Fed the dog {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? A PetTech startup is under fire after its AI-powered automated pet feeders went offline for days on end. Obvs a lot of hungry cats and dogs all round, and the owners are fuming. What meow? 😸

In Today's Open Letter

SA schools are losing teachers while 81% of Grade 4s can't read for meaning and 40% of Grade 1s never reach matric, so this former teacher and his wife made a plan with video…

It's no secret that South Africa has an education problem. But this year, it's gotten worse: the government centrally approves teacher wage hikes, but the National Treasury only partially funds them, forcing provinces to cut teachers.

The Western Cape, given just 64% of the wage bill's cost, froze non-teaching recruitment and cut 2'407 teacher posts from January 2025. Gauteng raided transport and nutrition to save 3'400 posts while KwaZulu-Natal's R4bn shortfall couldn't cover 11'092 teachers' salaries.

And obvs SA has too many learners per class…

It's something former teacher Leopold van Velden knows too well, having taught classes with up to 67 pupils in some places in SA through his career. So he and his wife (and co-founder) Silke Rothkegel van Velden built a video-based solution.

The local public-benefit co bringing the syllabus to YouTube

Thuma Mina Teaching turns the Grade 7 to 9 CAPS curriculum, EMS, History, Geography and Natural Science, into free video lessons on YouTube. No login, no fee, in just one click.

And they're not screen-recordings over a slide: Each lesson runs through a subject specialist, learning designer, peer reviewer, presenter and editor (45 hours of work) and costs upwards of R20k to produce.

They're hit, though: A cool 10 million views by 210 unique learners per term, which makes the cost around R5 per learner, per subject, for the whole year.

It's a public-benefit non-profit, but there's some inspiration here for others:

In a country losing teachers, the answer might not be complex AI or building humanoid robot teachers after all; just recording what we currently have and making that available could go a long way already.

We're watching this space (and their videos)…

What if you could hand a task to AI and just walk away? xAI's Grok Bot gives each bot its own cloud computer, signs into your tools with your logins, and works through multi-step jobs solo, researching accounts overnight and leaving drafted emails for your approval by morning. The race has moved from AI that drafts to AI that does.

Is the next data centre made of neurons? DayOne, Cortical Labs and NUS Medicine switched on Singapore's first biological data centre, living human neurons grown from stem cells, integrated with silicon, processing information dynamically.

Could your AI model be discriminating without anyone noticing? A Dutch court halted a government fraud-detection system for violating human rights. Praelexis breaks down the six ethical risks that live inside the algorithms themselves, not the infrastructure. Read it here.

Founders like Jo don't build alone, and neither should you. Check out our founder community, The Founder Collab, where SA founders swap the isolation of building alone for weekly accountability, honest feedback and a room full of people who get it.

📉 The Relief Is Imported. SA’s inflation eased to 4.3% in July from 5%, below consensus, but core inflation went the other way, up to 4.2%. That's the fuel shock unwinding, not underlying pressure easing. If you're budgeting for next year, plan against 4.2% and rising.

🔞 Age Prediction Does the Gatekeeping. ChatGPT for Teens went live globally on Tuesday, auto-enrolling anyone OpenAI's classifier estimates is under 18, with no accuracy figures published. If you ship anything consumer-facing, age assurance is now product infrastructure, not a nice-to-have.

⚡ 1% Off a 900% Rise. Eskom and municipalities are barred from recovering bad debt through tariffs, worth 1% to 2.5% off your bill. Take it, but the real news is Nersa's new 10-year price forecast, the first time you can model electricity as a known input cost.

🏪 Way More Spaza Shops. Lesaka now sees SKU-level sales across 90'000 spaza shops and taverns to sell to FMCG brands. Only problem is that's way more spazas than the government has verified. The founder lesson: your payment rails are a measurement layer, and the measurement is often worth more than the processing fee.

🚀 Global Reach Built. World-class futurist John Sanei has the insight but needs consistent global visibility. So FDC turned LinkedIn into a positioning engine that's driven 6.7 million impressions, 31k+ profile views and steady inbound demand from global audiences.*

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

Most SA founders scramble to sign any trial customer they can get. One SA founder did the opposite, refused the inbound, and four years later her platform screens around $5bn a month across 70+ countries. The approach has a name that almost nobody here is using.

Here's the design partner approach, where it comes from and why she chose it.

Yesterday, we showed you Jem's new HR platform, asking for your honest first reaction to free HR software. Most here are reaching straight for the T&Cs…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🧐 Nothing is free. I'm reading those T&Cs like a divorce settlement (72%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😭 I've paid per employee for years. Please stop talking (9%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📲 My current HR system is a WhatsApp group and blind hope, so yes (19%)

Eating healthy costs the same in SA as it does in Europe, yet 60% of Southern Africa can't afford to eat healthy.

💡 Southern Africa sits at roughly $4.20 equivalent a day per person (similar to Europe), but 60% of our people can’t afford to eat healthily.

💡 Interesting to note that Northern Africa fares way better, while Middle Africa, with among the lowest prices, has even lower affordability (80% can’t afford a decent meal).

A super interesting chart, but we can’t help but feel the affordability is skewed by lack of formal vs informal trade and market numbers. Either way, it’s another indicator that SA as a country needs to demand more from our law- and policymakers to promote growth and business, so that we can use our economy to help more people enjoy a healthy meal every day.

Digital Divas Summit 2026, 28 Aug, Cape Town: A full day on career growth, AI, ambition and visibility, built around the theme SHIFT. R1'199. Get tickets.

Venture Summit at LeaderEx, 1 Sept, Sandton: Founders, funders and the people writing the cheques in one room; Jason and Renier will be there, so come say hi — use code TOL to get a free ticket (Open Letter reader perks, y’all). More info.

Startup Stories: Bionuclex Research, 2 Sept, Cape Town: The team chasing multi-cancer early detection from a single blood draw, over lunch at OneBio. R50. Join here.

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: Check this girl's insane knife-throwing skills. See the clip.

📱 Wow Site: Full Talk Time is a dumb phone simulator that lets you write and share 160-character messages like it's 2005.