Great outdoors? You got solar for your home, now how bout a high-tech solar hat to keep your phone and devices charged wherever you go… Noice.

In this Open Letter:

• Little-big solutions: Giving 21M+ parents a helping hand.

• Toasters on demand, breaking an e-sweat & Woolies’ solar power play.

• Engage: Your chance to learn from an SA startup royalty!

• The worst thing the internet gave us: The results are in.

• Grab yours: Share this and get 100+ SA business ideas.

TRENDING NOW

Helping 21+ Million Parents Save the Day

Ask any parent and they will tell you: having kids is expensive... 

In the US, the cost of raising a child is an estimated $313k (±R5.6m). Sure, things are more pricey in the USA, so adjusted using the Big Mac index, that’s roughly R1,85 million to get them from birth to employment (excluding tertiary education).

Tough on parents, but this also means that, for every child born, it contributes that much to the GDP over the next 18 years. And with 1.2 million babies born in SA every year, it's safe to say that children growing up has a great impact on economies around the world. (Not to mention the tax revenue and contribution to the workforce once they reach 18). 

That’s why many people are concerned about declining birth rates globally.

Birth rates worldwide have declined by almost 54% since the 1950s and the UN estimates it’ll drop by another 34% by 2050.

In SA, the amount of babies being born per year has been consistent, but with population growth that actually means our birth rate is coming down. We are currently sitting around 18.8 births per 1’000 people (a 56% drop from 1950). 

The cost of having children, changes in the modern workplace resulting in more women being involved, urbanisation and other factors play major roles in declining birth rates. 

But one often-overlooked reason is just how difficult and taxing it can be to raise a little one in our modern, busy lifestyles.

Diagnosing issues quicker, and doing the right things that lead to healthy development – all while trying to not lose your mind — is something most modern parents battle with.

Make it all make sense

Parent Sense is a science-backed mobile app that features real-world advice about your baby’s sleep, health, play, and nutrition, tailored specifically for your baby, to make parenting through different life stages a little bit easier…

Pregnancy: The journey starts during pregnancy, where Parent Sense walks the journey with an expecting mother explaining what’s happening, normalising some of the changes taking place and helping identify potential issues.

0–3 Months: The app uses the data moms enter to provide guidelines around sleep, feeding, and general health.

3–6 Months: As the baby gets older, the app navigates topics like improving a baby’s sleep, when and how to start with solid food, and how to deal with regression (that fun thing babies sometimes do: sleep poorly).

6–9 Months: Tips and tricks on how to fast-track your baby’s developmental leaps through play, as well as recipes and shopping lists for your little-big eater.

9–12 Months: As your baby approaches toddlerhood, Parent Sense is right there with advice on all the key things for their next developmental milestones.

And it’s quite a unique business. With roughly 140k potential new customers per year and a customer lifetime of at least 12-odd months (a baby’s first year) all the way up to 5 years, founder Meg Faure explains how they made it work on the latest episode of our Podcast 'How Would You Build It'.

Highlights from our podcast with Meg include:

• Why B2C is hard and how they’re making it work in South Africa.

• How being a subject matter expert helped her win.

• Building authority through content opened doors that were otherwise not possible.

IN SHORT

🛵 On-Demand Toasters. Massmart’s Game now lets customers shop for electronics and small appliances from its 51 stores via the Uber Eats app. Game has also integrated 23 of its stores into the on-demand delivery app OneCart.

👨‍💻 Coding For Madiba. More than 32’000 youth from Africa and Asia have participated in this year’s #Coding4Mandela tournament, with 70 teams heading to the national finals in September.

🎮 Breaking an Esweat. Fancy winning Olympic gold but couldn’t be bothered to train 12 hours a day? You’re in luck. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) have decided to create the Olympic Esports Games, with the first competition to take place in Saudi Arabia in 2025.

☀️ Solar Power Play. SA retailer Woolworths is upping its renewable energy project investments with more than R10 million in solar installations, and just over R7 million per annum in other renewable energy projects.

🏃‍♂️ Discovering Vitality. Discovery is planning to merge 2 of its 3 separate businesses Discovery South Africa, Vitality UK (VUK) and Vitality Global (VG) into a single global entity, Vitality.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with easy no-code automation with Make, your own CFO for a fraction of the cost with OCFO and loads more.

CHECK THIS OUT

Work more on the things that matter

A scaling business normally equals chaos. Staffing, operations, clients, finance and more all need attention and all seem equally important. But what if they aren’t?

Metavolve’s Scale programme has helped agriBORA double their customers with only a 25% increase in employees – in just 4 months.

If you want to grow with a mission, sign up for the Metavolve scale program and start focusing on the stuff that matters most!

Want to learn more about Metavolve’s framework that has helped more than 100 founders and business leaders develop sustainable scaling strategies? 

Click here to book your free 1-hour strategy session.

Engage SA’s Most Vibrant Startup Community

Want to unlock valuable opportunities on tap?

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

• Helped Natasha walk into her product meeting with a 🔥 new idea

• Gave Richard an idea to potentially repackage a feature for other industries

Oh, and, of course, we had the most awesome event in Stellenbosch…

It was fantastic meeting so many of you in person at our first event. Look out Cape Town, we’re bringing the vibes your way in a few weeks.

But first…

We want to give you the chance to learn from SA startup royalty, so we’ve put together a very special online AMA opportunity.

Let’s put it this way… Would you like to learn a few business tricks from the co-founder of SnapScan, JourneyApps and Offerzen?

Well, great! Because that’s exactly who we’ve organised for an online Ask Me Anything (AMA) session next week on Friday (16 August) at 12:00 sharp.

Just one catch. This one’s only for our Open Letter Pro members.

What You Said…

We asked what about your pet internet peeve, and would you believe ads win out…?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📢 Ads (42%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 🍪 Cookie consent popups (40%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📰 MSM amplifying its lies/truths (16%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🗳 Politicians succeeding in getting the left on Threads and right on X (0)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎙️ RickRoll (2%)

Your 2 cents…

Ha ha, yes, Ayuballie, sometimes it’s like those cookie consents are an anti-UX conspiracy.

You’re so right, Jason. And our favourite investigative reporters just did a very insightful deep-dive on this very topic. 😉