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Good to play? Bet you wish you were one of fin advisory firm Deloitte’s 173k US workers — they each get $1’000 per year to spend on LEGO and Xbox games (around R17’800). Enough to buy that prized Millennium Falcon. BTW: If every Deloitte employee maxes out their “wellness subsidy”, it’s a staggering R3 billion per year. 😳

Instead of dreaming, though, you can build your own empire with today’s Fast-Five Friday — 5 things to know in startup, in 5 minutes. Let’s go…

We only really know fragments of parents’ stories… a few repeated memories shared around the dinner table and a handful of photos of those big life events. And that’s especially true for dads, who mostly communicate with nothing more than 👍.

So, with Father’s Day this Sunday (yes, you heard right), it might be the opportune time to start getting some of those stories from Dad or Grandpa down onto paper. And now there’s a platform that helps you do that in a fun and engaging way…

Learn About Me is a local startup’s platform that allows people to capture the stories that shaped them, in their own words, one question at a time. It provides 700+ questions and prompts across 13 themes, AI-assisted follow-up questions, and a downloadable storybook that becomes a keepsake for families to learn about a parent or grandparent.

Might be a good way to discover dad’s ideal gift – or become a great gift itself this Father’s Day Sunday.

Learn About Me Founder Omar Kinnear and over 100 other SA startup founders, operators and builders are in our startup founder community called The Founder Collab. Come join us today.

South Africans produce around 122 million tonnes of waste every year. And only about 10% gets recycled (or used for something else). Much of it thanks to the 90’000 waste reclaimers moving through the suburbs across SA on bin collection day, picking out salvageable items out of people’s bins.

Often regarded as a nuisance by homeowners, they actually make an impact: Back in 2014, they had saved municipalities anywhere between R309 million and R748 million. Wait, what?

Regenize is a local startup bringing recycling, reclaimers and the neighbourhoods they operate in closer together. By setting up decentralised recycling hubs serving up to 1’000 households, they formalise waste reclaimers by giving them uniforms, recycling tricycles, smartphones and professional training.

Effectively becoming a free recycling service – no wonder Regenize landed an undisclosed funding amount from E Squared Investments to help expand its network of decentralised recycling hubs.

There are few things as annoying as queuing. Especially when it’s for medication – you’re sick, in winter, at month end, when err’body else is either also sick, or refilling their chronic meds.

Local pharmacy giant Clicks is quietly rolling out its Quick Collect lockers: a smart, self-service system that lets customers skip the queue and grab their pre-packed meds.

Once your meds are ready, you get a one-time PIN on your phone. Swing past your local store (just over 50 of their stores offer this service), punch in your code, and your secure locker opens. 

It benefits their staff, too. With fewer patients in-store, they have more time to dispense healthcare advice to those who really need to see them.

And it looks like it’s built by local retail tech company Service Systems, who offer an array of optimisation solutions aimed at good ol brick n mortar.

Google Glass walked so Apple Vision Pro could ski straight into traffic (remember that oke who got arrested for wearing the Vision Pro while driving?)... For a while, being on the cutting edge of wearable tech meant sacrificing your dignity for a heads-up display.

But we’ve come a long way, friends: Even Realities G1 is what happens when AR glasses get a glow-up. They look like normal specs (that’s right, no cyborg lens, no headset halo), but glance up and boom: floating text, directions, live translations, even a teleprompter for your TED Talk moment.

Under the hood, they’ve got two micro-OLED projectors, custom-bonded lenses, and an adaptive optical system that beams a crisp floating dashboard into your line of sight. And they pair with your phone, charge in a sleek case and last more than a day on a single juice-up.

And, apparently, it’s safe to drop them from at least 2 metres, so…

The Rubik's Cube was invented back in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and architecture professor Ernő Rubik. Over the last 50 years, it’s become THE bestselling puzzle game and bestselling toy, with 500 million sold by Jan 2024.

Recently, a team of engineering students from Purdue University built a robot specifically to solve a Rubik’s cube faster than the blink of an eye. It’s called the Purdubik’s Cube (ha – original), and this robotic system solved a Rubik’s Cube in 0.103 seconds, a Guinness World Record for the “Fastest robot to solve a puzzle cube”, and 3x faster than the previous record.

For context, Max Park is the current (human) world record holder, solving a Rubik’s cube in 3.13 seconds. 

Looks like we’re getting closer and closer to solving it in negative time, like this conspiracy theorist suggests. There goes the Earth's mantle…

🧑‍🌾 AgriTech Growth. Local AgriTech startup Nile has raised a R200 million ($11.3 million) round led by the Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund, with co-investment from FMO and existing investor Platform Investment Partners also part of the round. The funding aims to accelerate Nile’s growth across Southern Africa. Nice one, team Nile.

📱Stadio Enters the Chat. Local private higher education group Stadio has just become the latest MVNO to launch in SA. Piggybacking off the MTN network, the network will be exclusively available to students and staff of Stadio to help cut connectivity costs. We love to see it…

🛵 Delivery Charges. SA’s first EV-only courier company, Xpress, has just launched to make overnight deliveries in Gauteng and surrounding areas, with Durban, Cape Town and Nelspruit coming soon. Delivery costs 99 rondt, with guaranteed next-day delivery if booked by 10AM. Pretty cool, man.

🖼️ Copy Paste. Generative AI platform Midjourney is in Disney and Universal’s line of legal fire for allegedly training its art-generating and -editing models on their content without permission. Here we go…

🍴Fine Dining. Two South African restaurants have made it onto The World’s Best Restaurants list. La Colombe and FYN, both in Cape Town, ranked 49th and 60th, respectively. Fancy.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with full-funnel tech performance marketing by Stream, 90% off your first 6 months’ accounting with Xero, plus loads more vital startup tools & services.

Next up in our members-only founder network — The Founder Collab.

13 June 12:00 — The Art of Strategy Masterclass: How high-growth founders think & win: Cut through complexity and create a scalable strategy for profitable growth with Jason Goldberg, Art of Scale author and co-founder of Edge Growth.

20 June 12:00 — Operationalising AI Masterclass: Learn how to deploy AI to power productivity across multiple layers of your business, with OfferZen’s VP of Product, Stephen van der Heijden.

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.

PLUS: When you join The Founder Collab get access to expert sessions, more than 100 SA founders to network with and weekly online and offline network engagements.

🧱 Product Manager @ PayU

💎 Technical Product Designer @ Jem

🧑‍💻 Intermediate Full Stack Laravel Developer @ GovERP

🎨 Senior UX/UI Designer (Contract) @ Pepperplane Design

📚 Executive Assistant @ Entrepreneurs Capital

💡 Junior Investor Community Manager @ Entrepreneurs Capital

🧩 Above The Line Strategist via Outsource-SA

🗺️ Product Engineer @ Jem

Hiring? Get in touch, and we will feature it here.

Only one of these South African startups is real.

On Tuesday, we asked what kind of surprise grocery bag buyer you are, and most people do it to help combat food wastage…

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 💸 The “Price first, questions later” bargain hunter (22%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🎲 The “What’s in the bag?!” thrill-seeker (18%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🌱 The responsible recycler fighting food waste one bag at a time (25%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍿 The “As long as it’s got snacks” pragmatist (13%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 📊 The spreadsheet meal planner trying to be spontaneous (22%)

Your 2 cents…

Awesome, Ntokozom — what price-comparison method do you use that works best for you? 🥫

Right and right, Jannie! All those little habits add up to a world of positive change. 🌍

Always smart, Massa. Do you have to go to many different places to get better prices, though? 💸