🚦 Get Those Cars Back on The Road…

Hi there,

Excess heat? See how this spa warms its pools with BTC mining. They claim they don’t even want to profit from it, it’s just a fancy way of keeping things steamy (and attracting BTC bros to visit of course).

In this Open Letter:

• Fleet innovation: Hidden opportunities in claims processing.

• GPT-5, space drones & who will and won’t be on Vision Pro.

• People power: Building the ultimate startup team.

• Your drinks of choice: The results are in.

• Free stuff: Share this and get cool business tools.

TRENDING NOW

Opportunities in Speeding Up Vehicle Claims

Remember when they said South Africans are among the worst drivers in the world? 

Reports show we have around 1 million accidents per year, and a lot of them are fatal – 44.8 people out of every 100’000 South African citizens die in road accidents. 

And it’s all thanks to a dangerous mix of speeding, alcohol use, unroadworthy vehicles, illegal drivers and poorly maintained roads, of course.

Let’s face it, folks, every time you pull out of your driveway, you’re practically heading out onto The Fury Road.

Now imagine your business depends on road travel

We showed in the past how hard all this is on SA’s taxi industry, but take a moment to imagine what it must be like for anyone operating a commercial fleet (think logistics, taxis, Ubers, buses).

If one of your fleet is in an accident serious enough to warrant repair time, the costs can escalate quickly – those in the know say that the total amount of hidden costs and lost revenue in an accident can be ten times the repairs, insurance and injury costs.

No wonder we need so much insurance, right?

Ah, but therein lies another point altogether…

The time it takes to process a claim

Insurers have quite a robust claims management process – and it can be time-consuming (bad news if you’re a fleet manager who’s losing money every second that vehicle’s off the road).

Typically the steps involved in processing a claim are:

1. Put in a claim

2. Get quotes for repairs

3. The insurer sources an assessor and assigns them to the case

4. Find a suitable time to inspect (when both you and the assessor are available)

5. Approve quotes

6. Payment flow

7. Order parts

8. Wait for parts

9. Repairs get done

How long does this take? Well, it depends on whom you ask. The insurers themselves, like Discovery, will say it takes only a few days. But that’s just their internal processing time, not taking into account the accessor’s time, actual repair time, parts order time – and the delays in these processes that result from when they actually make the money available to the repairer.

In reality, you’re looking at weeks – sometimes as much as 1 to 6 weeks. (In the US, for example, the average actual time is around 3 weeks.)

That’s a lot of lost revenue for commercial operators.

Now, imagine if you can create and offer a product or service (or the entire workflow suite) that shortens any of these steps by a meaningful amount of time. Do it well, and you’re in business. 

AI might make it easier than ever

For example, Carscan. This local AI-powered Augmented Reality app helps capture accurate conditions of vehicles, detect damages and generate competitive quotes from a network of repair workshops to fix the damages — probably cutting time to get insurance payouts by days.

And despite only being a couple of years old, they’re already operating in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, India, and the Middle East and raised a cool R20 mill in early 2022. And it will keep getting better. With a database of over 2 million vehicle images in various conditions, Carscan’s AI trains itself to identify issues with high accuracy.

Of course, that’s just one element (the assessment part) of the workflow. There are likely many awesome tech startup opportunities up and down this claims workflow. We are watching this space.

IN SHORT

☀️ Charge Up Off-Grid. SA’s first Eskom-free electric car charging station is set to launch by June 2024. Zero Carbon Charge started building its first fully off-grid EV charging station in November 2023 and aims to have 120 of these sites (including a charging station, farm stall, parking area, restrooms and botanical garden) by September 2025.

🚁 Mars Drone Found. NASA has regained contact with Ingenuity, its mini-helicopter currently living on Mars. The first motorised craft to fly autonomously on another planet was taking a test flight last Thursday when it lost contact. Engineers were able to re-establish contact via the Perseverence Rover over the weekend.

🙅‍♂️ Snubbed Apples. Apple is bargaining on cementing its position as “the ultimate entertainment device” by locking in some of the world’s most popular entertainment apps. But Netflix will not be developing an app for the Vision Pro. Ditto for YouTube & Spotify.

