Hi {{ FIRSTNAME | there, }}
Saw it coming? Yes, an aviation startup made the world’s first all-electric commercial passenger flight earlier this month. It flew about 130kms on just $8 worth of electricity — at least half of what it would’ve cost with a Cessna 172 (16.9 litres of fuel). Still small-scale for now, but it could defs be a start to cheaper air travel. 🛩
In this Open Letter:
A group thing: The startup helping SA manage R15 billion in group gifts.
New car smell, ChatGPT make dumb & Mr Beast’s thumbnail pickle.
R2 million funding up for grabs & what 2025’s taught SMEs (so far).
Farming at home and how you prefer to do business. The results are in.
Lonely building your startup? Join The Founder Collab and get support.
Thanks to today’s partner, OCFO, for its support in keeping this newsletter free and independent.
📢 Bookkeeper or CFO?
Here’s When to Make the Move
Still juggling spreadsheets? It could be hurting your profits.
✅ When to upgrade to strategic finance
✅ What a fractional CFO actually does
✅ 5 ways they help boost profits
Join us for a live session with the venture financing pros at OCFO.
📅 10 July | 🕛 12–1PM | 🔴 Live on LinkedIn
TRENDING NOW
A Better Way to Party Away R15 Billion
This Tuesday Deep Dive examines some of the pain points of group gifting in SA, introducing a startup that’s looking to change the game…
Everyone’s been there… News of a wedding, birthday, baby shower or farewell breaks and two 300-millionths of a second later, you’re on the WhatsApp gift group.
Now it’s just a thousand hours of painfully mindless chatter so that you can end up chipping in way too much for a gift they 100% guaranteed don’t want. (Or three duplicate gifts, random envelopes of cash and gift cards from like 10 different places.)
Group gifting isn’t new. “Clubbing together” for gifts is a time-honoured tradition. But since 2010, tech’s been accelerating it, and not always in the right ways.
It’s hard to put an SA figure on it, but extrapolating from the US’s $50 billion a year group gifting market, we’re probably looking at a R15–R20 billion per year market in SA (our gift card industry alone is about R20 billion per annum).
And, with around 100k weddings per year and goodness knows how many housewarmings, graduations and other milestones, it’s a big deal.
South Africans love a good pool…
South Africans are no strangers to pooling funds. From stokvels to office parties, we’re wired for collective contribution – community-based finance is part of our DNA.
Tech is also definitely enabling the trend: social media and mobile, as well as e-commerce and gift cards, are putting group gifts right at our fingertips.
And group payments are a win for merchants, too.
They can tap into more revenue
Consumers are high-intent shoppers
Unlocks premium product purchases
If only we could solve the whole WhatsApp gifting group chaos…
The local startup killing awkward group gifts
Chipin is a purpose-built group payments platform that helps groups chip in securely on gifts people actually want, unlocking bigger baskets and better margins for merchants (without credit barriers).
From the giftee’s side, it’s simple: Browse from Chipin’s ever-growing merchant list, add your dream gift, select “Chipin,” and create a shareable wish list.
Friends and family chip in for your purchase (without even needing to create an account), zero fees (the merchants cover that), no awkward follow-ups or banking info shared.
Once the target’s hit, you check out using your collected “chips.” Done.
The instant win-win
And for merchants, it’s plug-and-play: A simple widget handles everything, only charging a fee on completed transactions. Chipin already has integrations in place for Magento and WordPress.
We recently caught up with Chipin founder and CEO Rob Anderson and business lead Haydan Bowman, and they confirmed a Shopify integration is currently in the works, which will likely boost their merchant onboarding.
In the growing world of buy-now-pay-later, Chipin is more like buy-together-better. And that’s pretty lekker. We’re watching this space…
CHECK THIS OUT - PARTNER CONTENT*
What Would Your Finance Team Do With 10 Extra Hours a Week?
Cloud accounting gives you the tools. Experts help you get the most out of them.
Most founders already use cloud-based systems, but even the best software can’t catch up on reconciliations, clean up old entries or clarify confusing reports on its own. When capacity is tight, those things slip.
Now imagine what your finance team could do with expert backup and 10 extra hours a week:
✔️ Focus on strategy, not spreadsheets
✔️ Wrap up month-end without late nights
✔️ Feel confident in the numbers, every time
Here’s how OCFO can assist
🧠 Flexible Accounting Support: Meeting founders and businesses where they are.
💼 Trusted advisor: Build with clarity, communication and understanding.
📈 Reliable, Year-Round Reporting: Timely, accurate numbers you can rely on.
Cloud accounting works best with experienced people behind it. We bring in the experts so your systems can really deliver.
🎯 Want to extend your team’s capacity without hiring full-time?
*This content is part of a paid partnership with OCFO
IN SHORT
Take a few good ones for the road…
📦 Take some profits soon? Takealot group posted some strong results, with group revenue up 15% in rand terms to close to R15 billion for the year. Considering the recent crackdown on Temu tax loopholes, the future might even be brighter for Takealot, as they aim to achieve profits by next year. Nice one for the local e-commerce giant.
