Sparkling health? A group of scientists found a gold-derived medication slows cancer tumour growth by 82% — way more effective than chemo. If this goes mainstream, who knows what will happen to the price of gold; might be a good time to go buy some TroyGold.

If you missed last week Friday, welcome to Fast-Five-Fridays. 5 startups, mostly local, all doing big things. Let’s go.

PS: Happy Black Friday — we got a special deal on The Open Collab membership. Get 40% off and 3 top SA startup books! Join now.

1. JUST LAUNCHED

New Life for Old Clothes

Fashion is cool. Until it’s not. Humans produce 100 billion garments a year (13 pieces of clothing for each of us on planet Earth). And 70% of it ends up in landfills.

Local re-commerce platform Thrif wants to help online shoppers think “buy secondhand first” by bringing quality-checked, affordably-priced (50—70% off), sustainable secondhand clothing (including a bunch of major brands) right to your phone — no need for dodgy Facebook Marketplace meets.

It’s early days for them, but they are making great progress and you can already pick up some great bargains here.

Check out Thrif’s elevator pitch…

theopenletterza

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PS: Thrif Founders Micaela and Nick are part of The Open Collab along with 68 other SA founders – keep reading for more on this community.

2. AN INTERESTING STARTUP NOT FROM SA

No More Weird Voiceover Sitcoms

If you’ve ever watched Money Heist on Netflix, (which you should btw), you would’ve noticed that it wasn’t originally filmed in English. Yep, this hit show that’s been one of the streaming giants’ biggest shows of all time with 3 of its Parts (seasons) in the Top 10 Most Popular Non-English TV shows, was originally filmed in Spanish.

Case in point to prove that there is money to be made in repurposing localised content for other audiences. Enter Flawless AI, which has built a tool to translate videos in a way that makes the lips of actors sync better with the sound.

And with Netflix (and others) continuing to invest in the development of localised content, this could be the kind of tool that makes it even more viable!

And with Netflix (and others) continuing to invest in the development of localised content, this could be the kind of tool that makes it even more viable!

3. REACHING FOR SCALE

Empowering the Peeps that Help You Succeed

By the end of 2026, corporates around the world are set to spend nearly $100 billion on corporate wellness solutions to boost productivity, reduce absenteeism, lower healthcare costs, and create a healthier, happier, and more engaged workforce.

Locally, Strove an employee well-being and engagement platform is building a solution that offers employers the ability to provide health and well-being support for their employees including 

• physical activity tracking

• mental well-being resources

• nutritional health support

• health reports and insights

And those participating can claim employee rewards from 4’000+ rewards partners.

It’s a positive-behaviour-reinforcement platform and Startup Club ZA’s 2024 Startup of the Year HealthTech winner.

4. WHERE ARE THEY NOW

The ZA Stablecoin

A year ago we shared the story of the riches in stablecoins and how local startup ZARP is trying to capitalise on the rise of these tokens.

Stablecoins that work are big businesses: USDT’s market cap is $133bn, making $1.3bn quarterly profit (Q2 2024) with only 100-odd employees.

The concept is pretty straightforward. For various reasons, people doing trading and other activities on blockchains want to be able to swap in a “stable currency” such as the US Dollar without having to exit the ecosystem. So in comes USDT, a crypto token that is pegged to the US Dollar.

How is it made? Well, people deposit real US Dollars in exchange for tokens and Tether (the company behind USDT) then uses the real US Dollar to buy US government bonds that give yields of a few %.

Owners of USDT can at any point exchange their USDT for real US dollars, but here is the thing… no one really does. Leaving USDT with $118m+ in reserves just sitting there earning interest on those US government bonds.

Local stablecoin ZARP is still going strong and has seen usage of their token increase, and so has the total amount of ZARP created. Should there be mainstream adoption of a ZAR-backed stable coin, these guys will be ready.

5. ON THE PODCAST

Free Wifi on the Way to Work

SA’s 15 million daily minibus taxi commuters spend on average 126 minutes travelling to work, school and such daily – that’s nearly 16 million hours per day!

