Ready to play {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Renier was the Snake king on the Nokia 3310 back in high school, so Elvorne showed him the US White House’s Trump Arcade, where, among others, there are versions of Snake and Tetris, etc., of a whole different kind. (It’s crazy.) 🐍

In This Open Letter

Using psychology to manipulate you to buy/spend more is big business and some people have no qualms about leading you by the nose — so these uni friends built an honesty machine…

We're psychologically wired to love a markdown: You're twice as likely to buy something if it's 20% off or more, and if they manufacture scarcity (hurry, only two left!), you're 178% more likely to hit buy.

The proof? Last year, Capitec clients alone pushed R28.8 billion through their cards over Black Friday (a 43% rise in spending). And it's not news that some companies strategically lift their list prices in the weeks before a sale, so they can "drop" it and catch you out.

3 Uni friends lived the pain: Dean Hodgen, Matt Potgieter and Chris Schmidt-Löffler were like every group of university friends you can imagine, always hunting for a good deal. But it didn't take them long to realise that in SA, the promotions game is rigged. They even saw that some companies can get the upper hand on specific products by paying to appear first on deals sites and peppering the net with their ads.

So they built an honesty machine…

The engine that hunts down what things actually cost

The Real Deal is a deals directory and comparison platform that checks whether a deal is actually a deal before you spend. At the centre sits the custom RealRank engine that weighs up the actual savings with price competitiveness, the retailer's reputation, the deal's freshness and the stock left to give you a transparent deal score.

The platform gives us Netflix vibes, with a feed that learns what you browse and a Deal Reels mode where you swipe deals like short videos, and category shops you can follow (like padel, running, watches, etc.). The experience is all about that careful curation and transparency. No retailer can pay to make their offer appear above any other.

What we like is that it scores on retailer reputation and no one can buy their way to the top of a page. Also, it's built in SA for local shoppers and stores, so we're in.

We're watching this space…

You've probably noticed that most of the good health research in this country never makes it out of a university building, and it's seldom because the science was bad. It's because the person who could have commercialised it was sitting in a different building, on a different campus, with no particular reason to ever walk over.

Cape HealthTech Connect exists to shortcut all of that, and two of the startups in the room show you exactly what's at stake.

Fluorobiotech makes recombinant proteins and enzymes, the raw materials that vaccines, diagnostics and biopharmaceuticals are built out of, and which Africa currently imports almost all of. Their patented SelfPrep process strips down how those proteins get manufactured; they've just closed a seed round from ThirdWay Capital, and they're working with GIZ's SAVax programme to pull part of the vaccine value chain onshore.

NAVU is at the other end of the same problem. A R10'000 prosthetic knee, built from mountain bike shocks and local CNC work, replacing imports that run R50'000 to R200'000. Up to 60% of amputees in SA can't access a prosthesis at all.

These two and many more will be at the BMRI in Tygerberg on 17 September, alongside the researchers, clinicians, investors and funders that Stellenbosch Network, SU LaunchLab, CERI, the SU TTO and SWEAT Africa have pulled into one building for the day.

Tickets are R400, or R3'000 for a 2x2m exhibitor stand with two tickets included.

🚌 Joburg Buses Go Electric. The city is trialling e-buses on certain routes, using competing manufacturers' products, on the city's own telematics, so it can get informed before anyone writes a tender. How pragmatic, love it.

⚡ Charged for NOT Using Electricity. A Mpumalanga municipality (that includes Lydenburg, Sabie and Graskop) is apparently charging R582.64 to properties that aren't connected to the grid at all. Meanwhile, it's losing 53% of the electricity it buys. AfriForum's given them 10 days to explain what’s going on.

🚕 Tesla's Cybercab Is Carrying Passengers. It has no steering wheel, no pedals, no mirrors, no lidar, and that's the entire business model. Tesla is trying to reduce cost per mile, but the fact that the cars are so very different has authorities asking if they are even cars at all.

📶 5G Now Reaches 60% of Us (We Barely Use It). MTN and Vodacom have both crossed 60% population coverage. But South Africans still spend only 3.7% of their time on 5G, because of technical stuff about spectrum and things. Long and short: We either spent R14bn on tech no one can/is using, or our usage data is wrong.

💼 Global Structure, Less Drag. Finance Isle of Man supports SA founders moving offshore with 0% corporate tax, UK VAT access and easier access to international capital — a smart base for global growth.*

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

Raising more money too early can dilute the value of your company later on. So we asked one of SA's longest-serving venture capitalists how founders can get to the right number, and what investors really want.

And there are 5 specific decisions to help you avoid the over-raising dilution trap.

Bitcoin touched $82'000, then couldn't hold it. It's the highest price since May, but when US jobs numbers made a rate cut look unlikely, it put a bit of a squeeze on BTC, so it sat around $79'700 this weekend.

Standard Bank is the only African bank building the next stablecoin. It's in a global consortium after moving R164 trillion in payments last year across 2.3 billion transactions, and it was the banking partner for ZARU. Awkward timing: Treasury and the SARB are proposing a ban on SA companies making any cross-border crypto transfers. Watch this one.

Your transaction history is becoming your credit score. Binance reckons on-chain activity can build a credit profile without paperwork, a big deal on a continent where discipline leaves no trail a bank can see. And people are already wiring AI into the same stack: three ways users are running Binance through AI.

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 PineChat's WhatsApp CRM, asking how you're keeping track of your most important relationships. The verdict? Sticky notes and vibes…

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🧠 It's in my heeehead, in my he-hehead, Rassie, Rassie… (33%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📱 A chaos of WhatsApp threads, reminders and sticky notes (45%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💀 I'm not, and I've almost certainly lost a deal because of it (22%)

Your 2 cents…

We nominate you, Thom. Build it, and we will try it. 📇

AI Uncorked! Agents for Business, 10 Sep, CPT: What actually works with AI agents, minus the hype. Innovation City, R50. Get tickets.

Startup Stories: Altera Biosciences, 14 Sep, CPT: The human side of building a biotech, over lunch at OneBio. Get tickets.

Building Iconic South African Companies, 17 Sep, JHB: Your Open Letter gathering at The Tryst. Big stories, good people, drinks. Get tickets.

Powered by Radi. Want your business event in front of 36,000 The Open Letter readers? Host it on Radi, and it lands here.

🏋️ Next Level: Watch Mexico's Raul Flores lift over half a ton, 511kg, to break the world deadlift record this past weekend.

💾 Wow Site: 56k.rip is a 1996 dial-up internet simulator: a full desktop PC, so you can enjoy the thrill of ultra-slow retro internet (plus Minesweeper while you wait).