The stretch where everything started taking payments

Build in public — Taigency series. 12 August 2026.

For a long time the question about any of my products was does it work. This stretch, the question quietly changed to does it get paid. That shift is the whole reason Taigency now says one thing — from built to paid. Building the thing is table stakes. Engineering the path from a working product to money in the account is the actual job. Here's where that stands across the portfolio.

The flagship crossed the line

FieldForce — the field-service OS for South African installers — went from "the software works" to "the money moves." A tradesperson can now build a quote, turn it into a job, invoice it, and collect payment, all from a phone. The part I care about most: the full chain, checkout → charge → webhook → plan activation, was verified end-to-end in production on live Paystack rails. Not a sandbox, not a demo — a real subscription, a real card, a real active account. That's the "from built to paid" thesis proven on my own product before I sell it to anyone else's.

Two new products went live

Soek is a POPIA-first B2B research and prospecting engine — think "Clay, but built for South Africa." You build a list of the right businesses to approach, it enriches them from local sources, and it exports clean data your sales team can actually use without tripping over compliance. It's live as a first working version.

HomeBudget SA is the other end of the spectrum — a home-finance app made for how South African households actually run money. Joint or solo budgets, bill reminders before the debit order lands, and small saving nudges, all in Rand. It's live for anyone to use.

Different audiences, same pattern: a product that goes all the way to being usable and payable, not a slide.

The front door started answering

The most fun change is on this very site. Naledi — the operator behind the man — is now a real AI agent, not a scripted FAQ. She'll answer questions about the work in plain language and, if you're ready, take your details and pass the enquiry straight to me herself. She sits on top of a site that largely maintains itself: an engine watches my repos and refreshes the work here as products ship, and there's a "cockpit" view of the whole thing that shows what running a portfolio on autopilot actually looks like — agents doing the daily work while I watch the numbers and approve the next move.

The rest of the shelf kept moving

Quieter progress everywhere else: FundReady SA is selling funding and tender toolkits through a live storefront with a wizard that qualifies buyers before they pay. Hans Rooseboom Art grew proper collecting tiers so originals are sold like collectible art, not leftover stock. ColourIQ, AnswerRank, and the others each moved a notch closer to their own version of paid.

And a first step into enterprise

The newest thread is a different weight class: I'm deep in the process of becoming an approved supplier to a major mining operation — the kind of engagement that runs on vendor registrations, compliance packs and formal onboarding rather than a checkout button. (It's under NDA, so no names here.) It's the same thesis at a bigger scale: it's not enough to be capable, you have to be procurable. Getting built is one thing; getting to the point where a large operation can actually pay you is the harder, more valuable half — and it's exactly the half I like engineering.

The throughline

Every one of these is the same story told at a different size: close the gap between a product that works and a product that earns. That's the only number that matters, and it's the one I'm building toward across all of it.

If you've got a product that works but isn't earning yet — that's the gap I engineer. Come talk to me.