restaurant operating system two ex-Discovery actuaries built in a year, to push AI ops tools out to 200k SA independent businesses.

5 Conservio, undisclosed to Glampings.com: Raised R17m in January 2025, sold 18 months later, taking 1'000 African nature lodges onto a Dutch platform chasing 35'000 listings worldwide.

Who's it going to be next year…?

AI makes it easy for anyone to build software that gives insights to the hospitality industry, so one SA company needed to get an upper hand over competitors.

They had a beer-monitoring system that could give unprecedented tap-side information, but the device was too large, had no backup power, and didn't provide the level of reliability and detail the application required. So they brought in Octoco to redesign it from the ground up.

Why? Because hardware is the moat. And Octoco's in-house team designs, builds and integrates real electronics and takes a product across the full process rather than handing it off halfway. From hardware and embedded systems, IoT and software, plus fractional CTO leadership to connect them.

The team went through multiple hardware iterations, progressively reducing the size while working towards the most efficient design that includes:

Once deployed, the system can tell breweries exactly how much beer is being poured, whether it is being served at the right temperature, how often lines are cleaned and whether equipment is operating as expected.

That combination of hardware, embedded systems, connectivity and industrial design is what turns a collection of sensors into a system that can operate in the field.

Grow by changing your model. OUTsurance always sold by phone or ads, but HNW clients buy differently, so they broke their own rule and built a broker channel. That channel 5x-ed its profit to R458 million in a year. See the numbers.

Win by pairing the best humans with tech. While Chinese brands edge out traditional carmakers, BMW's Rosslyn plant now builds every X3 plug-in hybrid sold on the planet. The difference? Investing in team + new tech. How they do it.

Get advanced account protection. With phishing rising in Africa, Capitec built a unique feature into their app: the ability to check, in real-time, whether the person calling you is really from your bank. Next level. Get better protection.

🏆 R4.2m, And It Costs You Nothing To Try. Investec's early-stage awards just quadrupled the pot and doubled the categories, and if you're under four years old and pre-Series A, you qualify. There's one term worth reading before you enter, though.

🤖 A Bank Just Wrote SA's AI Rules. The FSCA said it would wait for global guidance, so Standard Bank went and wrote its own framework with Stellenbosch University. In FinTech, someone else's internal doc may become your compliance requirement.

📉 Now You Can Prove The Shadowban. X will start telling you when a post was throttled, in which country, and which government asked for it. No other platform does this at account level. There's one unglamorous thing to do about it this month.

💨 Our Wind Beats Germany's. SA's onshore wind runs better load factors than Germany or Spain and got procured at R0.49 per kWh, the cheapest power ever contracted here. So the obvious question is why the plan is now pointing offshore.

🛒 25'866 Shopify Stores, One Missing Piece. South Africa has 25'866 Shopify stores, and every one of them has been sending shoppers to a separate page to pay. Not by choice, Shopify Payments has never operated here. That changed this month, and with Black Friday nine weeks out, the timing isn't an accident.*

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

Yesterday, we showed you LegalFundi's WhatsApp legal AI, asking what the play is when a legal problem lands. And most here Google into the early morning…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🙈 Ignore it and hope it disappears (15%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🔍 Google it at 2 AM and hope for the best (62%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💸 Pay the lawyer and feel the pain (23%)

Most SA founders treat a new market as a fresh build: new research, new product, new everything. But we asked a founder whose platform now screens around $5bn a month across 70+ countries how they did it.

And it turns out she has 5 specific steps to expand into new markets faster than most.

Building physical or consumer tech? The Next Wave Fund from Kickstarter and Google offers a $10k pledge toward your crowdfunding goal, expert campaign support and free Google training. Closes 30 Sep. Apply now.

Edtech team with a concept, not yet built? Injini's AI for Education Venture Builder takes 12 Southern African teams through an 8-month build, with $25k equity-free for five. Closes 27 Sep. Apply now.

Need more than just advice? The Founder Collab bundles R40k+ in tools, cloud credits, legal sessions and a curated founder community into one membership for SA tech builders. Join now.

Want free AI skills training? Google Hustle Academy 2026 offers one-day bootcamps and 60-min webinars for SA entrepreneurs and SME owners. Register for free.

Buying Back SA Tech from Durban, 1 Oct, Ballito: Gumtree's Pedro Casimiro on why Ignition bought the brand back from its offshore owner. R150. Get tickets.

Founders Café, 10 Oct, Cape Town: Half-day founder morning, 50 seats, micro-talks and a R4'000+ gift bag. R1'500. Get tickets.

Startup Stories: Biomine, 14 Oct, Cape Town: Making the gut microbiome useful for everyday health and cancer drug trials, over lunch. R50. Get tickets.

🎆 Next Level: The Nagaoka fireworks festival is genuinely insane. Also, why doesn't SA do fireworks shows anymore?

🔍 Wow Site: Is SlickSearch the world's most customisable search engine?