🏪 Is This the Future of Markets...?

An SA shake-up? Yes, by now we all probably know the ANC lost their majority rule, both nationally and in a few key provinces.

But, interestingly, if we ran in the elections and got all our readers to vote for us, we’d be SA’s 32nd largest party (just about 4k adrift from COPE).

Yep, we hit 10’000 subscribers over the weekend and we want to say thank you for reading and engaging!

In this Open Letter:

• Capital Markets: How blockchain and CASP are shaking up finance.
• Here comes TrumpTok, Pick n Pay’s pickle & why Apple’s chips are down.
• Go to market: How to build a beautiful website yourself.
• How we like our insurance freebies: The poll results are in.
• Giveaway time: Win R1k’s worth of gold & The First Kudu!

TRENDING NOW

An Alternative Way to Capital

The JSE (Joburg Stock Exchange) has seen 22 delistings in 2023, down only slightly from the 25 delistings that occurred in 2022. And apart from the recent separate listing by WeBuyCars, there isn’t too much else cooking on Africa’s top stock exchange.

It’s worrying for asset managers who are pressed to make do with fewer options, but it's also worrying for companies that want to use the stock market as a means to raise funding.

But why is the JSE listings shrinking?

Well, it might have to do with the costs of listing: It’s estimated that for a company to issue traditional financial assets (shares) via the exchange, typically involves up to 40 intermediaries. Wow, 40 extra hands all taking a cut from the transaction.

In fact, the global financial intermediary sector is said to extract over $200 billion in value from the market every year (that’s R3.8bn).

Yes, listing is pricey, but for good reason: Compliance and trust are crucial for the functioning of capital markets. 

But we can’t help asking if that risk could be done at a lower cost…

Tokenising assets the future of finance?

A smart contract can represent ownership of an asset. Think shares, a bond or even a representation of a real-world contract. And on the blockchain, these smart contracts can easily be traded with other users in exchange for cryptocurrency.

With the first 75 FSCA Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) licenses being issued earlier this year, we might see more tokenised asset exchanges and solutions hitting the market. 

And Mesh is one such local startup. Mesh developed the infrastructure to enable the issuance and trade of assets. Running on the Stellar blockchain, Mesh recently launched one of the continent’s first tokenised bond sales, raising R100m for “Die MOS inisiatief” to fund the development of private education facilities. 

The bond was fully underwritten and guaranteed, offering investors prime + 2% with a minimum investment size of as little as R5’000. 

It’s one step closer to bringing alternative investment opportunities to the man on the street, all while helping companies raise funding more affordably.

Exciting times ahead….we’re watching this space…

IN SHORT

🌬️ Cape Doctor Power. The V&A Waterfront in Cape Town is testing 5 small-scale, pole-mounted vertical wind turbines as part of its green energy mix.

🍏 Apple Chips Down. Nvidia is set to replace Apple as the world’s second-most-valuable company thanks to a massive upshot in demand for the high-end chips that power AI applications, and a seemingly decreased demand for iPhones.

🔻Petering Out. Retail OG Pick n Pay looks to be in a spot of bother after publishing its financial results ending 25 Feb 2024. The results show a 373% decrease in net profit from R1.17 billion to a net loss of R3.2 billion.

🎺 TrumpTok. Former US Prez and presidential nominee Donald Trump joined TikTok this weekend and has already amassed 1.7 million followers. Guess he doesn't hate everything Made in China.

🤷🏽 Berkshire Affordable. The NYSE claimed a bizarre glitch that displayed Berkshire Hathaway’s stock as being down by 99.97% has been fixed.

BUILDER’S CORNER

How to Build a Good-Looking Website Yourself

by Renier Kriel from The Open Letter

One of the most valuable concept validation techniques is to get a website up that markets your products and services, and then send some traffic there.

Best-case scenario, it leads to a few customers. Worst case, you get market feedback. But if building your site takes a long time, costs a lot of money or doesn’t look great, this experiment quickly becomes too costly.

That’s why I use Webflow.

Webflow makes it easy (for even non-coders) to build visually appealing websites in a visual interface. You pretty much design the website (or start from a library of over 1k+ templates) and Webflow writes the HTML, Javascript, etc. in the background.

After building many sites, including The Open Letter and our latest venture, Stream’s site on Webflow, we think it’s good enough to give you a quickfire guide on using it to get a new website up in a jiffy.

1. Set up your Webflow account

Head on over to Webflow and create a free account — it gives you dashboard access and lets you explore the features before you fully commit. The free plan allows you to build a site with 2 pages, 50 content items and 1’000 visitors per month before having to pay. Enough for you to get a feel for how it works.

2. Browse for a template you love

They have over 1’000 templates, catering to various industries and purposes. Whether you just need something basic to test an MVP and messaging or want to, later on, go full-blown e-commerce (check out WigWag’s plugin to enable E-commerce in SA), you likely don’t need a designer to get a really slick-looking website.

3. Start editing

The best part is how easily you can just change up the template to suit your brand needs — it’s basically an intelligent drag-and-drop editor. And if you get stuck, they have like a thousand video tutorials on how to do virtually everything you can imagine on there.

4. Find a site plan (hosting) & connect your domain

Webflow has hosting plans built into it all, making it super easy for you to connect your domain and publish your work of art to the world!

5. Click publish

It’s basically done and live as soon as you’re happy with it. And then you can just use the Webflow editor to make changes and republish… no developers or designers needed (just yet).

If you want to get started with Webflow, please use our affiliate link which will help us earn revenue.

Today’s Builder’s Corner was written by Renier Kriel from The Open Letter and Stream, who is an expert in SA startup strategy & growth.

Connect with him on Linkedin here.

YOUR VOICE

We asked where you’d like to earn some “free” embedded insurance, and most eyes are on the FinTechs…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍟 My Uber Eats and takeaways (8%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📱 My data purchases (3%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⛽ When filling up with petrol (22%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎬 My DStv bill or Netflix sub (10%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛒 Rewards for my online shopping (14%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💰 My bank or digital wallet, for sure! (43%)

Your 2 cents…

An intriguing thought there, Charles? Yeh, many would probably say that was the idea behind the RAF, but a properly structured, controlled and individualised (preferably commercial) product would likely be quite welcome with vehicle owners.

Not a bad idea at all, Jason. Wonder if FNB would bite…

ENTER TO WIN BIG THIS FRIDAY!

To celebrate our 10k subs and TroyGold’s launch of a first-of-its-kind subscription, we’re shaking things up and giving away R1’000’s worth of gold bullion with this week + a copy of SA startup must-read, The First Kudu (check out the new audiobook here).

To enter, simply refer one friend this week using your unique referral code.

That’s right, just one friend to sign up. Want more entries? Refer more friends and each referral will count as one entry into Friday’s draw.

(Note: In order to claim your prize you’ll need an active TroyGold account, which is free to create.)

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