What's up everybody?

This is Cortland from AndyHackers.com and you're listening to the Andy Hackers podcast.

On this show, I talked to the founders of profitable internet businesses and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes.

How did they get to where they are today?

How did they make decisions, both of their companies and in their personal lives, and what exactly makes their businesses tick? And the goal here, as always, is so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and go on to build our own profitable internet businesses. Today, I am in beautiful South Africa in Cape Town, sitting across from the lovely Alex Proctor, the founder of

Diggs. Alex, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Coulton. I'm so excited to be chatting to you.

I'm excited to be here. South Africa is amazing. Amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's a great place.

It's honestly a very confusing place, too, for an American economy. There's so many different

groups that live here in different situations and I mean, we have 11 national languages. Yeah. Just like the start. That's too many. I mean, at roadside, it's all hula confusing. I tell you that. It's like, oh my gosh, which one do I pick? Yeah, I don't know what the right number of national languages is, but 11 is definitely... And like one tunnel for taking to you to like this beautiful, like beachy, like, it's like really upmarket area. And the other turnip would take you to like, in case where you don't end up after dying. It's like one or two. There's no in between. Yeah. Well, I'm succeeding. I haven't been murdered yet. But it's my last day here. so I think I'll make it out alive. And that you just cross those fingers. So tell us a little bit about Diggs.

What is it exactly? yet. But it's my last day here, so I think I'll make it out alive. And that you just cross those fingers.

So tell us a little bit about Diggs. What is it exactly?

So Diggs or Diggs Connect is Africa's largest student accommodation marketplace.

Essentially, we sort of call ourselves the AMV of student housing, which perhaps I shouldn't

say on an American-based podcast because people might actually have

like issue with that. But in South Africa, no one really cause concern yet. But basically all we do

is in marketplace that just connects landlords and students. You know, in South Africa we have a bunch

of universities, a bunch of private colleges, about 2.3 million students in total. But only a tiny

amounts of those students are housed by the actual university. It's about 5%. So most students either living at home or need to find their own housing. Before Diggs Connect starts, there was no place to go. Like, it was really antiquated. There were like posters on walls. There were stickers up and like in the university library saying, spare room in my house, my flat, whatever it is. Just so you know, a digs is like a South African term for like a student commune, like a house

or my digs, whatever. And yeah, there's no place to go. I mean, there's maybe like Facebook groups or people chat each other or like a friend of a friend or no place. But there's no like actual go to place. and I was getting worse

almost every year

where people were like

we cannot find a place this day

...