Love a good tune, {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Afrikaans artists are upset with AI-generated music like Jakkals Vibes eating into their scene. We can (guiltily) see why; it’s surprisingly good. 🪗

In This Open Letter

The cloud’s a trap: Great for starting up but 10x more expensive when you scale – so this SA startup’s giving cloud-grade features on a server you can host at home…

With most of the cloud (internet) actually still running on another computer (Amazon, Microsoft, Google), it’s no surprise that when AWS had a hiccup on 20 October 2025, it took down most of the web. Most post-mortems say dependency on a few large providers is a huge business risk.

But there’s another big unspoken cloud computing problem: Cost. When it first launched in the early 2000s, the cloud let you rent computing power (pay-as-you-go style) instead of running your own server – great for a startup just testing an idea quickly.

Then the model changed: To make money, the big providers began layering on a vast catalogue of extra services (many open-source, that anyone can freely access, the crooks!). They packaged these tools neatly, added automation and priced them at a premium.

The result is, 20 years later, the cloud still makes sense mainly for a small startup to just test stuff. As soon as you scale, Amazon’s own billing info shows the costs spiral out of control.

The great, big cloud lie

Independent analyses have shown time and time again (and again) that once you grow, serving the same number of users via cloud can be 5–10x more expensive than if you were hosting from your own server.

But tech companies need cloud-grade reliability and want a click-to-launch developer experience, just with optionality. So, isn’t the opportunity to create a simpler control panel that gives you AWS-like power without locking you to AWS pricing or regions? Why yes…

The local startup bringing the cloud home

RunOS is solving this with a cloud operating system that packages best-in-class open source into a single console you can run on your own servers or any provider you choose. Basically, giving you all the features of the cloud for your own setup.

We caught up with cofounder Didier Breedt, who has two decades across software and DevOps, to hear how they’re building RunOS. It orchestrates Kubernetes for you, then lets you install and wire up services like Postgres, MySQL, Kafka, RabbitMQ, Grafana, Prometheus and an S3-compatible object store with a few clicks. 

Apps become “aware” of each other, so spinning up a blog and pointing it to a database and storage is workflow, not weeks of YAML. You can keep workloads hosted on AWS, move others to Hetzner for cost or run AI inference on a local GPU.

RunOS was born out of Didier's experience in managing cloud infrastructure, where he saw peeps spend millions of Rands per month in a space that makes it near impossible to a) hybrid cloud or b) set up your own dedicated infrastructure that replicates cloud services.

He says that if hyperscalers are the Ferrari, RunOS wants to be the keys to any garage you like. 

We’re watching this space.

Pause payments till 2026. Lula’s November offer lets you get funded now and only start paying end of Jan ’26. Use code GROW2025. Apply here.

Find your next business idea. Govchain’s AI tool gives startup ideas matched to your skills, budget & the SA market. Try it here.

57 new AI models this month. See the full October roundup of newly launched open-source AI projects — 1.9 per day. Read it here.

Most companies spend years building a strong brand.

But if your leaders aren’t visible, trusted or heard online, your growth eventually hits a wall. Personal posts perform 5x what company posts do.

That’s why FDC helps you build what matters:

✅ We turn founders and executives into industry voices worth listening to.
✅ We manage the full strategy, content & engagement behind your LinkedIn presence.
✅ You focus on running the business while your influence (and pipeline) grows.

From PaySpace to Taylor Brunswick Group, over 300 leaders in 22 countries have used FDC to transform LinkedIn into a channel for real business growth.

If you’re ready to turn your profile into a growth engine, see if you’re the right fit.

👀 Keeping An Eye On It. Local EdTech disruptor The Invigilator just landed R195 million in international investment for global expansion. With this hefty boost from the Jersey-based Kaltroco, the company plans to enhance its AI, expand its teams and strengthen ties in major global markets. Well done.

🧐 Checkers Gets Fancy. The Shoprite Group is flexing its muscles with new high-end Checkers stores in a bid to gain market share against its high-end competitors. The retailer opened its first new format Checkers Foods supermarket in 2022, and it looks like it’s coming after Woolies’ free-range chicken, restaurant-quality steak and artisan breads.

🏏 Jozi’s Debt Relief Play. The City of Johannesburg just launched Phase 4 of its debt relief programme, offering up to 100% debt write-off for some, to recover the much-needed R200 billion to fix its crumbling infrastructure. Good to hear they no longer send a guy called Trevor from Benoni round to your house…

🔒 Locking it Down. Donald Trump has called dibs on Nvidia's top-end Blackwell AI chips, saying they should be an exclusive ‘Murcan affair. Hmm, 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.

From 15 October 2025 to 15 November 2025, each friend you get to sign up to The Open Letter gets you one entry into a draw to win a brand new iPad Air!

Yesterday, we showed you how Phonetik is enabling automated video accessibility and captioning, asking what type of watcher you are. But most here are on their best behaviour…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ☀️ Full brightness that a plane could land on your house. (7%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔊 Full volume to shake the dust off the rafters. (0)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤫 Virtually on silent with closed captions. (28%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌑 Screen so dark, others might think your phone is off. (10%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 👌 Volume and brightness are perfect. What you talking about? (55%)

Your 2 cents…

Great habit, Samantha! Never, ever change. 📚

On 4 November 1952, as a publicity stunt, the makers of the world’s first commercial computer, the Univac, had the machine try to predict the US’s Dwight Eisenhower-Adlai Stevenson election live on air at CBS studios.

At first, everyone was super worried. The computer made a crazy prediction with very little data: a 100-1 odd victory for Eisenhower. A few hours later, the results were in, and, against all odds and logic, the computer was right, hours before most of the official poll data came in.

🧱 Tool to Try: GitPage builds and deploys full websites straight from a form.

🌿 That’s Interesting: Plants have independently evolved cardenolides, a toxin-based defence mechanism that attacks herbivores’ hearts, at least 12 separate times in Earth’s history.

🦸 Next Level: Every Halloween, window cleaners at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital dress as superheroes to surprise kids who can’t go trick-or-treating.

🙏 Hack: Replace “sorry” with “thank you.” It flips guilt into gratitude.

🧮 Wow Site: Matrix Rain turns your audio into colour-reactive rain like the Matrix.

We are always keen to get reader feedback to help make The Open Letter the most useful of its kind for you. So please select