👨 Thanks dad. Ivan Saltzman, co-founder and former CEO of Dis-Chem, just gifted two of his sons ±R3.4 billion in Dis-Chem shares each as part of an ongoing generational shift within the company. Combined, the two brothers own more than a quarter of the company. Years of buying him a tie for Father’s Day are finally paying off…
🥴 YouTube thumbnail Hullabaloo. Mr Beast’s newly launched AI-powered thumbnail tool is rubbing fellow YouTubers the wrong way. The tool promises to create high-converting thumbnails by copying other channels’ visual style, and can even edit a different face into vid thumbs. LOL, all this after his 2021 tweet complaining about Russian YouTubers doing the same thing.
🚘 WeSell(BrandNew)Cars? Local used vehicle buyer and seller, WeBuyCars, is reportedly looking to expand its offering to include selling new cars. The platform sees around 30% of the people it buys from are looking to buy new vehicles once they’ve sold their old ones, so this could serve as a double whammy for those sellers. Very interesting moves…
🫠 BrainRotGPT. Scientists at MIT have been studying the effects of using ChatGPT on our brains, and it’s not looking good, fam. The team had 54 participants write 3 essays using either ChatGPT, a search engine or their own brains. The ChatGPT group showed significantly lower cognitive engagement. Obvs still early, but sheesh, hey.
✅ The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with the best in IP offshoring and global market access with Finance Isle of Man, all your VC and startup legal sorted by Dommisse Attorneys, and loads more vital startup tools & services.
FOUNDER’S CORNER
3 Things for Business Builders
Brought to you by Lula — Fast, simple business funding
Want to finish 2025 stronger than you started? Lula’s SME Reset webinar is happening this Wednesday at 11:00, where their CRO and CGO unpack the key economic and political trends shaping the year so far — and what smart businesses should do next. It’s a sharp hour of insights for any SME operator. Register here.
Scaling across Africa? develoPPP Ventures is back with EUR 100k (that’s R2 million) in catalytic funding, tailored advisory and one of the best delivery networks on the continent. It’s not just for SA – the program is also open to founders in Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya and more. If you're ready to raise and expand, this one’s worth a look. Apply here.
Visa’s Business Boost. Applications are open to female South African residents over 18 to take their business to the next level with Visa’s She’s Next programme. Winners can expect to walk away with their share of R1 million, an exclusive mentorship programme, and valuable business training to propel their business forward. Nice one — get those applications in by 30 July, ladies.
BUILDING TOGETHER
Happening over at The Founder Collab
27 June 12:00 — Business Value Masterclass: Come get the inside track on strategies to increase your business’s value, straight from the experts with Graham Stephen from bizval.
11 July 12:00 — Business Automation Masterclass: Come learn how to automate your entire business from day one with Theunis Duminy from the automation pros at Vertiqal.
25 July 12:00 — The Art of Execution Masterclass: Learn to bridge vision and reality by turning your strategy into results with 7 proven disciplines and a scalable leadership Ops System by Jason Goldberg, Art of Scale author and co-founder of Edge Growth.
Thinking about joining The Founder Collab?
Supercharge your network in the SA startup landscape — get that introduction, get that customer, or meet that partner.
Get feedback on your products, services and/or offers from others who have built and are building their own products right now.
Join all our online and in-person events for free!
Exclusive 1-on-1 sessions with startup consultants.
SA’s only dedicated tech startup and scale-up founder network.
WHAT YOU SAID
Double up…
Last Friday, we riddled you on a local veg-growth startup, and no one recognised Homefarm…
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨 🌱 GrowPod ZA (67%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌿 Homefarm (0)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌾 SmartPatch (13%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍃 UrbanThrive (20%)
And we also asked about your go-to way to get business done…
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💬 WhatsApp (44%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📱 Dedicated apps (26%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌐 The good old web (browser) (21%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📞 Phone calls (5%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤝 Face-to-face, the old-school way (5%)
Your 2 cents…
“Though I like being able to use one app for a variety of things, some app UI's are just more aesthetically pleasing.”
Defs, Msokih, nothing beats a great experience. 🎨🖌️
“Although I prefer F2F, clients prefer speed and convenience over, well almost everything... Good, Cheap and Fast — you can only pick two!”
Some things are just better face-to-face, for sure! 💎
“Prefer dedicated apps if the security is stringent, otherwise online banking (web).”
For sure. With app fatigue rising, there’s definitely something to be said for the easy access of web over apps, Leon. 👍
HOW DID WE DO?
How are you feeling about today’s Open Letter?
BEFORE YOU GO
Here are 3 Ways We Can Help You
Advertise or Partners — Engage {{active_subscriber_count}} South African professionals that read The Open Letter. Partner with us or run an ad campaign — Reply to this email to get started.
Grow with Content — Love The Open Letter? Want to build a newsletter just like that for your brand? Want to grow your brand with content? We can do it for you. Check out Stream.
Startup Community — Join 100+ SA founders in our SA startup founder community called The Founder Collab. Weekly online masterclasses, in-person and online meetups and a network like never before.
Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason
