What the Diggz does
Simply put, Diggz is a platform to find roommates. But not just to rent a room or fill up one. Diggz’s vision is to connect like-minded individuals with similar lifestyles in a shared living experience. On Diggz, one can find a room, rent a room, or partner up to find a place together.
The Current Landscape
When Diggz started, they were one of the first on the scene of new roommate finder apps. There were a few that started a bit after and that no longer exist today. There was one giant place to find roommates and it was Craigslist. Today, aside from Diggz, there are other similar apps. Each has their own take on roommate matching, similar to what’s happening with the dating apps. Other than that, there is Facebook, which has housing groups for many cities. However, even though the interface is familiar and many people are already using Facebook, it does lack some tools to narrow down specific requirements. Some of their groups just don’t have enough volume compared to Diggz.
Company Birth Story
The idea for Diggz formed after Rany Burstein, Diggz’s Founder, had one really bad roommate search experience; Thinking he found the perfect roommate on Craigslist, a female roommate with an awesome apartment in the Financial District, slammed her door in his face after realizing “Rany” was a dude and not a girl. This was last minute too, so he ended up needing to store all his stuff and couch surf for a month.
The experience made Rany realize that there was no effective way to find reliable roommates online that fit someone’s specific preferences. Something as minor as gender, or a face photo were not included on Craigslist. It still isn’t. It was hard and time consuming to meet roommates online, and even harder to find likeable ones. The process seemed like a crapshoot and didn’t really teach much about a future roommate until it was maybe too late.
Rany had an idea how to make the roommate search more efficient and transparent. So he partnered with Ben Blodgett, his co-founder, and they were off to the races to launch Diggz.
The Solution
At its core, Diggz relies on a matching algorithm to connect people with their best roommate matches. They take people’s circumstances like moving date, preferred areas, and budget. They also consider their lifestyle preferences in terms of work and sleep hours, interaction, drinking and smoking habits and more to match them with prospects that will be a good fit. Folks can see a lot of info about each other upfront without really needing to go back and forth until they realize there is a deal breaker. People can also chat on Diggz to flush out all the rest. Diggz is different than the competitors in the fact that they focus on individuals and not rooms. A lot of what is out there is trying to mimic an Airbnb type of site. On Diggz it’s more about connecting the right individuals. They’ll have to live together after all. Since Diggz launched, they’ve matched thousands of roommates nationwide.
A Customer Story
Other than helping people find great roommates, Diggz has also been responsible for many new friendships. Since many of the people who use Diggz are moving to a new city, they might not really know anyone before moving. As part of the roommate search process they get to know a lot of people. They end up living with one (or two) roommates, but they can make many friends in the new city before they even moved. That is one cool by-product of their service.
Check out more: https://www.diggz.co/
Social media links:
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/Diggz.co
Instagram- https://instagram.com/diggzny/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/diggzny