Imagine if we could get them all free internet while they travel. Yeah, we could fund it through brands paying to tap directly into an audience in a host of different ways, rewarding them for reading the news, playing a game, or even completing a survey… 

Well, that’s what the team at Sebenza is building: An intuitive, gamified platform that brings content, brands, products, and connectivity together in a single digital ecosystem that connects and rewards commuters in over 8’000 taxis across SA.

We had Sebenza co-founders, Wesley Dorning and Calvin Le Mottee, on the latest episode of the pod (yes, it’s back after a short hiatus!). See how they’re building it, the unique challenges they had to overcome and get some powerful insights into building in this exciting space…

BLACK FRIDAY!

Get 68+ Founders to Help You Build

Startup can become a lonely game and it’s easy to get stuck…

But when you surround yourself with others who’re also building businesses, you unlock a certain kind of magic you can’t get anywhere else… insights, ideas, honest people to bounce off of, trustworthy pilot testers, valuable connections, key introductions and maybe even a partner or two.

We know, that’s why we started The Open Collab (TOC) a few months ago to give founders a space to support each other.

And does it work? Dunno, you tell us…

And we’d love for you to join in, so we’re doing that Black Friday thang and giving you 40% off a year’s subscription, plus the first 10 signups get a bonus gift of 3 of the most must-read SA startup books right now.

That’s right, Stalking Giants, Life Lessons and The First Kudu absolutely free for the first ten people to take up the offer — they’re all must-reads for any SA founder and just in time for December.

IN SHORT

Well, well, lookie here…

📰 Funding Local News. A new R114 million fund to support the digital transformation of small, independent SA news publishers is in the works. The Digital News Transformation Fund (DNT Fund) is a partnership between The Association of Independent Publishers (AIP) and Google and will be administered independently by Tshikululu Social Investments.

🌿 Vine Connections. On Wednesday 4 December, The Stellenbosch Network and The Open Letter are hosting a business speed networking jam with lekker snacks and drinks at the University’s Botanical Gardens to help startups connect more with people in other business sectors and vice versa – B2B networking with established players, anyone?

📺 Memory Lane. SA’s first TV museum, the Tevolution Museum, was just launched in Cape Town by Hisense SA, The Western Cape Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport, and the SA Sendinggestig Museum. Visitors can see everything from a nostalgia-giving wooden box TV, right the way through to the R400k Hisense 110-inch UX TV built at its Atlantis factory.

🌍 African AI. OpenAI, Meta, and French telecom Orange are working on a collaborative project that’ll see them training AI programs on thousands of African dialects spoken on the continent to address the shortage of African language models. The project will kick off in the first half of next year, focusing on two West African languages, Wolof and Pulaar.

🇿🇦 Flying High. SA’s state airline South African Airways is showing signs of a turnaround with its recent announcement of profits to the tune of R252 million for the first time since 2012. And it seems like some of the banks are taking notice, with some already approaching the SOE to fund its route expansion plans.

🎯 Founder Focus. Every year, more than half of entrepreneurs put their company’s future at risk by failing to take a proper break over the holidays. Our friends at Metavolve are hosting a free, hands-on 2-hour workshop on 11 December with practical steps to end off 2024 in a way that allows you to recharge over Christmas so that you can come back on fire and ready to dominate again in January – register here.

JOBS IN TECH

Makin’ Moves O’Clock?

Retail Product Manager at Superbalist

Senior Dev (2x roles) at KHULA!

UI/UX Manager at Derivco

Talent Advisor at OfferZen

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

GAME TIME

Been paying attention??

We love the South African non-fiction category, particularly books about startups. So it's quiz time…Pick the correct answer, and you could win a copy of Alan Knott-Craig’s book!

WHAT YOU SAID

Time applies…

We asked what’s worth the effort of a credit application, and it’s just the big stuff…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🏡 Property and cars only. (57%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📱 Maybe the odd credit card or phone contract. (20%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛍️ Everything! Clothing accounts, furniture – never pay cash for anything. (3%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧔 Nothing, I will remain credit-free, forever! (9%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🦄 Mainly lines of credit for my business – gotta keep growing. (11%)

In case you missed it, on Tuesday, we took a deep dive into startups democratising your financial data.