'If you're considering starting a business, I cannot recommend this book highly enough'
Bruce Whitfield chats to DigsConnect co-founder Alexandria Procter about her book 'Upstart'.
Upstart by Alexandria Procter. Image: Bruce Whitfield on Twitter
Every week The Money Show interviews the author or reviewer of a new or trending business book.
Procter's book 'Upstart' tells the story of the journey that led her to co-founding DigsConnect International, at the age of 25.
Motivated by student protests in 2016, she created a platform addressing the student housing crisis.
DigsConnect raised R12 million in its initial seed fundraising round in 2019, propelling it from a local startup to a global player in the tech landscape.
In 2021, Procter was also appointed to the board of directors of the National Youth Development Agency by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
It all started when she was assigned the 'cursed' portfolio of student housing on the UCT SRC.
"We were looking at the shack erected on upper campus, thinking this is the state of the nation, and why is nothing being done.. Before you take the leap it seems almost impossible, but once you've taken the leap it's so obvious..."
"We confronted this housing crisis, realising that we had to get stuck in and build a solution. That solution was just me building a little website one weekend that has taken a life of its own."
"We didn't plan to build a business - the idea wasn't to become an entrepreneur but to solve the problems on my desk, which was how do I help these students that are homeless... how can I just provide value."
"What's been so interesting, is this started at UCT... and then all the universities around Cape Town, and then Stellenbosch; and then Johannesburg asked for it... and then we started working offshore. It seems to be a global issue, a lack of organisation around the infrastructure available for housing."
"I think our model does make sense because we get paid when everyone wins... There are more ways we can model it and add different revenue protocols. We're exploring all of that, but I think we definitely want to lock down our core model."
Alexandria Procter, Author - Upstart
Description on NB Publishers:
At 25, Alexandria Procter became SA's youngest startup tech wunderkind.
During her annual break from UCT in 2018, she came up with the idea for DigsConnect. Deeply affected by the violent student protests which swept university campuses in 2016, Alexandria created a website that would address the tumultuous student housing crisis.
DigsConnect has subsequently transformed from being a local student startup, to catapulting into the global fourth industrial revolution. A deeply inspiring story.
Scroll up hear more from Alexandria Procter