🤖 Level 5 GPT. ChatGPT-5 is expected later this year and will be power-packed with improvements including better reasoning capabilities, more accuracy and fully multimodal with speech, image, code and video support.

🚗 No Tesla. Elon Musk confirmed on X that there aren’t any plans to bring Tesla to SA amidst high import duties imposed on electric vehicles by the government. Remember what we said about car manufacturing in SA a while back?

🇿🇦 Winning Nation. Sunday was a big day for South Africa. Dricus “Stillknocks” Du Plessis won the UFC Middleweight Championship & Bafana Bafana won their AFCON Group Stage match against Namibia. South Africa takes on Tunisia tomorrow night at 7PM in a bid to qualify for the Round of 16. Let’s GO!

BUILDER’S CORNER

How to Assemble Your Ultimate Startup Team

While doing research for our recent piece on venture studios, we noticed that many of the best tech and venture people in SA were being snapped up by Next176. As you might expect, we investigated and traced it all back to the desk of their CVO Tramayne Monaghan. 

So, when the topic of building innovative startup teams came up, we asked Tramayne to take the lead…

There’s a major difference between someone who has shined in an established business vs someone who will succeed in the pace and chaos of the startup world — so it’s important to look for the right things when hiring for your startup.

When I’m hiring and managing, I look for people who will take extreme ownership of their domains. They must be proactive, willing to challenge my (and the entire team’s) thinking, know how to work in flux and adapt to change fast.

I look for people who will be able to think on the fly and execute fast, knowing we’re working towards the same vision.

The following 10 characteristics are key

But how do you test whether candidates have these characteristics? You ask them good questions. Here are a few examples:

5 Interview Questions to Help You Find Those Values

1. Assessing Agility & Critical Thinking

Ask: “How do you approach problems that have no clear solution or path forward?”

Assess: The candidate is expected to exhibit their skill in dissecting a problem into more manageable segments, pinpointing possible solutions, and considering various elements to reach a conclusion. Moreover, an effective response would highlight the candidate's capacity to assimilate new data and modify their strategy accordingly.

2. Assessing Drive & Creativity

Ask: "Tell me about a time when you identified and seized an opportunity that put you or your team ahead of the competition. What was the scenario and how did you go beyond the usual limits to achieve this?"

Assess: The ideal answer will showcase the candidate's ability to foresee opportunities and their strategic thinking in outpacing competitors.

3. Resourcefulness & Efficiency

Ask: "Describe a project where you had to prioritize results over processes and use limited resources efficiently. What compromises did you make and what was the impact of those decisions?"

Assess: You're assessing practicality and problem-solving skills. Look for their ability to make strategic trade-offs, use resources wisely, and their capacity to deliver results under constraints.

4. Accountability & Self Awareness

Ask: "How have you held yourself or a team member accountable for a mistake, and what steps did you take to rectify the situation?”

Add: “How do you address your own weaknesses in a professional setting?"

Assess: Look for integrity and self-awareness. Good responses should reflect honesty in acknowledging errors, taking responsibility (whether personal or shared), and concrete steps taken to correct mistakes.

5. Prioritising & Decision-making

Ask: "Can you give an example of a challenging situation where you had to make a critical decision to ensure long-term success? How did you determine the right course of action and what was the result?"

Assess: This tests strategic thinking and decision-making under pressure. Candidates should illustrate their ability to evaluate complex situations, weigh various factors and potential outcomes, and make decisions that align with long-term goals. Pay attention to their thought process in solving the problem.

Today’s Builder’s Corner was written by Tramayne Monaghan who is the Chief Venture Officer at Next176.

Got a team hack, insights or tip to share? Hit reply and let us know… we might feature your insight next.

THE RESULTS

We asked what your social drink of choice is, and, well, they say South Africans love their beer…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Water (9%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Coffee (7%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Beer (33%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Wine (24%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Spirits (7%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Non-alcoholic beers (9%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Non-alcoholic wine (0)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Non-alcoholic spirits (2%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ I'll just have a Coke thanks (9%)

FOR THE MEMES

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