Best in SA? Startup Club has made its 44 finalists public for SA Startup of the Year. There are quite a few Open Letter family members there. You can now vote for your friends and favourites — voting is open until Friday.

In this Open Letter:

• SA’s latest R1bn exit: The startup that makes businesses smarter.

• 5M Mzansi hotspots, Woolies’ Dash(ing) results & SA slacking off.

• Go with a bang: Fill your B2B sales pipeline for 2025.

• Which games you like to play: The results are in.

• Lonely building your startup? Join The Open Collab and get support.

Together with:

TRENDING NOW

Helping Business Make Better Decisions (Faster)

— Insights from the startup that lead to SA’s latest R1bn+ exit

Having your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in your business is mega important…

For many businesses, keeping finances up to date is mostly a compliance thing. But what if your financials could empower you to make better business decisions quickly?

A major pain for many founders is that management accounts normally only tell part of the story, and what’s more, not everyone in leadership has a background in finance. 

The data guiding your business's decisions…

Companies have anywhere between 5 and 20+ data sources meant to inform decisions, dictate next steps, and determine if business objectives have been met…

Pretty simple, right?

Not so much.

Seems like in this rich world of data at every turn, businesses have developed a brand new thing to be worried about: data fatigue…

And it’s a real thing. 

Data fatigue occurs when a business or individual has too much data or doesn't know what to focus on and is overwhelmed by the complexity or sheer volume of data a business collects, processes, analyses, or reports on.

And when the data quality is poor it has all sorts of ramifications on decision-making, reputational risk, and missed opportunity – not to mention the 10 to 30% of revenue spent on handling data quality issues.

Eina…

What’s more, in a recent survey of 1’300 finance and accounting C-suite and senior leaders across North America, Europe, Aus, and Singapore, 40% of CFOs reported they do not completely trust their organisation’s financial data. And ONLY 2% expressed complete confidence… 

Simply put, we have too much data that makes us go, “So what?”

The local player turning your financial data into pretty pictures (and actionable insights)

When Vangelis Kyriazis was building his accounting firm in JHB back in 2016, he wanted to offer his clients reports that made sense rather than reports showing profits and loss and a balance sheet.

To do this, they went to great lengths to build their clients’ very time-consuming Excel documents with rich graphs and insights. Clients loved it, but it wasn’t scaling well.

But turns out this was the start of Syft Analytics, an interactive & collaborative financial reporting tool providing businesses with insights into their accounting data to help them make better decisions.

8 years after launch, and this isn’t just a local business anymore. Syft has managed to sign up more than 100’000 businesses from more than 80 countries and that’s when Xero took note and purchased Syft for a whopping $70 million in September this year. 

What’s it do?

Syft integrates with Xero and others to extract data and make it simpler for a non-accountant business owner to understand using visualisations and summaries which can be presented in either pre-built report templates or fully customisable reports that provide real-time financial analysis catered to your specific business needs.

And if we consider that the human brain processes images 60’000 times faster than text, generating business reports and insights into cool-looking, insightful visuals is a no-brainer…

But the product really flexes when it provides businesses with forward-looking projections & forecasts, combining data from other 3rd party non-financial data sources like your CRM, and Google Analytics, etc.

As with most SaaS products these days, AI gave it a real boost. Users can ask AI how to improve certain things, and because Syft has access to more data like the underlying transactional data and data from other sources it helps the AI better answer those questions.

And Syft’s comprehensive visual dashboards are live and fully interactive, so even Beryll in HR can take a look without messing anything up – no offence, Beryll…

Businesses aren't going anywhere soon and reporting and visualisation tools will become ever more important in staying competitive. But if anything, the team at Syft have proven once again that SA can build tech that scales well across the world.

We’re watching this space.

CHECK THIS OUT

Start Building Your B2B Sales Pipeline for 2025

The key to closing more B2B sales is building authority and trust.

When Forrester Research found earlier in 2024 that B2B buyers are twice as likely to recommend companies they trust, their chief analyst Ian Bruce said it’s because they’re buying on behalf of the organisation, so they want to be double and triple sure you can deliver.

