Artive Ventures Research
Research on South African commerce.
The lab publishes what it plans, how it works and what it finds, including the answers that are no. Our papers are working papers: open for comment, labelled for what they are, and free to read and cite.
The programmeHow we do research.
- 01
Questions first
We publish our agenda before the work, so results can be judged against what we set out to find.
- 02
Bets written down
Every experiment states its expected answer and its one number before it starts, a form of pre-registration.
- 03
Every result reported
A clear no is published like a yes. Research that hides its failures misleads.
- 04
Merchants’ data protected
Data from merchants who take part is used only for the study, under POPIA, and reported in aggregate or with permission.
PublicationsPapers and notes.
The four-gate method: testing commerce ideas before building them
Most new commerce products fail for a reason that could have been found cheaply: nobody had the problem badly enough to change what they do. This paper sets out the method the Artive Ventures lab uses to find that out early. Every idea passes four gates (research, prototype, pilot and spin out), and at each gate it faces one small test with one number, decided in advance. We describe the parts of a test, the evidence each gate asks for, and the rules for stopping. The method borrows from lean start-up practice, online controlled experiments and the pre-registration of studies, and adapts them to South African merchants, where small samples, payday cycles and informal trade make naive testing misleading.
Keywords: venture buildingexperimentationpre-registrationstopping rulesSouth Africa
Read the paperResearch agenda 2026/27: seven questions for South African commerce
This agenda sets out what the Artive Ventures lab will study over the next year, and how. It is organised around seven questions, one for each focus area, chosen because they are problems we see repeatedly in South African commerce and because an answer would be worth a company. For each, we give the question, why it matters, the hypotheses we will test, the methods we plan and what would count as an answer. We publish the agenda before the work so that our results can be judged against what we set out to find.
Keywords: research agendaretailpaymentstownship economyAIinfrastructure
Read the paperMeasuring listed South African commerce: how the Artive Commerce Index is built
Artive Capital publishes six indexes of JSE-listed commerce companies, led by the Artive Commerce Index (ACI), and charts them against the JSE Top 40. This note documents how they are built: the universe of companies, the equal-weighted daily calculation, the treatment of gaps and outliers, and the known limitations. It exists so that anyone reading the indexes on capital.artive.co.za can see exactly what they measure.
Keywords: equity indexequal weightingJSEretailmethodology
Read the paper
Research themesSeven questions.
- T1
AI for commerce
What if every product page wrote, tested and improved itself?
- T2
Checkout & payments
Why does paying still lose one shopper in every few?
- T3
Retail media
How does a local brand buy shelf space on a screen as easily as in a store?
- T4
Social & chat commerce
What does a store look like when it lives inside WhatsApp?
- T5
Commerce data
What would a small store do with the data only big retailers have?
- T6
Township retail
How do we bring spaza shops the tools that chains take for granted?
- T7
Commerce infrastructure
Who builds the warehouses, cold rooms and pick-up points African commerce still needs?
Data and toolsOpen to use.
The open problems register
Problems in South African commerce from the lab and from merchants, with how many people share each.
Artive indexes (opens in a new tab)
Six equal-weighted indexes of JSE-listed commerce companies against the Top 40, updated every trading day.
The shopper’s economy (opens in a new tab)
Retail sales, inflation, rates, confidence and jobs, with history and release dates.
The venture scorecard
The four gates as a self-assessment for any commerce idea.
Got a commerce problem worth a company? We want to hear it.
A few lines is enough: the problem, who has it and why now.