Digs Connect

Alex Proctor was a biology undergraduate at the University of Cape Town who got elected to the Student Representative Council with a portfolio in student housing. She found herself in an impossible position: students kept coming to her saying they couldn't find places to live, while landlords and property companies called saying they had empty beds but couldn't find tenants. South Africa was experiencing a massive influx of university students—the first in their families—but universities only housed about 5% of them. The problem was dire: students were literally sleeping in lecture theaters and libraries. A major protest called Fees Must Fall had even led to a symbolic "Shackville" erected on campus, where students built a mock slum to represent their housing crisis.

Sitting in her SRC office, Alex maintained a spreadsheet manually matching students with landlords listings. She had just completed one year of computer science—enough to know Python, JavaScript, and basic web development from Khan Academy and online resources. Over a single weekend, frustrated by the inefficiency, she built a two-page website: one page to search listings, another to add a property. She called it "Digs Connect" ("digs" being South African slang for a student house; "connect" because it connected people). At an SRC meeting, she mentioned it so fast that attendees thought she said "Digs, a dating website"—someone even drew a logo of two digs touching as a joke. The website went live in January 2018 with minimal fanfare. "I kind of forgot about it," Alex recalls, "still studying, still doing my qualification."

The first customers came organically. Landlords who had been calling Alex at the SRC office were told about her website and started creating listings themselves. Then something unexpected happened: Alex was checking Google Analytics in lectures and noticed traffic spiking from people she'd never spoken to. Students and landlords from nearby Stellenbosch University started signing up. Then calls came from Johannesburg and Pretoria—cities three times larger than Cape Town's market. One landlord called saying he had 4,000 students at a massive university in a remote town and had listed 70,000 beds on the platform. The organic growth was exploding.

The success came down to solving a desperate problem with zero friction. Students needed housing; landlords had empty rooms; universities refused to digitize (preferring paper lists). Alex's position as an SRC officer gave her credibility and reach. Her willingness to just "do it myself" when the university bureaucracy said no—the "no scram" (shamelessness) mentality she later reflected on—meant she didn't wait for permission. She also built community features like "Find a Digs Mate" for roommate matching, tapping into the South African concept of "ubuntu" (togetherness).

When the platform became flooded with landlord listings in Cape Town but lacked student traffic, the team had to learn marketing. They rejected boring approaches like posters and flyers, opting instead for creative, grassroots tactics.

Two co-founders joined: Greg, an operations and marketing genius who structured everything into actionable plans, and Brandon, who rebuilt the entire platform in Django and React, hosting it on Google Cloud (which gave them free credits). This complementary team—Alex with big-picture ideas and sales energy, Greg with operational execution, Brandon with technical chops—became crucial to scaling.

By 2019 (roughly two years after launch), Digs Connect listed 70,000 beds across 17 locations, covering every major university in South Africa. The team decided to fundraise when competitors started circling and interest became overwhelming. After a thoughtful fundraising process—Alex worked with a Deloitte auditor to get financials right—they met with investors. One group stood out: immediate chemistry, aligned vision, trust in their mission. Within five weeks, the deal closed at $900,000 (described as the largest seed round in South Africa at that time).

Alex reflected on why this problem hadn't been solved before: partly cultural (many South Africans don't feel empowered to solve big problems), partly practical (tech solutions weren't as natural in South Africa as in America), and partly structural (the education system trains followers, not leaders). But Digs Connect proved that one person with audacity and a weekend could change lives—like the Zimbabwean student who finally got a visa because he could prove accommodation via the platform.

The impact went beyond commerce. Digs was enabling education access, filling the gap left by a failing government, and lifting infrastructure across South Africa. For Alex, the meaningful work in a place with real problems beat Silicon Valley meaninglessness every time.