Alexandria Claire Procter, Co-Founder & CEO of DigsConnect.com
Creating a Self-sustaining Community of People
Happy New Year & Welcome to 728 Founder's Series. Conversations with incredible Founders in South Africa building exceptional start-ups by Ububele (@_ubsta).
I have somehow locked myself out of 728founders.substack.com, my email to be specific or someone changed my password. Nevertheless, we must march forward so much needs to be written & said this year. Starting with this interview with an extraordinary human, Alexandria Claire Procter.
Alexandria is what you consider a trailblazer, always full of energy & pushing the boundaries of what it takes to build a startup in South Africa. Often on a skateboard, doing things her own way. If you go through the countless interviews she has done you get to feel her passion for doing things differently. When I started to plan out this series Alexandria was one of the top people I wanted to interview. I am more than delighted to share this interview with everyone who is genuinely curious about founders building in South Africa. So enjoy!
Hi Alexandria, Thanks for doing this. The story of DigsConnect sounds like a chapter out of Ben Mezrich’s Accidental Billionaires. You never set out to be an entrepreneur but it found you willing & able.
Who is Alexandria Claire Procter & how did she end up running the largest student accommodation platform in Africa?
My business partner Greg Keal always says “the review mirror is clearer than the windshield” and I think that applies to this context as well. At the time I had no idea what I was doing or how each step I took would lead me in the direction that it did. There’s always been forces that guide my life - forces of curiosity, of defiance, of wonder, of rebellion, of compassion, but mostly of explosive passion, I feel everything very deeply - and just by following these and staying true to them I’ve sort of found my way into the place where I’m meant to be. There’s always pressure to conform, to submit, to bend or acquiesce because it feels good to fit in. But every day I see reasons why the world does not need more people copying what was done before. There’s nearly 8 billion people on earth, so that’s 8 billion conscious minds, each holding the potential for great thought, great productive output, great creativity, what a waste to just repeat what has been done when we have an infinite universe to fill and engineer! And I want to restate this now again, this message of being true to your vision, because as the stakes get higher, the pressure to play it safe grows proportionally, which is why your strength and courage must grow proportionality as well. As long as you are guided by authentic good intentions of building incredible things to push the frontier of humanity’s reach and do good for the world and spread joy for humans, I think you don’t need to be checking over your shoulder for buy-in.
Haha so this isn’t a very direct answer to your question of who I am and how I got here, but perhaps in another sense, it’s the most direct answer I’ve ever given to this question because it’s the first principles answer. I think it paints a much clearer picture of who I am than talking about my troubled youth or spending time in India when I was 17 or summiting Kilimanjaro and whatnot!
Haha...I’m from a little town in the Eastern Cape called King William’s Town, eQonce. I went to boarding school in an even smaller town; Queen’s College eKomani (Queenstown).
Having been to a boarding school like DSG. Have any lessons of camaraderie & co-living in dormitories played any effect early on in believing in the idea that DigsConnect.com can work at scale?
Fantastic question! Now that you mention it, yes, I have been in coliving situations most of my life! In terms of DSG, I only really realised years after I matriculated what an incredible school it was (one of those things about life is undervaluing the things you have and overvaluing the things you don’t, and the devastating and beautiful tragedy of only realising this once something has traversed the border of “had” to “overlooked”). I had always looked on my schooling years as very negative and objectively they probably were - I was constantly in detention, on the verge of expulsion, a social outsider, and I performed dismally in everything from academics to extra murals. Dormitory life wasn’t great for me, because at a school like DSG you’re either in line or you’re out, and because I would (very dramatically) reject conformity, I was struggling constantly against the system. I struggled with my peers to change their minds and attitudes about issues, and I struggled with the schooling system (which I viewed as archaic, nonsensical and unproductive). But it taught me one of the most important lessons of my life: you don’t change the world from the outside. You have to know the rules before you break them. You have to earn your right to a spot at the table and earn your right to an opinion. Results win, and if the incentives make sense, you can change any system. Most importantly, every system is made up of humans, and you’re not gonna change their minds about something if you make them your enemy. Any raging brat can break and destroy, there’s nothing inspiring in that. But what is inspiring is instead proposing a new way, and to prove that the new way is the better way with actual results.
So I wouldn’t say that the living conditions per se provided inspiration for DigsConnect - I guess it might subconsciously validate the idea of coliving at scale because we have all been doing it for so long - it was mostly my university digs experience that validated the idea. Everyone just lives in a digs, and it works, and it’s fun, and it’s awesome. It’s just a better way to live in your 20s. So let’s bring that awesomeness to a beautiful product so it’s easier to find!
I get that. In 2018/19, your company raised the largest seed round of a South African company at the time. R12 million was the number if I’m correct.
What hypothesis did the business validate for yourself & investors? What was the tipping point that caused you to focus on the mission of scaling DigsConnect.com?
