Future of entertainment {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Hollywood's AI actress Tilly Norwood was already cringe during a live Piers Morgan show, but then the AI glitched and started speaking Chinese. LOL, just LOL. 🙃

In This Open Letter

Know the pain of chasing someone owing you money? It happens to businesses, too — so this startup's built a thing that helps sort out which calls a human needs to make…

More than 10 million credit-active SA consumers are behind on their payments:

Some are making plans to pay; others genuinely need someone to walk them through their options for a plan that works. The problem is, businesses don't know which names on a list are which, so they pay a collection team to contact as many as possible, costing time and money.

And remember the other day when we said AI-driven spam is virtually killing the phone as a channel? Well, from what we've heard, most teams have such long lists to call, they rarely get even close to the bottom of it…

You just know someone had to do something about it…

The platform deciding which calls are worth a human's time

Voicia is an AI voice service that makes a company's routine outbound calls for it, then hands the ones that really need special attention to humans.

Co-founder Chris Pretorius, who saw how ops teams battle to reach enormous customer bases while working in credit risk and data science, started building it about two years ago with co-founding engineers Matt, Evert and Alex. And he says Voicia's not looking to replace humans in SA's massive BPO sector (R24bn a year in the Western Cape alone), but to empower them.

It also runs WhatsApp, SMS and email, with all the touchpoints feeding into a live dashboard with searchable transcripts of every call. And the AI's voices speak with local accents, with the tone being adjustable.

Lenders are the starting point, which is Chris's home ground, but he's already seen the same opportunities in any business leaning on outbound calls.

We like that it's a smart solution built around a specific, unglamorous problem and the founder's solving a problem he watched break firsthand. The multi-channel approach is also very cool — we defs expect to see more of this in BPO.

We're watching this space…

Most "tech for your business" mornings are a software vendor on a stage and a QR code at the end. This one's different…

The Tourism Tech Talk on 6 October is built around people who've actually run the playbook:

The theme is narrow on purpose: AI, automation, digital marketing and the customer data you already have but don't use. You leave with things to do on Monday, not a trends deck.

Half a day, free, at the SU LaunchLab in Stellenbosch, but there are only 40 seats; that's it.

⚖️ SA’s Finance Rules Must Wait For Basel. The FSCA won’t create any AI finance rules until the Financial Stability Board reports next month. Hmm, they came pretty hard at crypto recently; why so scared of AI, we wonder?

🩺 SA’s Next HealthTech Market. New draft regulations completely change how SA’s 8'354 physiotherapists can operate. So take note, HealthTech builders: there’s a whole new market to sell software, services and products into.

🤖 Gemini Hacked Three Companies. It guessed passwords on one and found credentials lying in a public repo on the other two. The bit that should worry you isn't the model; it's how cheap exploit-building just got.

🎣 SA’s e-Filing Clones. SARS warns there’s a scourge of AI-built website clones looking to scam South Africans into giving away their login details. Problem is every "spot the bad grammar" rule you taught your team just stopped working.

🌍 Taking SA Companies Global. Seeing how hard it is for SA founders to take companies global, Dommisse Attorneys worked with the SA SME Fund, SAVCA and Endeavor to create an open-source framework to establish your IP offshore called IP Strategy Flow.*

🔐 Something's Coming. 78% of phishing emails land when staff aren't trained, and the average SA SME spends just R388 a year per person keeping the bad guys out. There's a reason the gap is that wide, and it isn't laziness. Cell C knows how to fix it.*

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

Many founders get the first sales hire wrong. And the problem is it takes about 18 months to realise the mistake. So we asked one of SA's longest-serving venture capitalists how to hire instead.

And it turns out, there are 5 specific steps to hire your first salesperson and build sales as a machine rather than a gamble.

Bitcoin cleared $80'000. It dropped to $74'887 on Tuesday, then the Fed hiked rates for the first time since 2023, but BTC closed the week above $81'000 anyway, up 5% on Friday. And Ethereum went along for the ride, climbing to 5.3% by the weekend.

Which AI companies should you invest in? Some say it’s a bubble, but people are trading and making money every day. So, if you wanted to get in on it, how would you start? Crypto has some unique insights: Here’s a guide to which companies are really winning and losing (investments-wise) in AI.

Binance is building the payment layer under SA's smart cities. At The Gathering in Cape Town, Binance SA's Hannes Wessels showed how it already works at a Pick n Pay till: scan a QR, pay in 30 seconds, merchant gets rands, no fees added. Woah.

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 Snapback's wallet loyalty cards, asking how your business is doing loyalty right now. The verdict? Just give people value and call it a day…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📇 Still punching paper cards like it's 2015 (19%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📱 We built an app, nobody downloaded it (25%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🙌 Customers pay for stuff, we give them value, that's the loyalty (56%)

Faith in the Workplace, 29 Sept, Durban: Darin Owen and Renier Kriel on living out faith and values at work, at The Rock Church. Get tickets.

Buying Back SA Tech from Durban, 1 Oct, Ballito: Gumtree's Pedro Casimiro on why Ignition bought the brand back from its offshore owner. Get tickets.

Fine Dining with Linda Reddy, 1 Oct, Sandton: Nando's global exec on the unspoken rules of getting ahead in corporate, over dinner at Hotel Sky. Get tickets.

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🌋 Next Level: You haven't fully experienced nature until you see lightning striking the ash plume of an erupting volcano.

🏢 Wow Site: P Tree is an interactive explorer for the tree of life.

💼 Worth a Look: Know someone building a financial advisory business? Tell them to check out this specialist newsletter.