Fancy a payday {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Each of Anthropic's 7 co-founders will take home about R4.1 billion from its IPO, with shares trading on Nasdaq from 19 November. Not bad for a company started in 2021. 💸
In This Open Letter
Healthtech: How Udok grew 14x into a 300-practice network.
Local: Cape Town's Lumepay raises a R98.6m pre-seed round.
Global: Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO after 33 years.
Tech Jobs: 4 roles at Octoco, GoMove, Magic Safari and co.
Raising: Why most founders end up pitching the wrong fund.
Leadership: The smallest handover that builds new leaders.
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TRENDING NOW
How Udok 14x-ed, branching into practice management
We last told you about Udok's virtual doctor consults in 2024, with an update on moving into instant online practices for doctors in December 2025. Now, it's a network of 300+ practices…
Back in 2020, founder Dr Piet van Niekerk's Udok had 10 people, 140 sites and 15'000 GP consults behind it. Today, it connects 300+ practices, 3'000 pharmacies and 200'000 patients, with more than 215'000 consults done.
How it works: See a Udok doctor online or in person for the same flat R365, with medical aid accepted and no co-payment on the portal or an express consult on WhatsApp. And, for doctors, it's a much more affordable way to start a new practice (normally est. R1–2M in costs) for only a few hundred Rand per month.
See it in action…
4 moves to get Udok here
1. They went hybrid: Udok rebuilt itself from a video-call service into a network of doctors who see you online or in person.
2. They did compliance the expensive way: Every script carries an Advanced Electronic Signature, as SA law requires. That means a courier at each doctor's door to match face to ID, an authenticator app for every signature and a fee per script. A pasted image of a signature costs nothing.
3. They put AI on both sides: For doctors, a triage bot suggests a diagnosis and treatment plan, and the doctor accepts or changes it before signing. Doctors change the AI's diagnostic code about 10% of the time, mostly because a medical scheme won't accept that code. And on the patient side, an annual AI health review flags the screenings they're due for.
4. They signed Standard Bank: The bank's healthcare clients now get Udok's digital practice setup with no monthly fee: virtual consults, e-scripts, patient records and medical aid claims in one system.
3 lessons Piet learned from 8 years of building Udok
1. Go faster, and fund it: If he did it again, Piet would give himself a year, raise as much as he could and go the American route. Being first in 2018 bought a head start, not a moat. Money buys resources, and resources let you do things properly.
2. Customers don't pay for what they can't see: Udok charges a bit more to do things properly, but given a choice of a few hundred doctors, 90% of patients just hit Express. Nobody cares about the tech, Piet says, so you have to sell the why.
3. Healthcare is a low-frequency habit: You might need a doctor once a year, so Udok is moving upstream into prevention: its AI runs an annual health review on every patient, checking conditions, medication and family history, then flags the screenings they’re due for, at a scale no GP practice could manage by hand. The scale is very important, here, though.
What's next for Udok
GP vouchers are launching inside a national retailer: 1 consult for R365, valid for 3 years. Buy one for yourself or your gran in rural KZN, redeem it on WhatsApp and the doctor calls back. Medication delivery is also on the roadmap, and Udok has bid on a Canadian tender for an AI doctor.
Cool stuff, Piet reckons, is like surfboards: everyone wants the surf brand, but few want to climb on the board. Take note of that while building.
We're watching this space…
Have your say…
CHECK THIS OUT
Nothing like family…
Can your family access your offshore shares if you die?
Invested offshore? Good call: since April, you can move R2m a year on your discretionary allowance (R4m for a couple), plus up to R10m more on the foreign capital allowance. It's a hedge against a wobbly rand and a ticket into the world's biggest companies.
But here's what most people miss: Hold offshore money in your own name, and the country it sits in gets a say when you die.
US shares or US-based funds worth more than US$60,000 (just under R1m) give the US the right to charge an estate tax of up to 40%. The UK does the same on UK assets above a higher threshold. Then comes foreign probate, which commonly takes 12 months or more. Until it's done, your SA estate can't be wound up and your family can't touch the money.
