Alexandria Procter has embraced her rebellious nature and created something that truly supports South African students; she shares her journey to success in her new memoir UPSTART.
South Africa (27 March 2024) — Alexandria Procter is a South African name to watch! She started her career inspired by her time at university, creating a startup business with her friend Greg Keal that is today a major success, and to think, it all started to help answer the very serious student housing crisis in South Africa.
Alexandria penned her experience of launching a booming startup in her memoir, UPSTART. She starts by retelling the reader about her school days, explaining that she was often labelled as a naughty, disobedient scholar and eventually became that, spending more time in detention than not. Her focus was never to be academically minded, and yet she has built a business that supports all those hopeful academics who dream of completing their studies to go on and do great things.
Her rebellious nature was the very thing needed to make the kind of impact the DigsConnect startup needed. Focusing on students’ financial constraints, Alexandria, Greg, and coder Michael set out to launch their website in the only way a student would understand and appreciate it: by throwing money into the air and giving UCT students a little something to relieve the financial burden of student life.
That very act was the moment that changed everything for the startup and the small yet dedicated team behind it. They went from mere students with wild dreams to seeding R12 million in investment funding, all before the age of 25.
The memoir reads like the telling of a tale, with Alexandria sharing every detail of her journey, from turning down scholarships in favour of travelling India solo, to adventuring in the Amazon and following the Machu Picchu. Her travels were eye-opening and pushed her to see the injustices of the world, and it was this solo-travelled gap year that drove Alexandria to do something that would make a difference.
In the years that lead up to the biggest startup investment, Alexandria goes through the throes of growing up from a teen into a young woman in a politically charged South Africa, seeing the sheer need of students who do not come from privilege and working to help them in some way. She faces challenges in the business and like many across the world, the pandemic does its number! Navigating that has been the most challenging and most rewarding experience in her rise to success.
UPSTART is a brutally honest look at what life is like for a rising young female businesswoman with a drive to succeed and the attitude to make it happen. Reading the book felt like sitting across the table from Alexandria, sipping wine and listening to her sharing her deeply personal yet inspiring life story. She lays it all bare right there in the pages of her memoir.
It’s an easy read that flows from one big moment to the next. By the end of the book, you feel like you have a new friend with a very bright future ahead of them. Alexandria’s “this is life and it must be lived” attitude was enough to get me off the couch and busy with my never-ending to-do list.
Alexandra now lives between the United Kingdom and South Africa; her visits between the two countries even inspired her to pen all the things she loves about visiting home, which we featured in 2023. Alexandria adds being an author to her growing list of titles, and it seems to fit just as well as all the others she has gathered over the years.
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The back of the book
At 25, Alexandria Procter became one of South Africa’s youngest tech startup wunderkinds.
As an undergrad student at UCT, Alexandira came up with the idea for DigsConnect, similar to an Airbnb for students. Deeply affected by the violent student protests which swept university campuses in 2016, Alexandria created a website in 2018 that would address the tumultuous student housing crisis.
In 2019 DigsConnect disrupted the local tech terrain by raising R12 million in its first seed fundraising round, one of the largest in South Africa ever. DigsConnect has subsequently transformed from being a local student accommodation startup to catapulting into the global fourth industrial revolution.
Born in a small town in the Eastern Cape at the same time as South Africa’s democracy, Alexandria’s school career was characterised by defiance, rebellion and Friday afternoon detentions. Never one to toe the line, Alexandra dared to shoot for the stars.
Alexandria’s book Upstart was published on the 1st of March 2024 and is available as a paperback at all bookstores. For more about “Upstart”, take a look at the website here.
Interested in more proudly South African books? You can find more of our book reviews here.
Sources: Various – Linked Above
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