Season one

One new story every Tuesday, from 9 June through 28 July 2026.

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Week 01 Fintech

How Yoco Made Small Merchants Worth Serving

Four friends, one table, and a payments system rebuilt around the businesses banks overlooked.

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Week 02 Restaurants

A Cheeky Bet

How two men who knew nothing about restaurants took peri-peri chicken to the world.

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Week 03 Hospitality

Her Name on the Line

A loan shark funded the first Tashas. Twenty years later, a war in the Middle East nearly took it away.

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Week 04 Fast food

The Recipe Under the Bed

George Sombonos built a fried chicken chain on a $1,000 untested recipe and a franchise-light model.

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Week 05 Footwear and Retail

Nobody to Ask

Theo Baloyi opened 24 stores during a pandemic because he had taken no outside money, and nobody could tell him not to.

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Week 06 Luxury fashion

His Mother's Knitting Machine

How Laduma Ngxokolo turned Xhosa beadwork into global luxury.

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Week 07 Coffee

Eight Failures and a Shipping Container

The brothers who out-brewed the cities by starting in overlooked small towns.

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Week 08 Banking

Either a Big Success or a Small Failure

How a Stellenbosch outsider banked the overlooked and challenged the Big Four.