Do landlords and students / young adults want to connect with each other to find a home or find a tenant on an online platform?
And the answer is yes.
In the 35 months of our existence, we have connected nearly 50 000 people. You’re the first person we’re sharing this with publicly, but I think it is time for us to talk more candidly about some of our metrics, because it’s bloody exciting and after the crazy year we’ve had, it’s something for our team to feel incredibly proud about.
The tipping point that made me focus on the mission… hmm… if I think back now it was such a bizarre time in my life. I’ve always felt pulled in a million directions, there’s so much about the universe that excites me tremendously and I want to be a part of everything, get stuck in and get to work on every idea and opportunity. I was in this space where I was trying to decide between studying medicine at Wits, studying law at Stellies, doing my honours at UCT, or being a wildlife presenter in the Kruger National Park (no joke, I had an offer). DigsConnect was still sidebae and I was gonna keep it that way until Greg gave me an ultimatum and said either we do this properly and commit 100%, or we call it quits because half-assing it was just wasting everyone’s time. Greg is quite possibly the most competent person alive, and as such is very in demand. The fact that he would forgo every other (lucrative) opportunity to throw his lot in with me on this moonshot is I think what gave me that final boost of confidence to say “this is it!”. It was, of course, the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. Funny enough, most of the decisions that Greg has talked me into have turned out pretty well, and most of the decisions he’s against haven't gone too well. That guy has really good judgement.
Greg is the moral compass. Early this year before the world was in a global lockdown due to COVID, the company revamp its business model from a PageRank ad placement (what google does) model to a booking fee model similar to Airbnb & Bookings.com. In hindsight that was a super important pivot.
Why did you change the business model? & what lesson can others take away from the decision process of pivoting not just a business model but their business in general?
You really do your research hey! I love the way you think. If you’re ever looking for a change, you should think about joining DigsConnect, we love people that think like you, and you’ll be surrounded by other people that also ask the right questions! But onto the pivot - haha I actually got in trouble yesterday afternoon during our product call for suggesting pivots too frequently! One of our best engineers called me out on dubious pivoting processes (which was fantastic! We nurture a culture of extreme accountability) and I had to justify my reasoning for how and why and when we pivot. I’m a big fan of a pivot, I’m gonna be honest. Probably too much. I learnt early on to hold nothing sacred, except for user adoption. You can develop an idea for months and think it’s pure genius, but if it flops, let it die. The market always decides and metrics never lie. Follow user adoption, is whatever shape or form it takes, and be savage in cutting away and removing all that does not serve the mission.
Our business model has been on quite a journey! I started DigsConnect with no business knowledge, and to do this day I still consider myself a rogue entrepreneur. I don’t understand any of the jargon, but what I do understand is a value exchange. That I think is what the core of the business, and on a more fundamental level what the core of capitalism is about, and why it’s such a powerful force. Humans apply their abilities to generate value, and then we store, trade, speculate and swap value. Everything has a value. But essentially that value must be created first, and that value genesis is from entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are like the First Movers, haha. And that value genesis and trade is what took our species from somewhere in the middle of the food chain to base on Mars by 2025 (holding thumbs). This is why communism and socialism always fail - because those systems seek to create value by dividing what already exists, instead of incentivizing the creation of new value.
Okay wow, I’m getting sidetracked! Back to our business model! I built DigsConnect, and it was basically the poster board by the UCT library where people would post their spare rooms, but online. Very quickly, we had people offering us money to have frontpage exposure on the platform, and it was a great way to pay the rent as it were while we were finding our feet (still haven’t found them TBH). It was so exciting to have created something that was adding value to people’s lives! I had just made the world 0.0001% better, and it felt great. This model of paying for listings is used by all the major property listing sites in South Africa, and many people have recommended to me that this should have stayed our business model. But I don’t back it. I think it’s limited and unambitious. And DigsConnect is going to be so, so, so much more than just listings. The plans we have for the housing sector worldwide are… they’re big. We’ve only just started getting warmed up. I wanted to change the model because I wanted to align our company’s success with our user’s success. Once we’ve secured a successful placement, we have fulfilled our promise of the value exchange to our users, and as such we deserve our payment - it is entirely justified then. It creates a laser focus for the company and the team and ensures that our mission is just to make our users win at what they want. It ensures service delivery. It’s just so clean, and so simple. I love it. Maybe because I’m simple, haha.
I believe 3 things make a startup successful. 1. The mission; is the mission big enough & does it matter. 2. People, can the startup recruit the right people at the right time to build the company & 3. Culture, can the startup build, not just an inclusive culture but one that can scale across provinces, regions & countries.
How do you navigate recruiting & culture as the company scales its mission?
