Good to know {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Someone built an app to detect smart glasses nearby, you know, because of all the privacy concerns about being recorded without consent. It's called ZuckOff. LOL. 😎

In This Open Letter

According to the Karri 2026 Parent Survey, there's reason to believe there's a genuine device gap, with a TAM close to 15 million in SA alone…

Back in 2023, we wrote about SA schools as a massive 40 million-strong distribution channel, with players like the D6 app and the Nedbank-backed Karri school payments. And Karri's making progress: Present in 1'500 schools with over 500k paying parents on the platform.

And you know that we checked out their latest big report, the 2026 parent survey (and, no, 9 out of 10 SA parents did not call for a ban on phones at schools, as most news outlets suggested last week; it is only 30%-odd). But we did find some crazy interesting data in it around phones and usage…

The opportunity hiding in plain sight

See the problem? The very same device parents buy the kids at age 10 is the device that grants access to the thing no parent wants before age 16. There's a 6-year device gap sitting right there, where, clearly, SA's 15 to 17 million under-15s want something, but the device options available unlock the very behaviour the parents don't want.

SA's not the first place to notice the under-16 device gap, and there are quite a few product examples that play into the trend:

1. You know dumb phones are aimed at this

Inspired by Gen Z and Millennials' Analogue Movement (you know, the ones with kids RN), 20 to 30 hardware manufacturers have released "dumb phones". From new 3310-esque models by Nokia to Commodore (a dinosaur brand that hasn't been famous since their TV game set in the 1980s)'s hit new Y2K flip phone, which they got flak for using an AI ad to promote, so they redid the whole thing with real peeps, and it virtually revived their brand overnight. Check it:

2. Instant cameras are definitely part of this

At least 5 to 6 big manufacturers have been releasing new instant-print cameras (you know, like they used to have in the movies), including the original Polaroid and now Fujifilm. In fact, they just released the Instax Mini 13 this month, which is clearly aimed at your younger teen.

3. Landlines are making a comeback

After we first highlighted this trend back in 2024, we told you about local founder Matt Brownell building TickeyBox, an SA-made retro landline phone (curly cord and all) that runs off your home WiFi for VoIP calls with 20 close contacts only (no strangers here) and full parental control.

After a successful pilot with 30 families, Matt's officially opened sales of TickeyBox in August, and 100+ new families joined on the first day sales opened. Over 3'000 calls have already been made on the network. At just R129 per month for unlimited TickeyBox-to-TickeyBox calls and 100 minutes of mobile phone talk time, it's defs worth a look — we promise to do a deeper dive on this soon.

Did we inspire you to look at a new kids comms solution?

We're watching this space…

A few years ago, a working software product was a real head start. It took a team, months, and money most competitors couldn’t spare to get up and running, so if you shipped first, you were in the lead.

Now AI has consumed that head start: It can generate a large share of the code, allowing a small team to ship a functional product in weeks. But others can reverse-engineer it just as fast.

So where's the durable advantage now? Increasingly, in the physical layer: Hardware doesn’t have the same shortcuts, because building a real device isn’t one skill; it’s a whole chain, and almost no one owns theirs in its entirety anymore.

The fact that every link in the hardware chain needs a different specialist is the new moat. And being able to assemble all of it in-house requires building an entire new engineering department — something most companies can’t, and shouldn’t, do. 

Which is exactly why owning it is the advantage that lasts.

After every Open Letter event, Claudell needs to sort through hundreds of photos for our socials, partners and future promos — and doing it by hand took ages. So she used Claude to build a simple tool that sorts images by theme, colour or topic on command.

The lekker clever part:

✅ She drags a whole folder onto it and walks away
✅ It uses her existing Claude profile tokens to do the sorting
✅ Under a minute later, everything's grouped and ready to share

Now the tedious job does itself.

What's your team building, and where are you hosting it?

We’ve seen so many founders raise as much as possible so they can hire fast. But we asked a founder who built a platform screening around $5bn a month with just ten people how to use your money so that investors will want to come talk to you.

And it turns out, there are 5 specific steps to stay capital-efficient and keep more of the company in your hands.

💸 Free the Instant Payment. One SA bank says the rest are charging you for something that should cost nothing, and it's throwing down the gauntlet. Convenient for a challenger to say, sure, but it's not wrong.

🤖 The Great AI Pause Debate. Amodei, Altman and Musk this weekend all backed calls to slow down AI development, but Trump said they can’t rely on the US government to do it for them. Before you panic-read your feed, see what's actually going on.

📡 One SIM, Three Price Tags. SA's IoT SIM platforms price the same job three completely different ways, and picking the wrong one across a few thousand devices gets expensive fast. One question decides what you really need.

🛢️ Refining Without the Heat. Scientists just refined oil using 91% less energy, no distillation required. Refining eats ~1% of all energy on Earth, so if this scales, it changes what a refinery even has to be.

🤝 Founders Connected. Building in SA is lonely. The Founder Collab is a paid community of ambitious South African founders trading real advice, warm introductions and peer support for people who want more than advice in isolation.*

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

Yesterday, we featured Radhiant's mobile mammography, asking how you'd feel about an R4-million machine rocking up in the church hall car park. You're overwhelmingly sold.

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🚚 Genius. Send the machine, keep the specialist put (86%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🖖️ I'm just here for the Star Trek waiting room (11%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏢 Smart B2B play, someone's expensing this (4%)

Your 2 cents…

Because of the poor connection out there? Good thinking; we'll put you in touch with Radhiant. 🚚

On 15 September 1997, Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered google(dot)com for their search engine, which had until then been going by the rather less catchy name "BackRub."

They incorporated Google a year later, and the rest is history.

Cape HealthTech Connect 2026, 17 Sept, Cape Town: The one room you need to be in this year, if you’re in HealthTech in SA. Get tickets.

Building Iconic South African Companies, 17 Sept, Joburg: Barry Swartzberg and Sizwe Nxumalo at The Tryst, with food, drinks and 200+ founders and investors. Save your seat.

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

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: Yes, this camera shot happened for real at the US Open, Mr Bond.

🕹️ Wow Site: ISS Tracker Live will predict when the ISS passes and even give you an AR mode to spot the station in the sky.