Floqq is a Madrid, Spain-based provider of an on-demand learning platform, which recently raised 405k from Cabiedes & Partners and Enisa (read here).
CEO Álvaro Sanmartín, who cofounded the startup along with Carlos González de Villaumbrosia, VP Product, Robert Jerovšek, CTO, Álvaro Noaín Larrinaga, CBDO, Tanja Lau, COO, Álvaro Zamácola, CFO, answered our questions about himself, the company, the product, the funding and future plans.
FinSMEs: Hello Alvaro, thank you for joining us. First, can you tell us a little bit more about you?
Alvaro: “Thank you for inviting me to participate. About me… let´s say I am an Engineer who found his passion in Management and Global Crowd-powered projects. My passion is transform good ideas in great products, creating the most exciting workplace and company culture as an important part of that adventure“.
FinSMEs: Let’s speak about Floqq…What is it?
Alvaro: “Floqq is born to improve the way people learn new skills. We are a useful life-long learning marketplace where anyone can teach and learn whatever matters them using what we call “pills of knowledge”. As we have started our operations in Spain, we are focused on skills that are demanded by the labor market these days“.
FinSMEs: Tell me something more. How does it work?
Alvaro: “In Floqq you can find very specific and practical courses about the skills that are being demanded by companies. The difference with the traditional education is that, as well as Amazon or Ebay, you can rate the teacher performance, the content of the course, etc. using your own social network. We believe that learning is a social activity, and it´s very important to know who is going to teach you, and who has been in that class before, in order to know if it´s worth it“.
FinSMEs: Who is the tipical customer?
Alvaro: “Somebody who needs to know a specific skill for work, and also some passionate people who love to learn new skills“.
FinSMEs: …and the tipical teacher/expert?
Alvaro: “A professional who has been working in a specific field and see us as an opportunity to earn extra money with it. They get more than 80% of the ticket price that they set…so it´s a pretty good deal, with no risk. If we don´t sell tickets of the course, we don´t charge anybody“.
FinSMEs: What’s your business model?
Alvaro: “We take 15% of each transaction that takes place in our continuous learning marketplace“.
FinSMEs: Could you introduce us to the other team members?
Alvaro: “Well…we have a pretty international team who share the passion about learning new things and move fast. The four co-founders met in UC Berkeley, they came back and created one of the best Engineering teams I have ever seen. Right now we are more than 15 people involved in the project, with 6 nationalities, working as hard as the founders. Sometimes it moves me how our people talk about the company“.
FinSMEs: You just raised seed funding…What can you tell us? Was it difficult? What about your relationship with investors?
Alvaro: “It´s challenging, and you need to have some ingredients that are really difficult to gather: International team, Scalable business model, First sales happening, And above all…you need to find people who fall in love with the project as much as you are. I have always considered investors as part of my team, as well as my users“.
FinSMEs: how are you using the funds?
Alvaro: “We are investing in creating a better product, expand our service to LATAM and other countries, and find marketing alliances“.
FinSMEs:…future plans?
Alvaro: “Our objective is to become the most useful tool to learn useful skills, in any dispositive, format and country“.
FinSMEs
08/01/2013