Double take? A startup is building ultra-realistic human faces for AI and robots, and people are already referencing Westworld. Keep tabs on this tech here. 🔍

In This Open Letter

SA’s compliance is becoming trickier – this startup wants to give accountants and CFOs a better view across local SMEs…

Running an accounting practice in SA takes A LOT of heavy lifting.

You have different logins for CIPC, SARS, practice management, payroll, compliance… and these disjointed systems don't talk to one another, yet you have to keep track of different deadlines and re-enter the same client info over and over again. 

Multiply this issue across SA’s 2’600+ accounting practices and more than 2 million MSMEs, and it starts eating into your billables. 

When these practices spend hours manually updating spreadsheets and jumping between portals, the inefficiency means lost capacity to take on more clients, stunting growth.

The opportunity in the inefficiency

SA’s compliance load is increasing, though: Since July 2024, Beneficial Ownership registers have become mandatory for all companies, tied directly to annual returns. Tax filing deadlines haven’t eased either: PAYE, VAT and provisional tax all carry strict penalties if missed.

And if you think global accounting behemoths can offer a solution, don't hold your breath. Despite a “lite” integration with SARS, they don’t solve SA’s country-specific grind – they’d love to, but SA’s such a small slice of their customer base, it’s often not worth the effort. 

The local startup building for local accountants

Fintura is new but aims to become an all-in-one, AI-powered accounting platform unifying practice management and compliance. Accounting firms onboard a client once, and Fintura auto-generates the right deadlines, pulls CIPC data, tracks filings and even handles submissions without leaving the dashboard.

We caught up with Fintura’s Co-Founder, Bernice Houy (an accountant who experienced the inefficiencies of disjointed systems first-hand), and she says they’re also building a taxation module with a SARS integration, to give accountants and CFOs a single view of compliance across their client base.

And they’ve already got some AI embedded in document and task generation, with Fintura’s context-aware assistant (“Hank”) on the way. 

A winning formula

Fintura’s localised compliance could very well be its moat. By turning South Africa’s fragmented compliance puzzle into one workflow, Fintura makes scale possible for the very firms propping up the MSME economy. 

And we’re not the only ones who think so. Fintura was recently crowned winner of the South African leg of Startup World Cup, and will compete with other regional finalists from around the world at the Startup World Cup Grand Finale on the 18th of October, with a chance to walk away with a cool $1 million investment.

We’re watching this space…

Celebrating SA’s SMEs. Lula partnered with News24 at the inaugural SME Awards 2025 — congrats to the winners powering SA’s economy. See who won.

Scaling with AI moats. Rippling’s Parker Conrad and Cursor’s Michael Truell share how AI 10x’s hire ROI and sustains defensibility. Watch here.

Hot picks from YC Demo Day. Investors spotlight 9 of the most in-demand AI startups from Y Combinator’s Summer 2025 batch. Read here.

Meet Notion 3.0. Notion AI Agents can now autonomously create docs, build databases and run 20-minute multi-step workflows. Explore here.

6 Signs your side hustle is about to blow up…

The gap between SA’s formal and informal sectors is widening: 15’000 informal businesses were shut down in Gauteng alone this year – 800k more are in Gov’s sights.

But how do you know when it’s time to make it official and register a company?

Govchain created this super-easy guide, including:

✅ 6 signs it’s time to register your business
✅ 4 big benefits you unlock when doing so
✅ The only (1) document you need to register

Plus: What to expect when registering, how long it really takes and how surprisingly little it actually costs.

👻 Ghost Busters. The SA government is losing nearly R4 billion in salaries to “ghost workers” every year, so the National Treasury has launched an audit across national and provincial departments to smoke ‘em out. Maybe they should chat to our friends over at GovERP?

🚖 E-hailing Shake-Up. South Africa’s new e-hailing rules mean panic buttons, jurisdiction zones and branding for Uber-like services in a bid to improve passenger safety. Ironically, branding on the side of your Uber might just have the opposite effect.

🍪 Rejecting the Cookie. The EU is looking to simplify cookie preferences, potentially nixing those annoying pop-up banners with a one-and-done browser setting. Finally…

🛒 Get Ready. Checkers is back with its popular Little Shop campaign, rolling out its largest collection yet with 46 minis and a board game for family fun. Those neighbourhood WhatsApp groups bout to get LIT.

😎 The Stack. Founders need reliable tools and suppliers. That’s why our Founder’s Stack gives you cloud services and solutions by Cloud on Demand, Africa-ready payroll & HR via Deel Local Payroll powered by PaySpace, plus loads more vital startup tools & services.

Yesterday, we showed you how Bag Drop’s extending SA holidays with a Cape Town luggage drop service, asking how you’d spend your last few hours in the Mother City. And most would take a Sea Point stroll…

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 🍷 Wine in Constantia (30%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🌊 Last stroll along the Sea Point Promenade (33%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🛍️ Quick shop at the V&A Waterfront (22%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎨 One more gallery or museum stop (3%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏖️ Feet up on the beach at Clifton (12%)

Your 2 cents…

Indeed, Chris. Maybe we’d just dip our feet in the ocean on the way. 🌊🏄‍♀️

On September 22, 1986, a court ruled for the first time that copyright applies to software, too. This after Intel took NEC Corp to court over the code for producing x86 chips.

Though software copyright became a thing on that day, the first caveat was also revealed: NEC hadn’t copy-pasted Intel’s code; they just reverse-engineered it (wrote new code that does the exact same thing). Which, just like with normal copyright, is perfectly legal. Wah-wah.

🛠 Tool to Try: AI Meme Arena lets AI agents battle it out to create the funniest memes from your prompts. (Discord required.)

🎭 That’s Interesting: The kids who voice Bluey and Bingo remain completely uncredited to protect their identities.

🌅 Next Level: Haleakalā, Maui. One of the most breathtaking sunrises/sunsets on Earth.

🤖 Hack: New to AI? This simple, no-nonsense guide helps friends or family confidently take their first steps with genAI.

🌌 Wow Site: NASA’s Audio Library gives you free rocket launches, deep space sounds. All free and downloadable.

Hey, Renier here 👋, co-founder of The Open Letter.

I’ve spent 17 years in SA tech and seen hundreds of startups rise and fall. The ones that made it all had one thing in common: a strong community.

That’s why I started The Founder Collab — a space where 100+ SA founders connect for:

☕ Meetups & events

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🤝 A network unlike anything else

Come build your startup alongside me and 100+ other SA founders in The Founder Collab.

Spaces are limited — new founders join weekly.

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