Hi there,

Firemen and cops in San Francisco are at their wit's end with driverless Waymo cars (Google’s old Self-Driving Car Project) meandering onto emergency scenes and causing all kinds of havoc. Watch these firefighters light flares and try talking to the car to persuade it not to drive over their firehose.

In this Open Letter:

• True grit: The most interesting of SA’s 33 fastest-growing companies.
• Tech investors on ice, a time-travel tool & the CEOs coining over a quarter-million per day.
• For the build: 3 Super creative ways to get pilot users.

TRENDING NOW

Fastest Growers in Africa

One fatal founder mistake is trying to solve American problems in South Africa. It just doesn’t work. Not when there’s so much room for disruption and high-growth businesses to capitalise on solving uniquely South African challenges.

But where is money made in SA?

No, not where the central bank prints Rands, we’re talking about the fastest-growing economic sectors over the last six years. Check it…

Sector

Growth (2016-2022)

Share of total GDP

2022 (in R Millions)*

Agriculture, forestry and fishing

40.39%

3.39%

140,850

Mining

-7.25%

4.8%

199,306

Manufacturing

-6.45%

12.36%

513,188

Electricity, gas and water

-8.36%

2.43%

100,760

Construction

-30.90%

2.64%

109,470

Trade, catering and accommodation

-4.60%

12.79%

530,886

Transport, storage and communication

-0.89%

8.99%

373,100

Finance, real estate and business services

17.30%

26.41%

1,096,200

General government services

5.30%

8.84%

366,936

Personal services

9.68%

17.35%

720,021

Source : resbank.co.za

* GDP at constant 2015 prices, by production approach (seasonally adjusted and annualised)

No wonder it seems every second founder is in FinTech – finance, real estate, and business services have been delivering one-quarter of our GDP since 2016. That's where the money is at.

It's also encouraging to see significant growth in agriculture, which might be one of the driving forces behind a surge of AgriTech startups.

Who’s growing the fastest?

Recently, Financial Times combined their own research with results from an open-application process to create a list of the year’s fastest-growing companies in Africa.

While we've often slipped from the number one economy in Africa – not to mention years of almost flatlining GDP – it's heartwarming to see 33 South African companies featured on the list. This is a testament to the ongoing grit of South African entrepreneurs.

We checked out all 33 so you don’t have to, and here are some highlights:

• Despite being a declining sector (though GDP shows it's been a painful few years for most), the Financial Times list interestingly features some SA mining companies as fast-growing. Impala Platinum, Sibanye Stillwater, Pan African Resources, African Rainbow Minerals, Harmony Gold all made the list. This goes to show that if you get mining right in South Africa, there is money to be made, especially when there is a rise in global commodity prices.
  
• Leatt Corp, headquartered in Durbanville (outside Cape Town) and originally incubated by Savant Technology incubator in 2002, saw their revenue grow from $24.4 million to $72.5 million between 2018-2021, while only increasing their headcount by 11 (to 98). That’s roughly R13.3m in revenue per employee per year 🤯
  
• Last week, we wrote about businesses one can only build in South Africa, where the government falls short. Spark Schools is doing just that. It's a private school group with schools across Gauteng, and they have doubled their revenue in three years. This further strengthens the idea that there is still a lot of growth in private education in South Africa.
  
• HearX, a company that provides products for audiologists worldwide, has almost tripled its revenue, touching the $3 million mark in 2021.
  
• Finally, a shoutout to Eon Joubert, an avid reader of The Open Letter, who co-founded Electrum, which is the 79th fastest-growing company in Africa 🙌🏽

Let's face it, South Africa is not the easiest place to build a business. But if there is one thing that is clear from the growth of companies on this list, we have the grit to build fast-growing businesses.

Once we get the power back on, chances are we are set for a nice period of growth. We can’t wait… 🚀

Got a buddy (or yourself) building something we should know about? Hit reply and let us know so we can feature them here!

IN SHORT

⚖️ LegalGPT: OpenAI, which started as an open-sourced project, is suing another open-source project for bypassing their payment tiers to make ChatGPT plus free and open source again. Perhaps this is why MS axed the Bing GPT4 waitlist.

📱Call me maybe: Rain Ltd has just launched Rain Mobile: offering high-definition voice calls, data and SMSes. This officially makes it one of SA’s full-service telecoms providers alongside the likes of Vodacom, MTN, Cell C, Telkom etc.

⛏️ A literal Gold Mine. We highlighted earlier just how fast some mines have been growing. And some of these mining CEOs earn more than R250k a day!

🍏 How do you like them apples? Apple Stock rallies after results, coming in only 4.7% off the previous high reached in January 2022.

⏳ Time travel. Ever wondered what the earth looked like 600 million years ago? This new tool visualises the formation of continents as we know them.

🧊 Just in case: Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel says he signed up to be cryogenically frozen, even though he doesn't really believe the tech will actually work. Fact or fiction, we like to imagine he might go on ice next to old Walt Disney.

✌️ Sign of the times. South Africa just got its 12th official language.

­

THE BUILDER’S CORNER

3 Super Creative Ways to Get Pilot Users

And make some money at the same time…

One of the most vital ingredients for success is getting real and honest feedback on your product. It’s also something we don’t tend to think of, so you reach that awkward point beyond friends and family, where you’re kinda begging strangers to please just check it out…

‍

But it doesn’t need to be that way or cost a lot of cash. You can get really strategic about your user pilot programme.

How to get strategic about getting pilot users

1. Use the forums, but be strategic – Today we marvel at productivity software Notion’s huge online communities. But the story goes that Notion actually got started by founder Ivan Zhoe who would hang out in productivity subreddits (on Reddit) to see what people are complaining about, then quickly build a rudimentary tool to address that concern and offer it to the people who commented on that topic to test out. When it was time to build, he quickly put the best ones together and presto – they even already had a Reddit following who was ready to buy.
   
2. The test ads method – A bit riskier, but apparently before he started BestOnlineTrafficSchool, founder Roney Yo created a website that just stated his idea’s Value Proposition, with a signup form (no product to buy yet). He ran some Google Ads to test people’s responses, then created surveys for people in the database before building his product. It’s smart because you kinda sort your marketing before you even build. And the idea is popular enough that some guys swear by it – there’s a YouTube vid series that promises to show you step-by-step, right here.
   
3. Sell as a service first – Our Gold Idea is to not go directly to SaaS but offer it as a service first. Custom build a product on the go to solve a specific problem for a business, basically doing it as a consultant. It’s smart because 1) you can charge a lot more per user for a service (and start making a bit of cash) and 2) you get open, direct and one-on-one feedback from actual real-world clients, helping you refine that product idea until it’s ready to go full SaaS. The said client is literally giving you the blueprint to build your product exactly to their needs. Once it works, copypasta and SAAS you go.

How do you source pilot users? Hit reply and tell us so we can commend and praise you and your idea in front of everyone, like you deserve…

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