Deeper meaning? Some joker asked Google’s NotebookLM to generate an entire podcast from a document with only the words “poop” and “fart” written on it, 1’000 times. And the AI did it — behold 10 minutes of poop-fart deep-dive.

Should we be worried about how good AI is at making stuff up?

In this Open Letter:

• Sales optimised: How to claw back 30% of your company revenue.

• Africa startup acceleration, Elon’s SA investments & 300 million seeds.

• Offshore savvy: Join us to learn about housing your startup overseas.

• What most of us are saving up for: The results are in.

• Short on ideas? Share this with one friend and get 100+ startup ideas.

Together with:

TRENDING NOW

Clawing Back 30% of Your Revenue

Let’s face it, when it comes to buying something from someone, nothing beats face-to-face. 

In fact, research has found that face-to-face is 36 times more successful than digital channels. But that doesn’t always mean it's best for the business. 

Face-to-face sales are pricey! Travel time, travel cost, and aligning calendars (think travelling salesman problem) all add up to make it likely the most expensive of sales processes.

Traditionally salespeople spend as much as 70% of their time on “non-selling” tasks – i.e. stuff they have to do but that aren’t bringing in revenue, like:

• Administrative work,

• team meetings,

• reporting and documenting, etc.

And that’s why many organisations have become adept at doing sales remotely. Sure, it’s less effective, but at a fraction of the cost and complexity, in some cases, it does make sense. 

Taking it a step further, the advent of AI has seen people building AI callers that do sales calls for you. Old Mutual is piloting such a tool in SA right now – robocalling insurance armies.

Whilst certainly effective in certain market segments, it will be completely ineffective in others – that’s where instead of using tech to replace humans, one should use tech to make humans more effective at sales, all while reducing costs.

But running human sales teams in a post-covid, remote first world is complicated. 67% of sales managers say that overseeing a remote sales team is more challenging than they expected and 77% of B2B companies said they had faced challenges with their field reps working from home. 

Bringing the Human Back

Smart devices have done a lot for field sales. 

Being connected back to the office, easy calendar bookings and navigation using on-device navigation have all made the process of field sales force more streamlined. 

But add reporting, intelligence and sales capturing intuitively and all of a sudden you have a field sales team that turns into a field sales force.

That’s what local scale-up Skynamo started doing back in 2012. After building a field sales force solution for themselves in a company called EMSS (which later became Alphawave), they realised that there might be opportunities to build solutions like that for other companies, pitching on an array of tenders (including a field installation app for SA’s Digital TV rollouts, that due to politics never ended up happening). 

But they soon realised that while many people need a solution like this, most don’t have the budgets to build and maintain their own solutions. 

And right there, the SaaS opportunity was born with a 6-in-1 Field Sales Software platform catered towards:

• Sales Reps — give your sales reps access to live stock checks and instant reports, execute assigned tasks/visits and access relevant info on the fly.

• Sales Managers — watch sales unfold live and respond to customer queries or escalations.

• Sales Intelligence — smart analytics and insights help you make decisions that can lead to better results.

• Customer Intelligence — predict customer needs accurately.

• Strategic Forecasting — using past data, simplify your future forecasting and planning.

• Revenue Intelligence — figure out which deals/customers are most profitable.

Initially called Honeybee, they were renamed to Skynamo in 2018 and were able to raise $30 million right before COVID. Good for cash flow, not so great for international expansion plans. 

Once the lockdowns eased, they hit international markets, particularly the US hard with on-the-ground teams. Since then they have scaled back their on-the-ground US operations — a decision founder Sam Clarke explains on the latest ep of our “How Would You Build It” podcast. 

Skynamo is however still one of SA’s greatest SaaS success stories and continues to grow its customer base both in SA and beyond. 

And with the Robocallers going into overdrive, we think in-person sales will be more effective than ever and tools like this will have a major role to play. We are watching this space…

We recently chatted with Sam Clarke, CEO of Skynamo, on the “How Would You Build It” podcast. Check out the latest episode, or dive into some highlights:

• What is Skynamo (and building apps around 2010)?

• Getting Skynamo’s first customer, without paperwork or even pricing.

• Liquor licenses, tyre customers and conceptual debt — understanding your customers’ industry.

• Skynamo’s funding journey - at the time, local VCs just couldn’t write big enough cheques.

• Expanding overseas when the pandemic hit.

IN SHORT

Drop some nuggets at the weekend braai

🔘 Hit the Start Button. The SA SME Fund, the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) and impact investor E Squared Investments, have launched a R300 million Seed Fund of Funds. Aimed at early stage, tech startups, the fund will provide a much-needed boost for local startups starting out.

