Aisha Pandor and Alen Ribic are the co-founders of SweepSouth – an online platform for connecting homeowners with excellent, reliable, experienced domestic cleaning professionals – basically Uber for cleaning professionals. We bumped into them at the recent Start-Up South Africa event where they walked away as winners in the Get Up Start-up competition with an eight week trip to Silicon Valley, and entry to the 12 month Vumela Edge Growth incubation program to look forward to.

1. Tell us about the team and your education/ experience before SweepSouth.

Aisha: SweepSouth was founded by myself and my partner Alen Ribic. Alen has over a decade of experience in engineering and developing scalable software systems and has served lead roles at various South African software companies. He is passionate about technology in education and has lectured on computer programming and advised various government departments on modernisation and technology. I have a PhD in human genetics but worked as a management consultant in strategy, operations and HR management before starting SweepSouth.

2. How and when did you come up with the idea?

Alen: We came up with the idea while on holiday in Cape Town in December 2013. We couldn’t find a domestic helper to clean the house and were horrified at the idea of going through hours or even days of work trying to find someone reliable, do interviews, background and reference checks and then supervise cleaning. This led us to the idea for SweepSouth.

3. Brief company history from idea to today.

Alen: We came up with the idea while on holiday in December 2013, then discussed it over January, sent out a survey to determine general appetite for the idea, and started building in February. We launched in Johannesburg on the 1st June and will be launching in Cape Town later in the year.

4. How long did it take to build?

Aisha: It took us around four months to build before launching, but we are constantly iterating and improving in line with our customer’s needs.

5. What would you do differently next time?

Aisha: Nothing much. Perhaps build a “signup” landing page before launching to sign up potential clients while building the platform, but the four months building was so work-intensive that we didn’t really have time to do this and instead wanted to focus on launching quickly. We tend to see any “mistakes” we’ve made as vital to the learning process though, so we wouldn’t change anything.

6. The biggest achievement to date…

Alen: Having exceeded all of our monthly targets so far and grown revenue by 450% in our first four months, having a 4,7/5 average client rating, and securing first round funding.

7. The biggest challenge to overcome…

Aisha: The biggest challenge has been the uncertainty of not knowing whether we would run out of funds, whether people would love the idea, or how long would it take to “take off”. The whole process has been tough mentally and running a startup requires a lot of guts!

8. It is the right moment for SweepSouth because…

Alen: E-commerce is growing at a rapid rate in South Africa and Africa and we are becoming increasingly comfortable with using the internet for buying things and for booking flights and concert tickets. Booking services over the internet seems the logical next choice.

9. The secret sauce of SweepSouth is…

Aisha: The skill combination that Alen and I bring to the table, as well as our attitude towards our cleaners, who we want to uplift and empower as partners who grow as the company does.

10. What productivity/organisational habit could you not do without?

Alen: My morning espresso and Trello, an excellent tool to help manage and organise our SweepSouth daily tasks.

11. The greatest advice someone ever gave you about start-ups?

Aisha: Paul Graham‘s advice to “do things that don’t scale“. Following this advice has helped us to launch SweepSouth quickly, and to understand the problem and required solutions intimately before trying to automate everything.

Contact SweepSouth:

Website: https://sweepsouth.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SweepSouth2014

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SweepSouthSA

Email: [email protected]