How Split Seconds works
How Split Seconds works
Rent a neighbour's idle bike, collect it at the Split Secunda kiosk at the Duck Pond, ride the loop, and try to beat your own time. Then your friends' time. Then that uncle's.
Secunda literally means “second” in Latin: the town got its name because it was the site of Sasol's second synthetic-fuel plant, after Sasolburg. So when you ride here, every split second counts. Split Secunda. Say it out loud. You're welcome.
Sources: Wikipedia: Secunda, South Africa · Sasol historical milestones (1976)
It started with a bike Isaac couldn't afford
Isaac Tau needed a bike. Not for fitness. For Cape Town. He wanted to ride there to meet the institutions that could help him build what he was dreaming up. Reasonable plan. Small problem: his bank account was sitting at exactly zero, and the cheapest bike he could find cost R30,000. His account looked at that number and pretended it didn't speak English.
He also hit a different kind of roadblock in Secunda. He'd walk in talking about venture capital and raising money, and people would look at him like he'd ordered a cappuccino at a braai. The language just wasn't landing.
“Then I wondered: how many bikes are sitting in garages right now, doing nothing, for months?”
That was the moment. Not a boardroom. A garage. Somewhere in Secunda there's a perfectly good bike leaning against a wall, gathering dust and guilt, while someone else needs one. Split Seconds was born to connect the two. And it didn't stay about bikes for long: the same logic works for any idle asset.
In the end, Isaac flew to Cape Town. (The bike problem was, after all, the whole point.) There he met the people at a Fourth Industrial Revolution incubator, the 4IR Institute, and came home with real encouragement and a promise of support to help build this. Then he came back to Secunda to activate Split Secunda, the kiosk at the Duck Pond.
What's next on the calendar
30 October: the first Secunda hackathon. It happened, thank you Secunda. From here there'll be a hackathon every month, and we're looking for other towns to host them too. Next hackathon date to be released soon.
Next: the activation ride. We're at base camp in Secunda, rolling out when the road is safe. A crew of 12 cyclists rides from Secunda to Cape Town, town by town. Wherever they sleep, they meet the local newspapers and radio, explain the idea to the community, and help switch the platform on so locals can start using it. (This is the planned tour, separate from Isaac's original trip.)
Where you are right now
You're on Civilized University, the platform Isaac Tau built. Split Secunda and the Idle Assets marketplace are one section of it.
Civilized University teaches entrepreneurship in the home: how families make money from the things they already own and aren't using. Running the family's idle-assets business can be a project handed to one family member, the way ministries get allocated in a household. Somebody's the Minister of Finance. Somebody's the Minister of the TV Remote. Now somebody can be the Minister of Idle Assets.
The Civilized University app will be unveiled in Cape Town. This page is the trailer, not the movie. More is coming.
Split Seconds is the starting point
Idle Assets is a neighbourhood rental marketplace for things that spend most of their life doing nothing. Bikes are first because a bike is easy to understand, easy to hand over and easy to fall in love with. Owners list a bike, renters book it by the 3-hour block, everyone pays through a real checkout, and every slot can only be sold once, so nobody fights at the gate.
Ready to let it go for good? Owners can also list a bike for sale, or for rent and sale at the same time (rent it till it sells). Buyers tap I'm interested, and Split Seconds connects buyer and seller to agree the price and the handover. No checkout for sales yet: just a good introduction, minus the awkward small talk.
- Owner lists a bike
- We get it to the kiosk
- You book 24h ahead
- Ride the Duck Pond loop
- Log it, climb the board
How the smart hints work
Split Seconds looks at two things: which slots are open right now in the store's live inventory, and the bookings you made on this device. From those it makes a simple, pattern-based forecast. It is not magic and it is not a black box. Every hint shows its reason, and these are the rules:
- Likely to sell out (bike): more than 60% of the bike's bookable slots that day are already booked and at least one is left, or 2 or more of its slots were booked since you first looked (this device keeps a snapshot of open slots for up to 48 hours to spot that trend).
- Likely to sell out (slot): it is the last free slot on that bike that day, or more than 60% of the other bikes are already booked at that time.
- Best time to ride: of the selected bike's open slots in the next 7 booking days, the one where the fewest other bikes are booked. Ties go to the day with more slots left, then your usual time of day, then the soonest.