🚢 All Aboard. Local shipping platform for e-commerce exports TUNL has raised a seed round, after closing a $1 million pre-seed round in December 2023. Great news as it expands its local growth and dives into international payments & marketing support for local SMEs (to sell their stuff abroad).

✨ Investments in the Stars? Elon Musk has expressed his desire to “invest in and otherwise support South Africa” should South Africa relook the telecoms regulations tripping up digital inclusion in the sector and SA at large. This comes off the back of our Communications minister Solly Malatsi’s meeting with Starlink reps to talk about potential SA investments.

🚄 African Acceleration. Fifteen African startups, including 10 from South Africa have progressed to the second phase of the UCT Graduate School of Business’ Solution Space and ayoba’s e-Track programme. The 12-week programme is aimed at accelerating the development of validated ventures (from the first phase) and will culminate in a demo day on the 28th of November.

🚀 Boosting Benefits. Employee benefits tech platform Bento has just concluded a R5.2 million pre-seed funding round, led by NEXT176. With employee benefits playing a larger part in helping SMEs land top talent, that’ll help Bento’s mission of helping more SMEs offer competitive, flexible, and affordable employee benefits.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with easy cloud-based accounting with Xero, superior quality tech content to build brand trust from Stream and 11 more vital startup tools & services.

CHECK THIS OUT

Wish you learnt about money sooner?

You're not alone, over two-thirds of the world is considered financially illiterate!

But what if we could change that?

Remember playing Monopoly as a kid: The flipping the board in a heated game?

FinMaster is here to replace that with something better — a game that’s fun, fast-paced, and teaches real-world financial skills to children 13 and up.

Seems like an ideal solution for educational family game nights…

In FinMaster, you’re not just collecting assets, you’re controlling the market!

Will you build your wealth or cause the next financial meltdown? It’s your choice.

From creating booms to surviving crashes, FinMaster turns learning about money into a thrilling experience.

Here’s what some of our playtesters are saying:

• What a fun game!

• A lot more realistic than Monopoly.

• Engaging, educational, with an element of competition.

• Interactive and great for a group of friends.

Pre-order your FinMaster today and make it part of your next friends and family games night. It’s the modern-day money game South Africa’s been waiting for!

Events that rock

Stellenbosch, you beauty

Oh man, were we underestimating Africa’s AI and Machine Learning capability — our latest event guests gave everyone an entirely new perspective on SA’s AI and ML capability earlier this week. We heard stories about:

• how they are using it to help small companies beat their giant incumbents

• as well as how to use it to intelligently deploy traffic department staff to reduce road fatalities by up to 50%

Was great meeting so many of you there, see you at our next event!

Upcoming Events

4 October 2024 — Online Masterclass: All about offshoring with Andea du Toit from Dommisse Attorneys — The Open Collab community exclusive.

11 October 2024 — Linkedin Live: We chat with author and serial entrepreneur Alan Knott-Craig on his new book, Life Lessons.

25 October 2024 — Online Masterclass: SA’s very own “product legend” Roger Norton is here for the first in a three-part product building series — The Open Collab community exclusive.

1 November 2024 — Online Masterclass: Keep your B2B sales pipe filled Masterclass session with sales expert, Sebastian Chapman — The Open Collab community exclusive.

View all our upcoming events here.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last 48 hours alone, in our online community, we…

• Celebrated Erhard’s startup Hoom going live!

• Debated the whole Elon-Starlink-coming-to-SA thing…

• Helped Pieter get square on his next startup steps.

• Celebrated with Richard making great progress, with some help from Collab members.

• Debated whether it’s best to focus on 1 thing or spread your luck/risk.

• Welcomed 5 new members!

Coming Up Next Week

• Wednesday 10-11: Office Hours, where we all log in and work together, + the whole Open Letter team is at members’ disposal.

• New: Free monthly startup strategy calls for all Open Collab members.

• Support: All day, every day: unlimited introductions, recruitment, service provider referrals and business-building insights.

FOR THE MEMES

It’s a jungle out there…

Got some startup memes? Send them our way or tag us on socials.

WHAT YOU SAID

Priorities, priorities

We asked what you need to save for, and investing in getting to market or PMF’s the big one…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Cash for my startup or MVP 🚀 (32%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Home improvements – need that new pool, baby 👙 (11%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ A car or house – gotta keep moving up 💸 (17%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Purchase an investment property – esp. if interest rates keep dropping 🏘️ (21%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ A lekker holiday! It's time 🏖️ (19%)

Your 2 cents…

Nice one, Michelle! Do you know FinMeUp? Local guys that help you get your risk profile and manage investment goals in a fun and engaging way. 😎 💸

Oh, by the way, Jason, please remember to fix the cupboard door. 🤣