This!! The “people” side to being a CEO has become my biggest obsession as of late. I’ve been spending the biggest proportion of my time allocated to any one task on culture and recruiting lately, just because I’ve learnt time and time and time again that the right people are all that it takes to turn a donkey cart into a rocketship. Honestly, it’s 90% of the reason why I’m so active on social media because I want to reach out to every talented, passionate and smart person out there and say “jump aboard our pirate ship! We’re going to rad places!”
I’m actually working on a blog post about hiring right now because I’ve got so much to say on this topic! In my experience, what I’ve found to always be winning qualities in potential team members (and by winning I mean the kind of people you want to recruit immediately and then keep happy) are; firstly intelligence. Intelligence always wins. If someone is smart enough, they’ll figure it out. Smart people attract smart people, so once you have a critical mass of smart people, other smart people will likely join almost by osmosis. This is a necessary condition for pretty much everything else.
Secondly, ownership and accountability. Does this person have radical self-reliance and self-responsibility? Are they the kind of person that will take ownership of their task/job/project and not deflect authority or blame? Is this someone who will get the damn job done without excuses, and think for themselves? You want to be around people that don’t have a victim mindset. You don’t want people that wring their hands in despair and wait to be saved, you want the people that say “shit’s going haywire, this is how I propose we get it back on track, and I’m gonna lead the charge on it!”.
And finally, you want people that are kind. Humans are complex and beautiful creatures and somehow we have to figure out how to get along if we want to build this spectacular future we keep talking about. Cooperation is essential. No one is perfect. Being kind enough to put up with everyone’s idiosyncrasies, insecurities, and eccentricities and loving them for what they are (instead of resenting them for what they’re not) creates a trusting environment where everyone can be vulnerable, exploratory, creative and their bestest, beautiful, weird selves!
Recently the company released a new web & mobile app. The aim was to improve the experience for both the Landlords & Tenants, making the onboarding experience for Landlords easier plus moderating listings to make it more secure for Tenants. It’s a beautiful, well-designed platform, congratulations on that.
Given you talk to Landlords & Tenants when building, How do you go about designing the business for trust?
Airbnb speaks a lot about building for trust, and we’ve taken many, many leaves out of their book(s). They’re a phenomenal team. However, building for trust is 100x more important for South Africans when crime is never far from our minds. Especially for women. (I’d like to take this moment to punt an Instagram account called #KeepTheEnergy which shares daily posts about women that have been the victims of GBV in South Africa. Massive trigger warning, it’s extremely graphic, but I want to urge every voting South African to acquaint themselves with the continual stories of GBV until a rage about this war on women permeates our society and GBV prevention becomes an issue that politicians get elected in or out of office on - it’s the only way we’ll see change!)
At DigsConnect, we design trust in “nets”, by introducing a series of ways via the platform and support to continually filter listings and users to catch and remove the bad fish. Good design is when the good users don’t even know there’s nets, while the bad ones are removed. I don’t think we’re quite there with the perfect design yet, but we are good at removing the bad fish.
DigsConnect.com, thanks in part to your Co-Founder Greg, has a unique take on marketing. The money in the air campaign to launch the company was a success & #digsaur was also a success amongst the intended market, being university students.
As you now open up the platform to Tenants outside of students, How do you navigate attracting new Tenants whilst not alienating your target Tenants?
DigsConnect is a cohousing platform. We’re about the social living experience. Students exemplify this and have made it famous through digs culture, but young adults are living the same experience (albeit with more persistent hangovers haha!). We had to make almost no changes to our product and brand to broaden our scope to be more inclusive of non-students on our platform, because these tenants (recent graduates mostly) have the same living requirements as students, and in many cases had been using DigsConnect to find their student digs, and now can keep using it to find their adult digs!
Lastly, accommodation marketplaces have high scale potential. The most famous one, Airbnb is about to IPO.
Having proven the model works in South Africa, how do you view Expansion? Where would people see DigsConnect.com in the next 18-24 months?
I’m a bright-eyed idealist that fundamentally believes in good, in kindness and in the potential of human beings. I want DigsConnect to be a tool to help people who need it the most. This means countries that still need development. South Africa for a start needs a lot of development, and as a die-hard patriot I feel a call of duty to make it work. Why I love platform businesses is because they bring people together to transact. We’re not selling you anything, we’re just creating a little universe for people to come together to make a deal; to find a home, or find a tenant. To perhaps start investing in property rest assured that you’ll fill it on DigsConnect and perhaps realise a dream of building a little (or large!) portfolio. To realise a dream of getting an education, perhaps the first in your family to do so. To find an incredible roommate that turns into your best friend and the person you think about when you think back on your university years. This is the stuff of life, and I guess I just feel humbled and honoured that I can be a part of that and shape it for the better. Make life 0.001% better, more inclusive, more safe, more fun, more easy, more connected.
Okay that “more connected” part was kinda cheesy, but I’m gonna roll with it. Haha! Boom! Let’s do this.
Hahaha. Thanks again Alexandria, take care.
For more information on DigsConnect, visit DigsConnect.com