Enough robots {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Not for China, where Hong Kong is looking to top tech hubs like Wuhan's one-stop robot malls by rolling out actual stores staffed only by robots. Guess something's gotta distract them from world domination. 😉

Send this to a friend you'd meet for a robo-latte. ☕

In This Open Letter:

Preventive healthcare needs those annual checks that catch the 30% of SA adults with high blood pressure early, except SA has only a third of the doctors the WHO recommends to perform them, so this father-and-son team’s bringing the nurse to work…

SA needs a good workplace health solution. It’s probs the best place to catch the peeps who are at risk, ‘cos barely half of us are likely to even know if we have hypertension – which causes one in every six deaths in the country, btw.

But the doctor shortage means nurses burn their mornings on taking repeat vitals instead of actually treating anyone. 

So this one SA family made a plan…

The SA workplace health screening startup putting a nurse in every office

Abby Health is a self-service health station that lets anybody run more than 20 non-invasive checks on themselves, from blood pressure to body composition and a ten-year cardiovascular risk score – all sent to your WhatsApp, explaining your health results in plain language.

Abby Health's AI coach then takes over, flagging a borderline blood pressure reading and explaining what that means for you, and pointing you to a human nurse, if needed.

The beauty is that the system takes the repetitive measuring off said human nurse's plate, freeing them up to do more consulting with patients who need intervention.

3 Decades in the making

The idea runs in the family. Josh Lasker’s dad, Dave, spent 30 years measuring body fat and building an early version (the Healthinator), which Josh watched grow from age 16. They teamed up in 2018, then gutsed out two years with zero customers, with Josh working LinkedIn to try and find a market.

When COVID hit, preventative health was suddenly front of mind, and Abby had liftoff. Today, there are hundreds of stations in the field, 10 full-timers plus 50-odd part-time staff, and clients from Standard Bank and Old Mutual to Glencore and other big SA mines. 

The hardware is FDA, CE and SAHPRA approved, uses no consumables, and mobile units are available for smaller organisations. The software gives HR teams company-wide health data (anonymised) via a dashboard, with clinicians available for individual intervention, as needed.

We're watching this space…

Every ambitious SA founder eventually starts thinking about international markets. New revenue in hard currency, global investors, IP protection outside of SA and a structure that lets you operate across borders.

But here's what separates the founders who actually go global from the ones who keep circling the idea: networks.

The ones who make the move almost always do it through trusted ecosystems; the right introductions, the right advisors, the right jurisdictions. Cold emailing offshore firms never works.

Think about how business works in South Africa: You get things done through people who know people. Going international works the same way. The smartest route isn't Googling "best offshore jurisdiction," it's plugging into ecosystems that already connect SA founders to the right people, in the right places.

Your first move isn't a lawyer.

It's a network.

How to cold-message a CEO without being a pest. Most founders never message the people who could change their business. The ones who do it well aren't bolder — they just follow a different playbook. Here's how to get a reply.

17 practical ways to make money with AI. AI isn't the income source — the value comes from how you apply it to a clear skill, niche or business need. These are quick wins you can start today.

This Friday: Zero to one with Next176. Tramayne Monaghan (Chief Venture Officer, launched WeChat Pay, PUBG Mobile, JOOX Music) unpacks what it actually takes to move from idea to working product. 26 June, 12 pm. Members only. Join the Collab to get access.

🚴 SA Tech at the Tour de France. SA bike security startup 3BO is heading to the Tour de France after its GPS tracker tested at the Giro d'Italia with zero bikes lost. The AIGCP now recommends it to all men's and women's WorldTour squads. Lekke man.

📺 DStv on Every Samsung. Canal+ is putting the DStv Stream app on the home screen of all new Samsung smart TVs across 18 African markets, including SA, Nigeria, Kenya and Angola. Pre-installed from 1 June. The streaming wars just got a hardware play.

🎰 R1.5 Trillion Problem. Brazil is freezing illegal gambling operators' funds and making banks liable. SA wagered a record R1.5 trillion last year, distress calls are surging, and addiction treatment nearly doubled. SA should do the same. Yesterday.

🚕 Fake Uber Alert. Fake Uber drivers at SA airports are scamming travellers out of thousands, charging R4'200 for a R420 trip. Rule of thumb: if you didn't order it on your app, it's not a real Uber. Those guys with badges at CPT International? Not legit.

👁️ Invisible Excellence. Most executives are doing extraordinary work that the market can't see. There's a name for that problem, and FDC has built a system to fix it.*

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

Yesterday, we showed you Thandi, the career-advice AI, asking how you actually landed in the career you're in now. Most swapped lanes…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎯 Knew early, stuck the landing (18%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🎲 Pure luck and a few wrong turns (24%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👨‍👩‍👧 Family steered me (engineering, law or medicine or bust) (8%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📚 Studied one thing, do something completely different now (36%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤷 Still figuring it out, TBH (14%)

Your 2 cents…

Oof, resilience with receipts, Heike. Go for the title of owner, and it’ll never happen again. 💪

On 23 June 1868, Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soule were awarded a patent for the "Type-Writer", the basis for the first practical, commercially successful typewriter.

It evolved into what became known as the Sholes and Glidden typewriter (later the Remington No. 1), and its most lasting legacy? It was the first to use the QWERTY keyboard layout (the one we all still use today, 158 years later).

🧩 Tool to Try: DocuGenie extracts structured data from invoices, receipts, bank statements and PDFs using AI. No signup, export to Excel or JSON.

🌍 That's Interesting: The movie Meet the Fockers would have been automatically R-rated for its title. But the producers managed to find a real person with the surname Focker to prove it wasn't just wordplay.

🎨 Next Level: Watch this guy-in-a-kilt lift all the Ardblair Stones (the last one 152kg).

🕹️ Wow Site: Almanac turns any date in history into a beautiful, shareable poster of notable events from that day.