Eight arms {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? This guy built a mobile aquarium on a skateboard so he could take his pet octopus for walks. Peak pet ownership has been reached. 🐙

Send this to a friend who thinks their cat is high-maintenance. 🦑

In This Open Letter:

Out of SA’s 3 million small businesses, only 15% of owners feel supported by their bank — so this venture detoured through Morocco to come back with $1.5m (R25m) to build the SME bank SA actually needs…

SMEs battle with SA banks. Not because the normal business account is bad, but because of everything it doesn’t do. 

Your money lives there, but your invoicing, payroll, books and other critical financial tools all live somewhere else. Now you need six or seven apps and integrations, all costing you money, when banks could easily have tied this together years ago.

The neobank pulling it onto one screen

Zazu is a neobank for African SMEs that pulls banking, invoicing, expense controls and cash-flow tools into a single login. It sits on top of a licensed partner (Access Bank SA, via Sava Technologies), so the regulated side is handled — Zazu focuses on what the traditional banks won't build: The layer that actually connects everything.

Imagine: No more different SaaS tools for every financial action, they all live with your bank. And, if Zazu doesn't have a specific function, they’ve got a marketplace with providers, with API docs all ready so you can connect and go.

Now onboarding SA's first batch of SMEs

Co-founders Germain Bahri and Rinse Jacobs are two European fintech operators who wanted to roll out in SA as their primary market. While preparing for their SA launch, they saw an opportunity to expand into Morocco, where they validated the product with 500+ SMEs (including Bolt), raised $1.5 million (R25m) from Plug and Play Ventures, Digital Africa, Launch Africa, etc., and are now returning to SA.

They seem to be onto something: They've already onboarded their first 50 SA businesses, with more joining weekly. So if you want in, now's the time to act.

Next up: A mobile app and an AI cash-flow agent (already live in Morocco) that gives business owners run-rate and runway indicators from just a couple of months of financial data.

We're watching this space…

Turn your LinkedIn into a lead magnet. An expert who's spent close to a decade growing businesses through LinkedIn content shows you exactly how to make your profile bring in actual business leads. Check the guide.

R2.2M/month from two hobby apps. Kyle Fowler is a self-taught developer who turned personal problems into two mobile apps, doing over R2.2M/month combined (R18M+/year). No trends, no shiny objects, just building for himself. Watch the full story.

140+ founders building together. The Founder Collab gives you weekly accountability, expert masterclasses, R40k+ in free tools and a high-trust community of SA tech founders. See what's inside.

Claude.ai is one thing. Agentic workflows, MCP connections, ungoverned skills taking actions across your data? That's a different conversation — and most security teams aren't equipped for it.

Harmonic Security gives your CISO the visibility and controls to say yes confidently.

Share this Claude guide with security.

Help Security Say Yes

🎲 R298M Kickstarter Record. Cape Town agency Pulling Power Media (behind Launch Oracle) just helped its fourth Kickstarter game break a record in three years. Neon Odyssey, a 1'400-page tabletop RPG, closed at $16.14m (R298m) from 49'116 backers, the highest-funded tabletop RPG campaign in Kickstarter history.

⚽ Bafana Fans, Look Away. EA Sports has predicted that Spain will win this year's World Cup. Before you frown, they've been predicting for over a decade, and they’ve been 100% right for the last four World Cup comps. 😬

🛣️ E-Tolls: Written Off. Cabinet has approved the write-off of nearly R29 billion in unpaid e-toll debt. Good news. Unless you're one of the people who actually paid, because it also said there will be no refunds. Shoulda known.

🏠 CPT Rates Relief. Cape Town's Mayor has proposed expanded rates relief for residential properties valued up to R8 million (up from R7m), with the first R620'000 now exempt from rates. Indigent households on R7'500/month or less can get a 100% rebate.

⚙️ Scale Built Fast. LeaseSurance had a validated PropTech idea, but the platform to scale it nationally would take months/years to build. So Octoco rebuilt the core system with automation, risk profiling and claims processing to make it market-ready in just 5 months (not years).*

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

Yesterday, we showed you some local AI compute options, asking if you’d run AI locally for R200/month. Over half say yes, but don't know where to start…

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💻 Already doing it; local compute changed my business (3%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💰 Yes, the cloud costs are killing me (23%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤔 Interested but don't know where to start (57%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ☁️ I'll stick with the cloud, thanks (2%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏘️ I'd start a neighbourhood compute farm tomorrow (15%)

On 9 June 1993, Jurassic Park premiered and went on to become the highest-grossing film in history at the time. But its influence went well beyond that…

Jurassic Park did for CGI what Star Wars did for special effects 16 years earlier: It proved what was possible, and now every Marvel movie, every Pixar film, every de-aged actor on your screen — it all traces back to Spielberg’s Rexy from 1993. 🦖

🧩 Tool to Try: Builder Brief scans Reddit, Hacker News and founder newsletters for the best signals and builds product briefs you can pop to AI and start building, quick.

🌍 That's Interesting: When John Williams first played the two-note Jaws theme for Spielberg, he laughed — he wanted something more in-depth. Then Williams told him he’d read the script, and the movie is not that sophisticated. And so, one of the most famous movie themes was born.

🎨 Next Level: This paper-shredding magic trick is too much fun.

🕹️ Wow Site: Try this interactive 3D space simulator that runs in your browser.