Good catch? If you enjoyed SpaceX’s history-making rocket launch-and-catch manoeuvre this weekend, why not try it yourself? Test your skills at their official land your starship game.

In this Open Letter:

• Game changer: The startup that’s ending traffic jams, for good.

• Starlink Kenya turns 1, Google power & SA gaming on the map.

• Technical precision: 5 Steps to increase chances of success.

• The future of electric vehicles in SA: The results are in.

• This lonely startup game: Join The Open Collab and get support.

Together with:

TRENDING NOW

Saving SA’s 11 Million Drivers’ Daily Sanity

There are a few things as frustrating as being stuck in traffic…

Aside from the usual peak morning and afternoon slow-moving traffic, and getting caught up behind an accident or bumper bashing – thanks, rubberneckers – another leading cause for traffic is the good old faulty South African “robot” (traffic lights/signals for our international readers).

Look, Robots everywhere…

South Africa has a pretty extensive road network that requires a lot of robots to keep traffic flowing — about 1’500 and 2’000-plus in larger metropoles like JHB, Durban and Cape Town. And maintaining them isn't easy:

• First, the municipality relies on responsible citizens to report it – either via call centre or e-portal.

• Then, a technician must be allocated and head over to the intersection to assess and determine the fault type.

• Then plug into the robot to turn it off and on again to see if that works.  

Getting stuck in traffic is costly business…

According to TomTom’s 2023 Traffic Index, it takes South Africans between 13.5 and 16 minutes to travel 10km at an average speed of just over 30km/h during rush hour. 

Living in Pretoria, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Durban, or Johannesburg, that means you’ll lose between 43 and 49 hours to rush hour this year… 

Considering the 11 million+ cars on the road, think about the stress, economic impact, and CO2 emissions for each vehicle – and the relief shaving off even a handful of minutes each way, per day could bring…

Unjamming SA’s roads

Local AI R&D company Bytefuse is tackling SA’s traffic jams head-on with an AI system to optimise a robot’s timing, reduce congestion, and improve traffic management called Quebit.

Quebit takes sensor data from a specific intersection’s robot using edge computing modules installed at intersections, to process real-time data and adjust signal timing optimising traffic flow through the intersection. Think cameras and other smart sensors detecting traffic from different directions, feeding the data into AI models to adjust the timing of lights in real time. It’s basically a robot, a robot.

Quebit also allows traffic engineers to receive the data from the module, pick up if there is an issue, troubleshoot and even reboot the traffic light remotely – without leaving the office or breaking a sweat.

Finally, it also allows traffic departments to remotely adjust timings during events with high traffic volumes, such as funerals, sports matches, or music concerts at stadiums. Replacing the current expensive mode of going out to reprogram the light for a specific date and time which is both costly and labour-intensive.

Quebit is currently piloting in Stellenbosch and early indications show double-digit improvements in traffic flow. And with case studies like these, it could start rolling out to more municipalities in the future, and become your favourite solution you’ve never even heard of (unless you read The Open Letter).

We’re watching this space… 

IN SHORT

Have Something Fun to Say at the Staff Social…

🛰️ Kenya believe it? 12 months after launching in Kenya, Starlink has more than 8’000 subscribers, making it the 10th biggest internet service provider in Kenya. And while the numbers might still seem small the satellite internet services provider is poised for growth, with the last year considered as one of the fastest expansions for an ISP in Kenya.

🎮 Game face. SA’s gaming industry is set to receive a boost with the establishment of the AfriGames Consortium. Funded through the National Treasury’s Jobs Fund, EOH, and ABSA, the consortium has already secured R25.8 million to put SA gaming on the map.

🚀 Gear up with Google. Applications are now open for the next cohort of the Google for Startups Accelerator: Africa,  Google’s three-month hybrid accelerator program specifically aimed at Black-led technology startups in South Africa who are between the Seed and Series A stages.

💰 Funding Growth. Endeavor SA's Harvest Fund III has achieved its first close at R190 million, aiming to boost tech-related companies across Africa. Major investors include Standard Bank, Allan Gray, and the SA SME Fund, with plans to invest in a select pipeline of 135 companies, focusing mainly on southern Africa.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with super-easy local and international payment processing with WigWag, expert offshoring, company structure and legal advice from Dommisse Attorneys and 11 more vital startup tools & services.

BUILDER’S CORNER

5 Steps to Greatly Increase Your Product’s Chances of Success

By reversing what you think you know about building products

Written in conjunction with Heinrich De Lange of Octoco.

This past weekend, SpaceX made history (again)...

After 67 years of everyone “knowing for a fact” that the only way to get to space is to sacrifice your ($millions) booster rockets and let them burn up in the atmosphere, SpaceX challenged that notion…

And basically detached a booster and caught it again back on Earth to refuel and blast the next one within 60 minutes – an important requirement in the mission to occupy Mars.

It’s more than cool viewing, though. This simple feat of engineering will save hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted booster rockets by making them reusable in the future.

And this level of ingenuity is not reserved for space engineering or billionaires with R&D teams – you can use the same publicly available principles Elon and the SpaceX team use right now for software, hardware or any venture you can think of, with the Octoco interpretation.