The New York Times goes a step further to say that Edelman and LinkedIn data shows that 54% of companies make purchasing decisions based on your thought leadership content.

Why?

• When you reach out, it helps if they already know you (ice cold sucks).

• It reinforces their trust and belief that you have authority in the space.

And, of course, it’s not easy: It takes time, dedication and consistency to build, but here’s how you can start…

Step 1: Establish trust & authority with content creation

Develop a content engine of consistent, rapidly written, high-quality content that’s on-brand, positions your product and speaks to customers’ pain points.

Step 2: Disseminate content online

Through social media with highly authoritative, efficient and automated ghostwriting for founders and execs.

Step 3: Engage in targeted outreach

Using tools like Apollo, reach out strategically to engaged targets who’ve come to know you already through your content and build high-quality leads for your funnel.

Stream has launched a 6-month, fully automated authority and trust pipeline for B2B SaaS founders and executives who know they have a product-market fit and are looking to solidify their positions in their space.

IN SHORT

The latest SA and tech gossip…

🤳 Connecting Mzansi. A local consortium of Internet Service Providers called JUMP launched its WayaMore WiFi network which is on a mission to build 5 million hotspots around SA and have a fully operational network by 2030.

🌍 Funding Africa. Visa is investing in 4 African Startups that graduated from its Africa Fintech Accelerator programme. The startups include: Oze, a business banking platform from Ghana, Orda, a restaurant technology startup from Nigeria, WorkPay, an HR and payroll management firm, and OkHi an AI-powered address verification service, both from Kenya.

🏖️ World Champion Slackers? Turns out we’re not such hard workers after all… According to data from the International Labour Organisation, SA ranked 79th in terms of average weekly hours (42.6 hours), percentage of the population working excessive hours (17%), and only produces 21 International dollars (Int$) per hour, 7 times lower than winners Luxembourg.

🛵 Dashing Results. Woolworths has seen some great performances across various business divisions for the 18-week period ending on 3 November 2024 with a 54.4% sales growth for its Woolies Dash on-demand food delivery service leading the charge.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with next-level lead finding with Apollo, your own CTO for remarkable tech builds with Octoco and 12 more vital startup tools & services.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last few days alone, in our online community, we…

• Discussed how to get going with a SaaS product with zero funding.

• Attended another stellar product masterclass with Roger Norton.

• Supported each other in the SA Startup Awards.

• Celebrated BTC all-time highs 🤑.

• Celebrated some success after the sales masterclass.

• Helped Sebastian find an online payment solution.

• Delved into WhatsApp-based commerce solutions for SA.

Thinking about joining The Open 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 community.

HAPPENING SOON

Upcoming Events

14 November 2024 — TechSafari is coming to Cape Town! Join Caleb and team for a memorable night at Yoco to talk all things Tech and Startup in Africa. Get tickets here. Use OL20% code to get a sweet 20% off!

14 November 2024 — OCFO is hosting their 2024 Founder’s Conference with over 200 entrepreneurs and investors present. Get your tickets here.

12-14 November 2024 — Cape Town: Africa Tech Festival: Including AI Summit and so many tech must-sees — remember you can get a limited free pass, or get access to everything by applying for a startup pass early.

15 November 2024 — Sales Masterclass: Part 2: How to spot opportunities to increase conversion rates — Join The Open Collab community to attend for free.

6 December 2024 — AMA with Alan Knott-Craig: After our LinkedIn Live with Allan, you voted to an Ask Me Anything session — Join The Open Collab community to attend for free.

View all our upcoming events here.

WHAT YOU SAID

Game on…

We asked about your go-to game, and, as expected, SA’s not that into mobile gaming…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧱 Puzzle games (30%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎰 Casino games (10%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏌️‍♂️ Sports games (3%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔫 Battle Royale games like PUBG and Fortnite (5%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🙅‍♀️ I don't play mobile games (52%)

Your 2 cents…

Classic, DJK. Nothing like getting into desktop games 🎮.

Smart move, M. All the fun, none of the risk 🃏.