Combining financial services, data-driven insights, and travel APIs to help people afford global travel
and the Rubik Hub Startup Alley event
Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spottily or elsewhere. Below is some information about the episode. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links included in the post.
Hello from Eric in Bucharest, Romania.
In this issue: the Rubik Hub Startup Alley event, introducing new exclusive discounts for popular SaaS tools, Growth Mentor, Fly Wallet founder Alejandra Fernandez, and more!
Rubik Hub Startup Event
I had a fun time attending Rubik Hub’s Startup and Demo day this week in Bucharest. Always great to see what innovations are coming out of the region and meeting founders in person. At the event I had a chance to meet:
Emil Chichioi from BloomCoding who is building an online after-school EdTech solution. Kids will get to use a VR and AR tool to use during lessons. 🍎
Paul Burtic from Platerq who is solving the problem of bill splitting and long wait times to getting the bill in restaurants. 🍽️
Paul Burca and Andrew Hutanu from Silverbacks.app who are creating an AI-powered marketplace that matches teams with clients. 👬
Marius Grigorica, Adrian Capraru, and Alex Constantin from Stock Estate who are building a crowd-lending platform specializing in identifying, vetting, and financing real estate properties. 🏠
And many other talented founders who are bringing innovation to scale across many different industries.
SaaS Deal of the Week
Every week I’m going to provide an exclusive offer for a popular SaaS tool. This week, you can get a 20% discount for the first three months of a Pro subscription for Email Octopus. More than 50,000 companies use EmailOctopus to build beautiful emails, set them on autopilot, and segment their subscribers.
Innovators Can Laugh
I chatted with French startup founder Alejandra Fernandez of Flywallet. Flywallet is an all-in-one digital wallet and flight aggregation tool that makes it easy for users to save monthly for future travel. But the platform does more than that. It keeps track of flights within your budget, and can help offset travel related carbon emissions when you book a flight. Alejandra is from the Dominican Republic, but relocated to France after being accepted into Station F. Catch the interview here.
In this conversation we learn:
What is the average savings that someone can expect by booking through Flywallet instead of another travel booking site
How FlyWallet helps offset carbon emissions
What users really like about the platform
What was one of the hardest obstacles Alejandra had to overcome
Projected revenue and employee count
Best advice that her mom ever gave her
Popular TikTok Video
This clip with Reynold Simonnet from Dipli is the most recent popular ICL video on TikTok. Catch the podcast interview here.
Growth Mentor
I’ve been invited to share my consulting services on GrowthMentor. If you’re not familiar with Growth Mentor, it is a curated platform of invite-only startup and marketing mentors which have proven experience in their respective fields. Startups, entrepreneurs and marketers can schedule 1-on-1 sessions with these mentors and connect via Skype, Zoom, or Google Hangouts. For a limited time you can schedule a free 30-minute call with me if you want to talk about partnership marketing or anything else related to personal video marketing or GTM marketing strategy.
The End
I had an amazing productive week as my kids are back in school during the day. This past week we had a picnic in Mogosoaia park, had some delicious burgers from Vivo (imo the best burgers in Bucharest), caught up on Better Call Saul, and met some friends in Herastrau park. It was a fun week!
Let’s go kick some butt. Have a great weekend.
🤠 Eric Melchor