Easy mistake? When an AI security system mistook a bag of chips for a gun, it sent police to go full SWAT on a poor student having lunch. What’s it do with chocolates? 🤷♀️
In This Open Letter
Big Leak: Helping SA recoup half the Vaal per year.
Local: AI funding, robots in SA & we’re off the grey list.
Global: Nike wants to give you tech to run/walk faster.
SA Businesses: SA founders help each other. You in?
Tech events: Early-stage awards, Africa Tech & more.
Which colour iPad would you choose?
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TRENDING NOW
Keeping SA’s Heads Above Water
SA’s drowning in the impacts of a serious water crisis, with almost half of the 4.3 trillion litres of municipal water supply never even reaching your taps – but this company’s got a plan…
South Africa ranked 144th in rainfall with an average precipitation of 495mm. Barely a sixth of 1st-placed Columbia’s 3’240mm, but way better than 182nd Egypt’s mere 18mm…
Problem is nearly 98% of SA’s available water resources are already allocated, while per capita water use is around 237 litres per person per day, well above global averages of 173 litres.
Why? Well, due to leaks and other issues, SA loses an avoidable 40.8% of its water (1.8 trillion litres, almost a third of the Gariep Dam every year), so water conservation and demand management are the name of the game.
Billions of Rands of drinking-quality water gone (after it’s already been purified and moved).
The local player clawing back SA’s water
Re-Solve is a turnkey water engineering company with two decades of experience in reducing water losses and helping public and private sectors use water more efficiently.
Using innovative interventions and data-driven performance models, Re-Solve has saved more than 60 million kilolitres (about 24k Olympic-sized swimming pools) of water nationally, equating to over R1 billion in verified financial savings for its clients.
What makes Re-Solve’s approach really interesting is its performance-based contracting model, where Re-Solve fully funds projects and recoups only on verified savings. So their clients (we're talking government, municipalities and big private sector players) pay them from their water savings. No upfront capital outlay or budget constraints.
Smart backing
By focusing on verified outcomes and real-time monitoring, Re-Solve ensures that every litre saved translates into tangible cost reductions and improved system performance.
And their model completely de-risks investment: If they can’t cut your consumption, they don’t get paid. Talk about betting on yourself. And in a country leaking almost half of its treated water, that’s accountability engineered into the contract.
We’re watching this space…
FROM OUR FRIENDS AT SIDEKICK LAB
If you can’t find it, you can’t use it
Many organisations rush into analytics, AI or automation without first identifying and cataloguing their data. Without knowing what exists or where it lives, every strategy relies on assumptions instead of facts.
Up to 68% of business data is unused or unknown, hidden across databases and departments. This “data paralysis” slows decisions, blocks progress and weakens trust in insights.
Sidekick Lab helps teams see what they already own.
Our AI agents scan your environment, catalogue your data and build a real-time, searchable map, securely inside your infrastructure.
In days, Sidekick turns data chaos into clarity:
✅ A super-index with business context and guardrails
✅ Natural language queries for real-time answers
✅ Reliable, actionable insight you can trust
Because until your data is known, your roadmap isn’t real.
See what your data is hiding.
IN SHORT
While you were weekending…
💰 Locstat’s €2.5M Boost. SA AI startup Locstat has secured €2.5 million to take its graph-based AI solutions from Africa to Europe and beyond in a funding round spearheaded by Portugal Gateway Fund (PGF) and joined by ANZA Capital. Nice one.
👟 An e-bike for your feet? Nike has unveiled Project Amplify, basically “a second set of calf muscles” for peeps wanting to run more while expending less effort. Soon, we won't have to do anything for ourselves.
🌍 Goodbye Grey List. South Africa is off the global dirty-money grey list, with the Financial Action Task Force officially removing SA together with Nigeria, Mozambique and Burkina Faso on Friday. Noice.
🤖 Maximus Struts into SA. Maximus, a 35kg, 1.27m tall humanoid robot, made its SA debut at the Singularity Summit last week. Interesting.
✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools, so our Founder’s Stack gives you tech content marketing by Stream, tech, acceleration and funding with Octoco and loads more.
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BUILDING A BUSINESS IN SA
5 things we learnt in The Founder Collab
You can scale outbound on autopilot. Automation + AI can book calls while you sleep and grow B2B faster than headcount.
“Ship early” applies to websites, too. Most users don’t care how it’s built if it solves their problem today.
Collab reach is real. One member’s survey got instant responses and real user insight within minutes.
SA’s informal economy keeps evolving. New ideas and books like GG Alcock’s Kasinomics Unleashed fuel where the next markets emerge.
Banks aren’t sleeping. AI and agents are already fixing issues live and some players plan to eat the rest for lunch.
Find your founder community. Join The Founder Collab, it’s where 100+ real SA founders help each other to build better, faster every day.
WHAT YOU SAID
Cameras on…
Last Friday, we told you about Session Sense’s meeting wastage tracking, asking about your meeting persona. Most here are schedulers…
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📅 The Scheduler: If it’s not in the cal, it’s not real (57%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👻 The Ghost: Camera off, soul elsewhere (22%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🕒 The (Ominous) Agendaless Catcher-upperer (11%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🙋 The “Just One More Question” person (5%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ☕ The Double-Booker: In two meetings, present in none (5%)
Your 2 cents…
“Part of the problem is most meetings don’t have a clear purpose and outcomes. We aren’t intentional enough about why we are meeting and what we need to do there.”
Ah, yes, Joanne, the meeting that should have been an email… ⭐
“Send in my AI Avatar, goal: be productive in meeting.”
We’re going to respond, Jesko, but first: would you prefer a response that’s A, brief or B… 🤖😂
LOOKING TO NETWORK?
Upcoming SA Tech Events
AI in Digital Transformation — CPT 27 Oct, 17:30 — Panel + lightning talks on using AI in project & product orgs. Free hybrid event. Book here.
Notion AI & Agents Intro — Online 28 Oct, 19:00 — Build a multi-profile agent inside Notion you can start using tomorrow. Register here.
The Future of E-Commerce — CPT 30 Oct, 17:00 — Hear Takealot CEO Frederik Zietsman on scaling in SA’s ecom landscape. Get R100 off with an early bird ticket now. Book here.
The ESEYs: Early-Stage Entrepreneur of the Year Awards — 6 Nov — The Investec Easies celebrate first-time founders making bold moves. Get inspired by the world’s best. Info here.
sheBLOOM Wellness Experience — CPT 8 Nov, 10:00 — A space for working women and mothers to reconnect, recharge and bloom. Hosted by WorkingMama. RSVP here.
Africa Tech Festival — CTICC 11–13 Nov — The continent’s biggest tech gathering. Founders, investors, policymakers and scale-ups under one roof. Book now.
Open Build: AI Coding Night — CPT 12 Nov, 18:00 — Join Windsurf and The AI Collective for live builds, dev tools, and snacks with fellow AI-native coders. Book here.
Origin Stories: Live Founder Tales — CPT 12 Nov, 19:00 — Raw, human journeys from African entrepreneurs. Theatre, storytelling and startup community. Book now.
Hosting a demo day, panel, founder meetup or tech event? Let us know, and we’ll feature it for FREE.
AROUND THE WEB
Let’s play…
🌍 Tool to Try: Google’s Earth AI lets you query the planet in natural language.
🥕 That’s Interesting: Bugs Bunny’s personality is based on Clark Gable’s persona in the movie It Happened One Night. People got the joke back then; we just forgot.
🩰 Next Level: These traditional Russian dancers look like they’re floating across the floor.
🕳 Hack: A simple guide to what black holes actually look like.
🔗 Wow Site: Six Degrees of Wikipedia finds the shortest path between Wikipedia pages.
THANKS FOR READING
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