The fix is in how you hold it, not what you hold.
Not sure yours is set up right? Connect with Cecilia Albertyn, Finance Isle of Man's SA representative. She'll put you in touch with the right Isle of Man firm.
RAISING IN SA
Why most founders pitch the wrong VCs
Most founders read a fund's website, like the partners, and pitch. Then a year goes by. So we asked Sizwe Nxumalo of 3 Capital Ventures, which backs SA seed-stage B2B companies, what founders miss about how a VC fund actually makes its decisions.
And it turns out, a 9-step chain, from fund size to follow-on risk, decides what a fund can offer before you walk into the room.
IN SHORT
Easing you into the weekend…
🦶 SA Code, US Clinics. Octoco built the software behind Austrian company Stappone's sensor insole, now FDA-listed, so US clinics and physios can use it. SA engineers inside a US medical device. That's a serious credential for local teams.
💸 R98.6m Before Seed. Cape Town fintech Lumepay has raised a R98.6m pre-seed to build cross-border payments, FX and stablecoin services for African businesses. It's already cleared in SA and Kenya. Payments need serious capital before they can serve anyone.
🎮 Jensen Huang Steps Down. Jensen Huang has resigned as Nvidia CEO after 33 years, amid reports of 2 affairs. CFO Colette Kress is interim CEO while the board searches. No successor was ready. Plan yours long before you need one.
📊 Books Sorted. Spreadsheets don't scale. Xero runs invoicing, bank reconciliation, VAT, expenses and reporting from one cloud dashboard — with direct feeds into FNB, Absa, Standard Bank and Nedbank. TOL readers get 90% off for the first 6 months.*
* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.
LEADERSHIP LESSONS
The smallest handover that builds leaders
Get all the insights in the video, for free and on-demand…
If you keep doing the work you're good at, your team never gets the chance to get good at it too. OfferZen asked Daniel Amber, CTO at Cars.co.za, which decision taught him the most about leadership. His answer: make people's jobs as big as possible by giving them more responsibility that plays to their strengths while pushing them a little further.
One simple change made a difference: he stopped running stand-ups himself and rotated the responsibility across the team each week. People felt more involved, and everyone got a chance to practise leading. Here's how to build leaders.
WHAT YOU SAID
On the road...
Yesterday, we showed you NATS Pets Couriers, asking how you'd move your pet across the country tomorrow. Nearly 4 in 5 of you would just hit the road…
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🚗 Road trip, pet riding shotgun (79%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📦 Pay someone to handle the whole thing (14%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🙈 Leave him with my mom and "visit often" (7%)
Your 2 cents…
"We had to move 2 horses, a dog, a bunny and 6 chickens from one province to the other. I wish the pet uber was available then already!"
2 horses, a dog, a bunny and 6 chickens is basically Noah's ark on the N1. Respect, CA. 🐓
READY FOR A MOVE?
Jobs in Tech
💻 Intermediate Software Engineer @ Octoco
📣 Marketing Coordinator @ GoMove
🦁 Founding Engineer @ Magic Safari
🎨 Front-End Developer @ Byte Orbit
LOOKING TO NETWORK?
SA business events coming up
Startup Stories: MariHealth, 17 Nov, Cape Town: UCT spinout MariHealth on reading 3'000 fish proteins in one sample to help aquaculture farmers, over lunch at OneBio. Get tickets.
Meet Your Co-Founder, 19 Nov, Cape Town: OneBio brings scientists, clinicians, engineers and business minds together to form biotech founding teams. Apply here.
OpenAI Academy & Codex Champions Showcase, 20 Nov, Cape Town: OpenAI, Andela and Big Cabal Media on AI and African storytelling, plus 5 finalists demo tools built with Codex, at Innovation City. Apply 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.
AROUND THE WEB
Have some fun…
🎨 Next Level: This artist spent years light-painting these video short stories. Mesmerising.
🐾 Wow Site: Ever argued over who fed the dog? I Fed the Pet lets everyone in the house log a feed with 1 tap and see who fed which pet and when. Free on iPhone and Android.
