Peak performance {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? To celebrate their successful IPO (the company like 6x-ed their value), Unitree demoed a new robot called Superman that outpaces Usain Bolt. 🦸‍♂️

In This Open Letter

SA is one of the most loyalty-obsessed markets on earth, but smaller businesses stood on the sidelines for 30 years. The barriers that stopped them came down this week…

We are an absurdly loyal country when it comes to cards in wallets. Truth & BrandMapp research says 85% of economically active South Africans are part of loyalty programmes (10.4 of them on average, double what it was in 2015).

And look at what that buys the companies who own the rails:

But independent businesses couldn't build programmes of that scale. Not because they didn't want to. Because every attempt to digitise loyalty for the small guy has died on friction: downloading an app is a schlep, the programme can't integrate with POS, staff forget to ask for the card and how do you reconcile all of it at month-end?

We wrote last year when Platō became the first business in SA to make loyalty card-linked with Yoyo running on its Yoco terminals. The customer's bank card became the loyalty card, with 5% cashback landing automatically. Within three weeks, the Platō app accounted for over 30% of in-store transactions, but it was still an app that needed integration and a download.

Yoco has just taken both of those frictions out of the equation

Yoco Loyalty, announced at Yoco Next, is card-linked in the same way, except the customer joins once with a phone number, gets their balance over WhatsApp and redeems at the counter with that same number.

No app to download, no integration to scope, nothing new for staff to run, and it's switched on from the Plus plan rather than commissioned. That is the entire difference between infrastructure a chain builds and infrastructure a business simply has.

And the reason it matters is the data underneath, not the points. In Q1 of 2026, R4.9 billion in transactions from repeat customers moved through Yoco's food and beverage network; one in three of those customers returned at least twice a month, and about half of all revenue came from roughly 38% of the customer base.

That is Clicks-grade customer concentration sitting inside thousands of businesses that have never been able to see it, let alone act on it.

Where we'd stay sober about it: Card-linked only recognises the customer tapping the same card, so cash regulars remain invisible.

The rewards themselves still come off your margin, which is a real decision when Platō's version costs 5% of every cup. And the customer history now lives with your payment processor, which makes switching more expensive than it was last week.

Still, this is a power move. The friction that kept loyalty in the hands of big retailers looks way less daunting now that the terminal on your shop counter has become the distribution you always wanted.

We're watching this space…

Have your say…

Founders and side-hustlers, stop us when this sounds familiar: Your partner is supportive but does not want to hear you mumble about churn again. Your one or two team members can never know just how worried you really are. Your mates think you are doing great (because the website looks really good).

So the hardest decisions get made in your own head, all alone, late at night, with no second opinion and no way to check whether you are being brave or just stubborn.

That is the entire reason we built The Founder Collab: 218+ South African founders helping each other build better businesses:

For many, it's that little bit of business luck they've been hunting for all these years.

When investors say "venture-scale growth," this is what they mean: Cloud-security company Wiz went from $1m to $100m in annual recurring revenue in 18 months, the fastest any software company has managed it.

The two important numbers are the fast growth (18 months) and the scale: the business grew 100-fold, without having to grow their staff 100-fold. The same 480 people can handle the tremendous growth. That's the type of company a VC wants to fund.

📡 SA’s New 5G Network Doesn’t Require a SIM. Local telecom Comsol is closing a multi-billion-rand raise to build a new national 5G network, 2'000 base stations by end-2028, and it won't sell you anything. It's wholesale only.

🥷 Your Brand Is the Bait. More than 100 fake sites impersonating Takealot, DStv, SAA and SARS are pushing Android malware that reads the SMS OTPs your bank sends you. If your product still verifies users by SMS, that factor might be jeopardised.

🍏 Free Analytics, Paid Replies. Meta has dropped a Mac app for Meta AI that plugs straight into your Instagram, Facebook, ad accounts and Google Workspace — so it can see how last week's posts actually performed before it writes anything. Note the timing: this lands free the same month WhatsApp Business replies become billable.

📈 Pipeline Switched On. Growing software consultants IQ Business needed leads but didn't have the in-house muscle. So Cloud on Demand funded and ran full social media campaigns, turning marketing spend into qualified leads and real sales.*

🛍️ One Tap, One Checkout. gloss connects to Shopify and WooCommerce out of the box, spins up trackable QR codes and links for every campaign, and captures the customer and performance data on each one, so you can prove exactly what converted.*

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

Yesterday, we showed you Thuma Mina's video teaching platform, asking what fills the gap as the state cuts teachers. Free resources took it comfortably…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📹 Free resources like this (59%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤖 AI tutors (8%)

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Your 2 cents…

Let's be honest, none of us would've passed Matric without Uncle William Smith.

📊 Analyst @ The Open Letter Media Group

🛠️ Software Development Engineer @ Amazon Web Services

🎨 Senior Product Design Engineer @ DuckDuckGo SA

📋 Product Manager, 3P Marketplace @ Amazon

One of the most powerful ways we've seen to build a great company in South Africa, simply explained in one video…

Don't miss all the extra operator interviews and insights content we do on our social channels — come enjoy the vibez.

Public Speaking Workshop with Verity Price, 22 Aug, Cape Town: The first African to win the World Championship of Public Speaking, on communicating your value. Last chance. Get tickets.

JHB Wellness Global Connection, Led By Her, 25 Aug, Johannesburg: SA women leaders on visibility and self-advocacy, over drinks and a whole-body cryotherapy reset. Register free.

Beyond the Red-Green Loop: Building with Coding Agents, 26 Aug, Online: Ex-Mozilla engineer Schalk Neethling on building the scaffolding your coding agents work inside. Join here.

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📊 Tool to Try: SyFin turns market noise into cited, analyst-grade investment insights.

👶 That's Interesting: In Japan, sales of adult diapers have outpaced sales of baby diapers since at least 2013. What?