It all comes down to 5 steps…

See, when most builders start engaging with an idea, we tend to develop a rough requirements list for how this thing could maybe work and then start building out on those initial assumptions.

The wrong way: Stop us when this starts to sound familiar:

1. You start looking for ways to automate most of the processes in your initial idea.

2. Then, you realise how taxing it is, so you try to speed up parts of it.

3. But it’s not enough, so you go back and try to simplify it a bit.

4. Still too long/slow/difficult? Try delete some parts of the process.

5. You realise that 90% of the things you thought you had to do were unnecessary – you were wasting time and money all along. And, by this time, your company’s probably failing.

Psst… it’s because you’re doing it the wrong way around…

The Right 5 Steps (in the Right Order)

1. Assume All Your Requirements Are Wrong

Musk uses the word “dumb” instead of wrong. And the lesson comes from the Tesla factory…

After a lot of wasted time and resources trying to solve a problem with fire insulation between specific components, Musk discovered that the insulation wasn’t even necessary – it had been “dreamt up” as a requirement early on by someone and accidentally included in the formal process.

The core of this step is to include info such as Who added a requirement (name of person) and their Why (reasoning) for it so that you can think critically about every product requirement. Use the ABC model to interrogate every requirement: Assume nothing, Be curious and Confirm the important (make sure you understand why it’s there).

This lets you interrogate each product requirement and try to see if it is really necessary. By eliminating as much wastage early on, you make your requirements “less dumb” and much lighter.

2. Delete Parts of the Process

Be ruthless and remove as many parts of your process as possible that let it still work.

See, our brains are naturally cautious; we try to be smart and pre-empt things. But that’s how you end up with overly complex systems (see point 1).

The rule of thumb is: If you’re not spending at least 10% of your time adding deleted parts back into the system (because it turns out they were actually needed), you’re not deleting enough parts.

3. Simplify and Optimise Design

If you’ve done steps 1 and 2 well, you will have removed as many non-critical parts as possible.

A vital move, because most people trip themselves up by wasting time optimising things that shouldn’t even be there. So if you’ve nailed 1 and 2, you should be able to laser-focus on stuff that matters by now.

4. Speed Up Cycle Time

Notice how we haven’t iterated on anything yet until now? Yeah, that’s the point: If you speed up things that shouldn’t be there, you just dig your grave faster.

Speed is important, though. Musk found bureaucracy can account for 35% of production delays – you’ll want to focus on eliminating those.

If you’ve done 1–3 well, the things you speed up will be only what’s necessary.

5. Go Ahead & Automate

Same here. If you’ve done them all well, and they work as expected, then (and only then) start automating for scale.

Crucially, though, automation comes last.

This process can often feel uncomfortable at first as it forces you to venture into the unknown, but after executing it successfully a few times, it starts to feel natural (which, in part, could explain Elon’s companies’ exponential success). 

If you want to avoid some of the pain and pitfalls when taking this approach, speak to the guys at Octoco about getting it done right. They have applied these principles to building technology for Henlo Coffee, LeaseSurrance, Intelligent Safe and more.

HAPPENING SOON

Upcoming Events

18 October 2024 — Digital Chat Roulette: It’s like startup speed dating, but you don’t have to leave the house/office — The Open Collab community exclusive.

25 October 2024 — Online Masterclass: SA’s very own “product legend” Roger Norton is here for the first in a three-part product building series — The Open Collab community exclusive.

1 November 2024 — Online Masterclass: Keep your B2B sales pipe filled Masterclass session with sales expert, Sebastian Chapman — The Open Collab community exclusive.

8 November 2024 — Online Masterclass: Part 2: How to keep shipping truly great products, fast — The Open Collab community exclusive.

18 November 2024 — Cape Town: In-person: Building SA’s most-used digital products — tickets available soon.

View all our upcoming events here.

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last 48 hours alone, in our online community, we…

• Got our Chat Roulette invites 👯.

• Enjoyed last week’s Alan Knott-Craig interview so much, we voted unanimously to invite him back for a members-only live AMA session.

• Discovered that Riverside recording tech is 💩.

• Laughed/cringed/cried at former FTX co-CEO’s going to prison LinkedIn update.

• Enjoyed SpaceX’s historical 5th Starship flight test, courtesy of Enrico.

• Welcomed some new members! (It’s a vibe).

Coming Up Next Week

• Wednesday 10-11: Office Hours, where we all log in and work together, + the whole Open Letter team is at members’ disposal.

• New: Free monthly startup strategy calls for all Open Collab members.

• Support: All day, every day: unlimited introductions, recruitment, service provider referrals and business-building insights.

FOR THE MEMES

We Bring-a da Spice

Got some startup memes? Send them our way or tag us on socials.

WHAT YOU SAID

Better Electric

We asked about the future of SA’s EV industry, and e-taxis are the way…

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ e-Scooters ⁠🛵 (27%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⁠⁠e-Taxis 🚐 (39%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⁠e-Trucks 🚚 (17%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ E-Lon’s passenger cars 🚗 (15%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ e-Ships 🚢 (2%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ e-Planes ✈️ (0)

Your 2 cents…

Oh definitely, Jason. You think oh it’s just another transport guy and then Justin comes in and 🤯

Indeed, William, it’ll be incredible to see what we can do in that space. 🚀