Lekker long weekend {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? While we were chilling, the world got its first humanoid-robot billionaire. Wang Xingxing's Unitree (the company behind most of 2026's coolest robot vids) led an IPO in Shanghai at a valuation of around $9bn. 🤖

In This Open Letter

Sunday was Women's Day, so instead of a poster and a hashtag, here are six local founders we've known since they started who’ve built truly world-class products and businesses right here in SA…

Of course this list should be much longer (we had to keep it narrow to respect your time). Why don't you hit reply and let us know who else you wanna see featured here…

Thalia Pillay and co-founder Carla Wilby from Orca Fraud left Stitch to build fraud detection that actually understands African payment rails, mobile wallets, USSD and agent networks instead of European credit card assumptions. Sixteen months in, Orca monitors more than $5 billion in monthly transaction volume across 70+ countries and closed an oversubscribed $2.35m (R38m) seed led by Norrsken22. Thalia was on stage at our event last week. Read about Orca's raise here.

Meg Faure from Parent Sense is an occupational therapist who noticed that fewer than 14% of SA women get first-trimester antenatal care, then built clinically vetted parenting support that reaches them on a phone instead of in a clinic. Over 450'000 parents supported, a Discovery Health tie-up, a Vodacom rollout that onboards by SMS, and a Middle East distributor. Get the full story.

Katie Dodge of Koola Capital supplies working capital to township businesses, delivered entirely over WhatsApp. Send "Hello Koola", and you can have between R5'000 and R50'000 in roughly 20 minutes. Over R2 million out to more than 200 SMMEs across 7 townships, growing on word of mouth rather than ad spend, because in that economy trust travels faster than marketing. See what Katie's building.

Gabi Immelman from Mindjoy knew that SA universities are excellent at admitting engineering students and poor at graduating them, which is why only 28% of those who start finish, and the other 72% rarely reach their potential because there's no way to give individual attention in a class of 800. Mindjoy gives each student lecturer-level support on their own faculty's curriculum, whenever they need it, so the shy student gets what the confident student gets. Already running at Stellenbosch, NWU and other major campuses. Hear her on the podcast.

Bernice Houy of Fintura was an accountant who got tired of juggling CIPC, SARS, payroll and compliance across systems that refuse to talk to each other. Fintura pulls all of it into one dashboard for SA's 2'600+ accounting practices. Won the SA leg of the Startup World Cup and went to the Silicon Valley final. See what Bernice is building.

Tayla Dandridge from stub recognised that Xero, Sage and QuickBooks were built for accountants and priced for the world. stub is built for the side hustler and the spaza owner running a business off a personal bank account. 4'000+ entrepreneurs, R189 a month, and integrations with iKhokha, Capitec and now Yoco's 200'000 merchants. Read Tayla's latest integration story.

We're watching these 6, and so many more…

There are two ways into Clarity, depending on how your business bills.

For agencies and consultancies, the full version joins your Xero data to your time tracking. That join is where profit per hour by client, bench cost and retainer drift come from. You'll need both connected, and Finvoke will get your chart of accounts and tracking categories in shape if they aren't.

For founders on Xero, the second version works on your accounting data alone. You ask questions in plain language: why is this month tight, what changed since last quarter, how is gross profit calculated, and get an answer, with the workings.

Both run read-only, reconcile to source and come with the Finvoke team attached, which is the part that matters: Clarity names the decision, and someone sits on the call when you make it.

You can see it working on live demo data before you speak to anyone.

Stitch CEO Kiaan Pillay built an agent called Jade with Takealot integration that helps run his life and handed it his LinkedIn keys. A move that spurred co-founder Junaid Dadan's agent, Gort, to reply with a breakdown of merchants needed for agents to start transacting for customers, and CTO Priyen Pillay's agent, Arc, with how agents are compressing Stitch's entire dev lifecycle.

Real, powerful business tools. But where do they live? Jade is on a Mac mini (presumably the others’ setups are similar). Because, of course, Stitch can’t risk deploying personal tools in their main tech stack (they deal with banks and stuff).

What are you and your team building that's brilliant, but can't go anywhere near your production stack?

🚀 Team ZA Goes to Space. Seven Western Cape learners were part of the winning company at the International Space Settlement Design Competition finals at Kennedy Space Centre, SA's first-ever entry, and the only African team in the field. Every company that says it can't find skilled people should look at what a national final and seven plane tickets produced.

🍪 263 Million Stolen Cookies. NordVPN counted 263 million stolen browser cookies tied to SA users, ranking us 30th globally. The number's inflated (it counts records, not people, and most are ad junk), but 96% of the logs came from devices already running security software. Sign out of sessions instead of closing tabs; the fix is free.

⚡ Eskom Takes the Wheel. Ditsobotla is the fourth municipality to sign a Distribution Agency Agreement with Eskom, with municipal arrear debt now at R111.6bn. The kicker: NERSA says it has never received these agreements, has done no oversight, and can't confirm whether the fees inside them are lawfully recoverable through tariffs. Sjoe.

👕 H&M Opens 30, Shuts 160. H&M's 30th SA store lands at Paarl Mall in October while the group plans roughly 160 closures globally against 80 openings. Not a land grab; everyone from TFG to Truworths is arriving at the same answer from opposite directions: fewer stores, better locations, a working online channel. Landlords, take note.

🌍 Thinking Offshore? For SA founders going global, the Isle of Man offers 0% corporate tax, 0% capital gains tax, 0% withholding tax, UK VAT access and a business-friendly legal system. Finance Isle of Man helps companies move, structure and scale internationally, sans the usual friction.*

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

A rand stablecoin just went global. ZARU listed on a global exchange. USDT still dominates locally, with on-chain USDT volume across SA markets hitting nearly R27bn in the year to April, while monthly trading volumes fell from R19.2bn in 2025 to R10.7bn in 2026.

Staying safe with crypto. Strangers contacting you, asking for recovery phrases and making it seem urgent — these are some of the five signs you're being scammed. Pause and verify any of these through official channels first.

Gold and silver options are live. Binance's beginner's guide explains how options let you cap your downside at the premium you pay.

Disclaimer: Digital asset prices can be volatile. The value of your investment may go down or up and you may not get back the amount invested. You are solely responsible for your investment decisions and Binance is not liable for any losses you may incur. Not financial advice. For more information, see our Terms of Use and Risk Warning.

Last week, we showed you GoMove’s moving platform, asking what your energy would be if you had to move house today. Most here are dangerously organised…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📦 Labelled boxes, colour-coded, spreadsheet (54%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🗑️ Everything in bin bags, sort it later (29%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔥 New house, new me, leaving it all behind (17%)

Your 2 cents…

Great, now you know who to use, Joanne. Good luck with the move! 📦

Work Rewired: Hiring, Skills & Careers in the AI Economy, 13 Aug, Cape Town: How AI is rewriting hiring, skills and what future-ready talent looks like. R50. Get tickets.

The Lekker Network Wine Tasting, 18 Aug, Mauritius: Klein Welmoed wines, Carrick's Craig Featherby, and founders from across the island. 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.

🧩 Tool to Try: Planninn is a shared calendar built for your family, team or club.

🌍 That's Interesting: The CIA spent an estimated $20 million over five years surgically turning a cat into a listening device (mic in the ear canal, transmitter at the skull) before concluding cats can't be trained. LOL.