Hi there,

Feeling fowl? Some scientists have created an AI to help us talk to chickens. Ok, it’s not peer-reviewed yet, but they claim they can tell what your chickens are feeling with 80% accuracy.

In this Open Letter:

• Overflow: What’s reshaping developer recruitment.

• Bee drones, SA’s new bank & Neuralink human trials.

• Last chance: 1 Week left to win R2’500 worth of gold (for reals).

• Moving fast: Learning from other startups quickly.

• Preferred ISPs: The results are in…

TRENDING NOW

Reshaping Developer Recruitment

So, the CEO of Naspers and Prosus suddenly stepped down, and eyebrows are rocketing skyward. The scuttlebutt is that it's connected to their rather surprising 100% acquisition of Stack Overflow in 2021 for $1.8 billion. A weird deal considering Prosus has largely been wooing developing countries, but here they are, buying up something as Big Apple as it gets. Intriguing, huh?

But without hindsight, one could try and rationalise it.

The need for dev resources

We can sympathise with a group that owns so many tech companies in Africa trying to secure more developer resources. Africa has a severe software developer shortage – less than 700’000 across the continent (something we covered earlier in the year).

For perspective, India has 7 times as many software developers for roughly the same population count.

But, of course, a few months after purchasing Stack Overflow, it became one of AI’s biggest casualties...

Enter ChatGPT

This AI not only talks the talk but walks the walk. It can write code (albeit not flawlessly). The kicker? ChatGPT trained on Stack Overflow data.

So, the entire wealth of knowledge that Stack Overflow, shared and developed by a global community of millions, is now, essentially, embedded in the AI. Why post a question on a forum where you have to wait for a reply when AI can give you an accurate answer (albeit not 100% accurate 100% of the time) within seconds?

Ironically, Similarweb, another Prosus portfolio company, wrote a blog article back in March 2023 attributing the drop in Stack Overflow’s traffic to ChatGPT.

But there’s a silver lining

Speaking of AI and coding, will our robot friends replace us? Hardly.

Some developers are seeing a kind of technological symbiosis. Perhaps even a dev renaissance of sorts. See, according to GitHub Copilot (an AI code-writing companion for $19 a month), developers who use their AI product spend 74% of their time on more enjoyable work, 88% feel more productive, and 96% speed through repetitive tasks.

So, AI can and should be more of an assistant than a replacement.

OK, so why are we seeing tech layoffs and a hiring slowdown since late 2022?

Could it be the economy? Or is AI actually reducing the demand for software developers? Either way, things are changing and those in the space are already evolving with the times.

Local developer recruitment platform Offerzen, for instance, changed its hiring model to make hiring devs more attractive:

• Old fee – fixed per hire, 12.5% of the developer's annual salary, ouch!

• New fee – flat monthly fee of R10k for up to 5 devs, nice!

Prosus will release its financial results in six weeks. By then, we'll have a clearer picture of how their Stack Overflow play pans out. And, for those of you scrounging for top-notch developers, let's hope the treasure hunt gets easier soon.

OVER TO YOU

IN SHORT

🧠 Want brain Implants? Neuralink is now ready for human subjects for their PRIME (Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface) Study. The 6-year experiment is aimed at quadriplegic candidates due to spinal cord injury or ALS, with the view of giving them mental control over various devices.

🐝 Busy Little Bees. Worker bees in George and the Outeniqua mountains have been acting like little micro drones, collecting pollen from plants in the area as part of a pilot project for Belgian startup BeeOdiversity. The pollen which contains important plant DNA and data provides mega-valuable insights into the biodiversity of the area.

🐓 What the Cluck? Hold on to your hats chicken lovers. SA is heading for a chicken shortage due to loadshedding and bird flu currently doing the rounds. Perhaps if those Japanese scientists can crack the AI to help us translate what chickens are saying they can let farmers know if they’re feeling under the weather and can self-isolate.

🤷‍♂️ Google who? Despite still being the big Search dog, it looks like Google is in danger of having its lunch money taken by the likes of TikTok, Reddit and even Instagram as more and more users (including 40% of Gen Z’ers) turn to these platforms to search for answers to their most burning questions.

🏦 Another Place to Bank. The Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities (DWYPD) has applied to the South African Reserve Bank to launch a new cooperative bank to specifically advance the inclusion of women, youth and persons with disabilities and their businesses and other co-operatives

🟡 Digital Gold Rush. You can now buy and invest in Gold straight from your phone without worrying about moving and storing it securely. *This is a sponsored post.

Got Gold?

Share The Open Letter and you can win! We’re giving away R2’500 worth of gold, plus this cool merch from Troygold.

Now even outperforming stocks.

And all you gotta do to stand a chance of winning it all is 1, 2, 3, 4…

STEP 1: Click on this shiny button 👇
(The button opens a LinkedIn tab.)

STEP 2: Click “Share in a post” right under the Open Letter logo in that new tab.

STEP 3: Type a few words on what you think about The Open Letter, as a post to your followers.

STEP 4: Tag us: @TheOpenLetter and hit “post”.

Done, now you’re entered to get gilded.

THE THREAD

How to Learn from Others and Grow Fast

If you’re serious about building something unique, this week’s podcast is for you. We take the concept of learning from the successes and failures of other founders, introduced in our earlier letter on deconstructing startup success a little further.

All in a quick 30-minute podcast that shows you exactly how it’s done and what the benefits are…

The Juicy Bits

1. Speed up your “school fees” by studying other startups
   Few things school a founder faster than building a new product. You have to constantly learn and adapt to make it stick and work. But you can fast-track it even more by studying the models of successful and failed startups.
   
   “Go and unpack what they've already done because there are lessons inside there.” But don’t just copy-paste, try to understand why something was built in a certain way.
   
   "Understanding the 'why' really sparks ideas of how you could do stuff in your own product.” Get all the insights here.
   

2. Utilising customer interviews & behaviours
   Something we didn’t touch on so much in our post is the idea of deconstructing customer experiences. If you can get in front of a potential customer and ask them about instances when they needed a solution and couldn't find one, you can probe about their decision-making process directly afterwards. This helps identify gaps and opportunities for what the market needs and how you can potentially position an offering.

   This exercise is also useful for refining an existing product. Ideas like actually looking at other apps your customer would typically use before you interview them can give you a real edge – get more ideas here.
   

3. Marrying Tech with Ops to create your moat

   Going back to our previous post on Checkers Sixty60, which was kind of a deconstruction in itself, if you think about how Checkers managed to leverage their tech in tandem with in-store operations (unlike others, who keep store and online separate), that’s actually what enabled them to create such a unique offering. This makes it hard for others to compete in the space – it’s their “moat” if you will.
   
   So there’s definite room for founders to go and deconstruct their competitors now (or perhaps even other parts of Checkers itself) to find the gaps and build products that help solve for growth at a corporate with deep pockets – get the inside track here.

Or if podcast app is your vibe, catch them here:

Like our podcast? Remember to subscribe and never miss an episode.

THE RESULTS

Earlier this week, we asked what you used for broadband, and good-ole fibre’s taking the cake…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌧️ Rain (18%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇿🇦 Vodacom, Cell C, Telkom, MTN (16%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📱 I use my phone for internet at home (0)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ➰ Fibre (54%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⚡ Starlink (6%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💼 I’m reading this at the office (6%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥰 Got my neighbour's wifi password at braai once (0)

Your 2 cents…

Sorry, Stephanie, you’re totally right!

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