Wild world, {{ FIRSTNAME }}? An activist group has created Poison Fountain, a site that feeds AI crawlers poisoned training data to degrade the quality of models. The kicker? The people behind the group are apparently all AI industry insiders who want to see their own products burn. 🤷‍♀️

In Today’s Open Letter

Tequila is a R114bn global market, but the plant genus it comes from offers so much more – these South Africans are serving up something entirely new from the Klein Karoo… 

Remember when tequila was the round you ordered as Mandoza’s “Nkalakatha” came on?

Back when your only options were Jose Cuervo or some super sketchy bottle with a label designed in Microsoft Paint…

Well, tequila matured over time to become an interesting niche drink that, in some circles, is held in the same regard (if not higher) as whiskeys and brandies.

In fact, in 2023, tequila overtook whiskey to become the second best-selling spirit category after vodka in the US, rising 13% YOY to $3.8 billion (R62bn) in the first nine months of 2024 alone. Globally, it’s the 6th most imported spirit, a cool $7bn (R114bn) market. 

Yeah, it's big money: According to Mexico’s Tequila Regulatory Council, 495.8 million litres of tequila were produced in 2024, with nearly 80% being exported. 

But here’s the thing, for a drink to legally be considered tequila, it must be made from a specific succulent called the Blue Weber agave, and be made in authorised regions. It’s a problem, though, because only so much can be produced, so the supply can’t keep up with demand.

The business gap that’s emerging here is to introduce connoisseurs to the unique drinks the entire agave genus (families of succulent/cactus plants) can provide – not just tequila.

Something brewing closer to home

Many agave plants are already naturalised (a non-invasive, non-native plant that’s established without human help) in SA. That’s why our National Biodiversity Institute lists Agave americana as established in South Africa.

Agave is very suitable for arid environments like the Karoo, where it can grow on marginal and eroded land without disrupting local species or farmland. Which is why SA is learning to make it into delicious drinks…

Inzalo Agave Spirits is a local agave distillery on a mission to create something truly unique to South Africa: an entirely new category of agave spirit.

It’s neither tequila nor mezcal and is made from a rare, wild variety of red-tipped agave, often more than 20 years old, found nowhere else in the world, but in a remote valley in the Klein Karoo region of South Africa.

Inzalo founder Sebastian O’Keefe identified wild agave thriving in a remote Karoo valley and spent two years on exploration, research and refinement, perfecting the recipe using wild yeast and spring water (all locally sourced).

Leveraging the popularity of a multi-billion-dollar industry, creating its own distinct category from something found only in South Africa – sounds like an awesome founder story to keep an eye on.

Naturally, the big trick for them will be positioning the product so that customers will want to give it a try. That’s something we speak about often in our community, The Founder Collab. In fact, it’s exactly what this Friday’s masterclass with PR pro Jo Eyre is all about: How to Position Your Business So Customers “Get It". If you can also use the insights, join here.

We’re watching this space…

Want to build iOS apps… on iOS? VibeCode lets you code iPhone apps from natural language prompts in Claude Code, right from your phone. See it in action here.

Amazon just brought Alexa+ to the browser: Meal plans, calendar sync, all the normal chatbot stuff, plus smart home control that’s free with Prime. See it here.

Need full flexibility in web app builds? WeWeb blends no-code speed with dev-level control — powered by AI but owned by you. Try it here.

South African startups are building world-class tech…

But many with international options have their IP stuck in a value-eroding system of exchange controls requiring SARB approval, formal audits and slow, uncertain processes most international investors want to avoid.

What if your idea is a global player?

Offshoring your IP (expanding your business operations while building your intellectual property outside of SA in markets investors love) changes everything. It gives global investors confidence, protects company value in hard currency, and enables cleaner exits when it counts. 

That’s why Dommisse Attorneys worked with the SA SME Fund, SAVCA and Endeavor to create the IP Strategy Flow — an open-sourced framework for SA founders to establish their IP offshore and ensure they build a globally recognised business from day one.

☕ Coffee Cup Careers. The Mr Price Foundation has opened applications for its Foundation Coffee Incubator initiative that offers candidates an opportunity to manage and operate café kiosks within Mr Price Home stores. Coffee up!

💼 SA’s In-Demand Gigs. Local online recruitment platform, Pnet, has released its report on the most in-demand jobs in SA. It also shows the level of competition for specific jobs, as well as education and experience requirements. Very interesting.

🏀 The NBA’s Africa Bet. The National Basketball Association is in talks with Silverbacks Holdings to sell one of 12 permanent franchises for its Basketball Africa League. Silverbacks already holds a stake in the Cape Town Tigers, making this a potential step up from participation to ownership. Nice one.

✋ Zuck Hits The Brakes on Metaverse. Meta’s AR, VR and metaverse division Reality Labs has started laying off staff. While it’s believed it isn’t abandoning its virtual world ambitions entirely, Meta is expected to let around 1’000 people go. Eina.

⚙️ Scale Built Fast. LeaseSurance had a validated PropTech idea, but the platform to scale it nationally would take months/years to build. So Octoco rebuilt the core system with automation, risk profiling and claims processing to make it market-ready in just 5 months (not years).*

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

Yesterday, we showed how Solid State Propulsion is building space rockets right here in SA, asking what problems SA space startups need to solve ASAP. Believe it or not, most want space biltong 🤣…

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🛰️ Managing overcrowded orbits (26%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🐮 Farming cows for space biltong (32%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌌 Finding Earth 2.0 (just in case) (16%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ ☀️ Harnessing sun power better (26%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤔 Wait, I have a better idea (tell us...) (0)

Your 2 cents…

Truer words we haven’t heard, Ted. 🐮

Downtime costs the average large firm $200 million a year — and most of it is preventable.

System outages are getting expensive:

💡 Large US firms lose up to $256 million per year to downtime. ($175 million in Africa and the Middle East.)

💡 Cybersecurity incidents cause 56% of outages; the rest are infrastructure or application failures.

💡 In Africa and the Middle East, large companies spend on average $22 million on ransomware payouts and another $12 million on extortion.

What’s more, most attacks succeed not because attackers are brilliant, but because systems aren’t keeping up with the pace of tech and threat evolution.

💡 Tool to Try: MakerSuite turns one idea into loads of viral- and platform-ready content.

📜 That’s Interesting: The Knights Templar invented banking by allowing medieval pilgrims to deposit money with them, get a letter of credit to travel safely and withdraw the money again in a different city/country.

💄 Next Level: Watch this makeup artist transform into a hater from her comments.

⏰ Hack: Stop tracking deadlines, track triggers instead, tying tasks to actions you already notice daily.

✍️ Wow Site: DropTheAdverb turns weak verb-adverb pairs into stronger single verbs.

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