Endeavor South Africa Newsletter Quarter 2 2026
Dear Friends of Endeavor,
“Chaos, when met well, becomes a forcing function. A friend. It strips away vanity metrics, exposes weak foundations, and accelerates trust. Elsewhere founders have leveraged it for decades.”— Endeavor, The New Wartime CEO
In her book, Why Fish Don’t Exist, Lulu Miller finds something unexpected in the story of David Starr Jordan — Stanford University’s founding president, and the man who named more fish species than any scientist before him. When the 1906 San Francisco earthquake scattered years of his life’s work across the floor, he picked up a needle and thread and started sewing labels back onto fish. What struck Miller wasn’t the rebuilding. It was what the chaos made possible.
Science has long understood this: the moments of greatest disruption — when a theory collapses, when the ground literally moves — are often precisely when the most significant discoveries emerge. Chaos doesn’t only test what you’ve built. It clears ground. It opens things up.
Globally, Q2 brought the biggest IPO in history — SpaceX at ~$1.75T — alongside OpenAI and Anthropic filing S-1s, and M&A beginning to thaw with Capital One’s $5.1bn acquisition of Brex, built by Brazilian Endeavor Entrepreneur Henrique Dubugras. The liquidity this sets loose downstream is what reaches our network — and scaled companies built against the odds are exactly what newly-freed capital will be looking for.
In this quarter, apart from our companies being recognised on a global stage as Outliers, across the network you’ll see evidence of building around AI- Yoco acquiring Dyner.ai, Go1 launching an MCP server for agents, TTRO’s Red Horizon simulation platform. Our entrepreneurs aren’t waiting, they are meeting the challenge and opportunity that chaos presents.
Meet the South African Outliers
Q2 2026 brought one of the most significant recognition moments for South Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem: Five Endeavor South Africa companies were named to the 2026 Endeavor Outliers list — the top 10% of Endeavor’s global portfolio of 1,900+ companies across 50+ countries.
The 2026 South African Outliers are:
- Onafriq — pan-African payments infrastructure scaling across 40+ markets.
- GoTyme Bank — reimagining banking with high-tech, high-touch distribution.
- Go1 — global B2B learning platform scaling from South African roots.
- Hello Paisa — trusted, fast remittance services for the unbanked.
- Pineapple — AI-driven, transparent insurance reimagined for the digital era.
New Programmes and Cohorts
2026 Ninety One Accelerator Cohort
This quarter saw the launch of the 2026 Ninety One Accelerator Cohort into the
Endeavor network: timbuk2.ai, AskMandla.com,Gobuddy
African Cleantech Scale-Up Cohort with FMO
We also launched the first African Cleantech Scale-Up Cohort with FMO — 10 companies across 5+ markets joining the FMO x Endeavor SA programme to accelerate Africa’s clean energy transition:
- Thola Energy — AI compresses industrial energy upgrade design from months to days 🔗
- Instollar — matches solar companies with vetted technicians, cutting project costs by 60% 🔗
- Earthbond — solar financing structured below existing diesel costs for SMEs 🔗
- Asoba — anomaly detection for underperforming solar assets in real time🔗
- Switch Energy — metering and trading backbone for SA’s emerging wholesale energy market 🔗
- Dragonfly — AI-powered autonomous operator for recycling facility decisions 🔗
- TrashCoin — mobile platform paying households for recyclable materials🔗
- Chargebyte Limited — solar-powered charging and connectivity stations for underserved communities 🔗
- Synafare — asset financing company focused on renewable energy products 🔗
- PowerLabs Inc. — energy and climate tech company designing intelligent solutions for cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable power 🔗
New Joiner — Local Scale-Up Programme
We are pleased to welcome CEO Howard Harrison and the DeepAlert team to the Endeavor South Africa Local Scale-Up programme.
Founded by Dr Jasper Horrell , DeepAlert builds AI-powered video intelligence solutions — an exciting example of deep tech emerging from the region 🔗
Endeavor South Africa Events & Network News
In the latest Board meeting at GoTyme’s offices, founders from Remitly, Matta Trade, and Bisedge connected with South African board members — an example of how the Endeavor network’s cross-border relationships create real value for founders across the continent 🔗
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Onafriq — Payments Infrastructure, Partnerships & Thought Leadership
Dare Okoudjou ‘s Onafriq had an active quarter — expanding ecosystem partnerships, deepening its reach into crypto infrastructure, and contributing thought leadership on the future of African payments:
- Onafriq × VALR — users can now fund crypto accounts directly via mobile money 🔗
- Onafriq × Yuno — global merchants gain single-API access to 40+ African markets and ~1B mobile wallets 🔗
- Onafriq Stablecoins White Paper — co-authored by Dare Okoudjou on whether stablecoins can deliver cheaper, faster African payments 🔗
Yoco — A Quarter of Major Moves
Yoco, serving 200,000+ merchants across South Africa, had one of its busiest quarters yet — new CEO, strategic acquisition, product launches, and a preview of what’s coming with AI:
- New CEO — Carsten Höltkemeyer appointed as Yoco enters its next growth phase 🔗
- Yoco × Apple — Tap to Pay on iPhone launches in SA, no extra hardware required 🔗
- Yoco acquires Dyner.ai — evolving from payments to a full AI-powered commerce and operations stack for restaurants 🔗
- Yoco x Stub — automated bookkeeping syncs sales data directly into accounting software 🔗
- Yoco AI — preview of an upcoming AI insights tool for independent businesses 🔗
Ozow – Cross-Border Collaboration
Ozow had a quarter of building out its partner ecosystem — deepening ties with South African fintech partners and expanding cross-border capability for its merchant base:
- Ozow x Duplo — partnership with Nigeria’s Duploto streamline collections, invoicing and reconciliation for SA businesses 🔗
- Ozow x Lula — merchants can view and apply for funding directly in the Merchant Portal 🔗
- Ozow x Happy Pay— BNPL rolls out across a wider SA merchant network 🔗
GoTyme Bank— Going Global
Yellow — 1 Million Customers
Go1 — AI-Native Platform Evolution
Local Scale-Up News
AURA — Safety at Scale
AURA launched a real-time emergency response partnership for independent delivery riders across Nairobi — bringing trackable safety infrastructure to Kenya’s gig economy 🔗
Global Endeavor Events & Entrepreneur News
We hosted an Africa Diaspora Dinner at Tasha’s Battersea in May as part of London Endeavor Week – Discover the highlights here.