- Recommended for you: the bike type you have booked most on this device, then whether your usual time of day is free. With no history yet, it falls back to the most booked bike right now.
Your history never leaves your phone: it sits in your browser's storage, and “Clear history” under Your rides resets it. With only a few bookings in the system, the hints stay quiet until there is a real pattern to show. We show no made-up numbers.
Beat yourself. Beat your friends. Climb.
Beat your own score
Log every loop. Your personal best becomes the person you're racing. Past you is beatable. Past you ate a whole pie.
Beat your friends
Book up to 10 bikes for the same slot as a group challenge. Name it. Office vs Accounts. Church choir vs the deacons.
Climb the leaderboard
Male, Female and Combined boards in age groups from 13–17 (with guardian consent) to 55+. Ranked by km, best loop time and rides.
The competitive advantages
Peer-to-peer idle assets
The bikes already exist. They're in garages. We just give them a job.
No fleet capex
We don't buy a fleet. Owners bring the bikes and earn from them.
The kiosk model
One known pickup spot at a loop people already love. Simple to run, simple to copy in the next town.
Community
Your neighbour's bike, your neighbour's income. Money circulates on the same street.
The leaderboard
People come back to beat a score. A rental becomes a habit.
Content add-ons
Drone footage, GoPro clips and phone mounts. Because if it isn't filmed, did you even ride?
It's not really about bikes
Two examples of where this goes next. These are ideas, not customers. Nobody's stove is on the platform. Yet.
The midnight stove
A family's stove works hard from 5pm to 8pm and then sleeps for the rest of the night. Imagine renting it out from midnight to 6am to someone who bakes and sells. The family earns income from an appliance that was going to be asleep anyway. The baker gets a real oven without buying one. That's a different way of funding a business: not a loan, just access. That's entrepreneurship. That's business.
The street of lawn mowers
Walk down any suburban street: there's a lawn mower in nearly every garage. Each one works maybe four days a month and spends the rest of it parked next to the paint tins. Meanwhile, a young person who wants to start a gardening business can't, because they don't own one mower. One street is quietly sitting on a whole equipment fleet. Rent it by the hour, and that young person has a business on Monday.
Lots of idle stuff. Lots of idle hands.
South Africa's youth unemployment rate (ages 15–34), Q2 2026, up from 45.8% in Q1.
Source: Stats SA QLFS Q2 2026, as reported by the Parliament of South Africa, Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour, 12 Aug 2026
Official unemployment in Govan Mbeki Municipality, where Secunda sits.
Source: Govan Mbeki Municipality Voluntary Local Review 2026, citing the Feb 2026 Socio-Economic Profile
Youth unemployment in Govan Mbeki Municipality: more than half.
Source: Govan Mbeki Municipality Voluntary Local Review 2026
Idle assets + idle hands + real local business problems = income, skills and startups.
The bikes are in the garages. The young builders are on the street. The problems are in the shops. The hackathons and the marketplace put them in the same room.
Rent. Earn. Pledge. Vote. Fund.
Families earning rental income can choose to pledge part of it to the Community Pool, then vote on which local startup, pitched on the platform with a short video, they'd like to back. When pooled capital is available, the voters decide what gets funded. Your neighbour's bike helps fund your neighbour's bakery.
Important: pledges and votes are recorded only. No money is pooled or invested until a licensed partner holds the funds. Bank or fintech? Let's talk
Springs leg: bring your bike to the peloton
The Secunda to Cape Town ride goes town to town as a peloton, and the first leg is Secunda to Springs. Got a bike that fancies a road trip? WhatsApp Isaac: say you have a bike, send a few pictures and your price for the leg. Then tell us how it gets home: you drive along with us and fetch it back yourself, or you'd rather we arrange return transport.
List my bike for the Springs leg
Got a software problem?
Something in your business that a bit of software should sort out, but doesn't? Send it to Isaac on WhatsApp: your business name and what the problem is. Short and messy is fine, we'll ask questions.
Run a business? Partner with us
Got bikes, a space, a skill or a problem worth solving? We'd love to work with local businesses who want to help put idle things to work, starting in Secunda and growing town by town.
Ready when you are
Book at least a day ahead. We need a day to get your bike to the kiosk.