Meet the Newest Endeavor Entrepreneurs for the Quarter
- April International Selection Panel welcomed 22 new Endeavor Entrepreneurs from 11 companies 🔗
- May ISP welcomed 20 founders leading 14 companies 🔗
- June ISP welcomed 6 founders leading 6 companies 🔗
Endeavor Impact Report — Global Release
Endeavor released its 2026 Impact Report: 3,000+ entrepreneurs across 50+ countries, 100+ unicorn founders, and 28 Catalyst investments on the African continent to date.🔗
Global Entrepreneur News
From last-mile delivery to space intelligence and AI entertainment, Endeavor Entrepreneurs globally continued to pull their industries forward:
- Greece — Matternet — strategic partnership with SoftBank Robotics America to accelerate last-mile delivery deployment in the US and key markets
- Jordan — Amjad Masad (Replit co-founder) — received the King Abdullah II ibn Al Hussein Order for Distinction for pioneering work in global tech and AI Türkiye — Insider One — acquired Bluecore, a leading retail martech unicorn serving 400+ US enterprise brands
- Ukraine — HOLYWATER TECH — Sifted 100 ranking; Gold, Silver and Bronze Telly Awards including for ‘Liminality’, an AI short film created using its storytelling platform My Muse
- Poland — ICEYE — €450M Series F at €10B+ valuation — achieving decacorn status as the world’s largest SAR satellite constellation
- Canada — nesto — CAD $302M Series E at a CAD $1.47B valuation.
Things to double click on:
Three pieces from our global network worth your time this quarter:
- The Power of the Second Act: – Nearly 1 in 5 of our 2025 investments went to Endeavor Entrepreneurs launching their second (or third) company. What’s driving this trend? Repeat founders are also seizing the AI moment—like Jason Wenk, who built unicorn Altruist and is now creating AI-native Prelude, or Pablo Fernandez progressing from Clicars to Clikalia to AI-powered Clidrive. Dive into the full 2025 Catalyst Annual Report for more insights. 🔗
- Martyr vs Donor: The Myth of Founder Sacrifice — In moments of crisis, how entrepreneurs show up over time matters more than how much they give in a single moment. The companies making the most progress are moving away from burnout leadership toward sustained, grounded donor-mode leadership. 🔗
- The New Wartime CEO where volatility is no longer a phase — it’s the operating environment. Endeavor Entrepreneurs who’ve built through war, economic collapse, and currency crises share what it actually takes to lead when everything is uncertain. 🔗
Upcoming Global Events
- Endeavor Singapore Global Hub Launch — July 22 — new gateway to capital, talent, and markets across Southeast Asia. Contact singapore@endeavor.org
- AI at the Frontier Programme — June–August 2026, virtual biweekly — live sessions with operators at Mercado Libre, Waymo, Carta, and Replit on rebuilding organisations around AI. Free and exclusive to the Endeavor network. Register for the final session here
- SF Tech Week — October 5–11, San Francisco — Endeavor’s Bay Area Hub hosts an ecosystem gathering on October 8. Register your interest at sf@endeavor.org
For our South Africa network – a reminder to check the talent exchange and events calendar.
Closing the quarter
The capital flywheel is beginning to spin again. Scaled companies in ‘Elsewhere’ markets stand to benefit as funds receive distributions and start writing new cheques.
The conditions that look like obstacles — the currency volatility, the infrastructure gaps, the markets that don’t reward early believers — have always been, for the right founders, an opening. Chaos clears ground. It forces the question of what actually matters, and in doing so, creates space for something new to come into focus — something that wasn’t visible before the disruption.
What this network does, at its best, is make those openings available: where the unexpected connection gets made, where the founder from the market nobody was watching finds her way into the right room. A founder on a mentor call once described Endeavor as ‘”the most transparent secret society, that will change your life. ” That’s exactly it — less about confirming what we already know, more about what can arrive when a gap opens up.
To all the founders, investors, mentors and partners who continue to shape our story: thank you. 🚀
With gratitude,
Alison Collier, Endeavor South Africa MD.