The eYou platform, a Romania-based social media startup currently in pre-launch, aims to become a European alternative to traditional networks, focusing on algorithm transparency, user control over feeds, and AI-powered fact-checking. The project has raised €300,000 in pre-seed funding from Fil Rouge Capital and has already attracted over 10,000 sign-ups on its first day.

Founded by Jasseem Allybokus and Grégoire Vigroux, two French entrepreneurs based in Romania, eYou positions itself as a “trust-by-design” platform in contrast to global players like Facebook and X.

At the core of the product is a real-time fact-checking feature integrated directly into the user experience. With a single click, users can access AI-generated assessments of posts, based on credible and neutral sources, enabling them to verify claims without interrupting the flow of conversation.

The platform also introduces a transparent recommendation system, allowing users to view and adjust the profile built about them. This gives users direct control over the signals shaping their feed and the option to diversify content exposure beyond algorithm-driven echo chambers.

Built in Europe and aligned with strict data protection standards, eYou enters a market increasingly concerned with misinformation, platform accountability, and the dominance of non-European tech giants.

The public launch is scheduled for May 2026. Until then, users can join the waitlist and secure early access at: eyou.social.

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Veridion (formerly known as Soleadify) announces a $6 million late seed round to expand to US and further develop their proprietary AIs that are specifically trained to understand the global business landscape, enabling their clients, including tier 1 consultancies and market intelligence firms, to access reliable data on 80 million businesses worldwide, saving thousands of hours of manual research and achieving record accuracy and refresh rates.

The deep tech startups raised the seed round from LAUNCHub Ventures, OTB Ventures, Underline Ventures, and existing investors Day One Capital and GapMinder Venture Partners.

Veridion leverages the power of AI to revolutionize big data and to comprehend billions of webpages every week in order to build and maintain a highly accurate, global scale, near real-time, single-source-of-truth database of company data made available through a Complex Search API and a Matching & Enriching API.

They are one of the first companies to deploy AI at this scale for data acquisition, setting them apart from the traditional firmographic data players that buy data from government registries as well as simple web-scraping alternative data providers.

Firmographic data is information that can be used to categorize organizations by a host of information such as business activity, products or services offered, location, employees, industry, technology offered etc. Enterprises are missing reliable, up-to-date information about market participants and a lack of those crucial insights leads to sub-optimal decisions and challenges when navigating through dynamically changing environments.

Veridion is positioned to be a firmographic intelligence leader, boasting a database of over 60 data points on over 80 million businesses with record accuracy rates and the highest refresh rate on the market.

Veridion saw solid growth figures in 2022, with over 3x increase in recurring revenue and an impressive zero churn in clients. Their biggest clients include, among others, tier 1 consultancies with specialized procurement and insurance teams, one of the largest global insurtech platforms, procurement platforms, and top tier market intelligence companies. There are multiple reasons for this, key among which is their highly granular data, the control their APIs offer on confidence scores and their internal matching engine which allows them to pinpoint businesses at unprecedented rates.

The name change is intended to highlight the company’s unique standing in the market, their commitment to being a single source of truth and reflect the company’s ambitious plans for future growth.

Florin Tufan, founder and CEO, Veridion: “We believe that the next generation of business decision engines, regardless of industry or vertical will require a completely new format of data. Predictive models will rely on AI more than human intuition and will be capable of processing exponentially more data as their core resource. For this, the data needs to be fresh, granular, easy to work with, and integrate-able across a wide array of processes. This has been our focus from the beginning and with this round, we’ll be able to double down on our approach.”

The firmographic data market in which Veridion operates is also known as the business information market and was valued at $211 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow towards $291 billion by 2027, with new technologies like AI representing a game-changer for big data. According to Gartner’s Data Quality Market Survey, the average financial impact of bad data on organizations in 2022 was estimated to be around  $12.9 million per year.

Recent developments in ML capabilities unlocked the doors for Veridion to be positioned quite differently from other market participants. Players such as Delphai, Planck Data, and Grata have collectively raised over $110M in the past 7 years of operations and development. While companies like these cover local markets and company records in the 10 – 20 million range, Veridion boasted over 70 million company records within their first two years of activity.

Delphai covers primarily private markets for M&A, prospecting and supplier sourcing, segments where Veridion brings in-depth data on hundreds of millions of products and services and business activities in all commonly used taxonomies worldwide such as NAICS, NACE, SIC, etc on companies from all around the world. Planck Data is focused on commercial underwriting but only covers the US market as opposed to Veridion’s global coverage and Grata, which is focused primarily on deal sourcing also lacks the in-depth perspective that Veridion brings on specific company descriptions, risk signals and other rapidly expanding data points that Veridion extracts on the companies they oversee.

The biggest name in firmographic data is Dun & Bradstreet, with over 200 years experience in the field. Dun & Bradstreet and Veridion may serve slightly different market segments, but their differences are pronounced when it comes to data products and capabilities. Veridion offers a distinct advantage in its coverage of the SMB landscape, with regularly refreshed data and in-depth product-level information and retail locations. The NLP-based approach employed by Veridion also enables the extraction of unique data attributes for specific industries, such as specific underwriting and supplier risks, enabling the company to better meet the needs of its clients through custom data solutions.

After validating their data with large enterprise clients in commercial insurance underwriting, supplier discovery, and private market analysis, Veridion is releasing self-service APIs to enable faster data integration for potential clients and open up to new markets in data-centric SaaS or other early-stage solutions.

Veridion plans to continue building its US footprint by opening a New York office in 2023 to more closely support their growing base of clients in the region.

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Former UiPath General Counsel Vasile Tiple launches Goodlegal, a legal infrastructure platform aimed at providing organizations with an out-of-the-box legal operations framework to achieve legal compliance by leveraging the latest technology advancements and industry-standard content.  

Goodlegal received a pre-seed investment of €1.2 million from early UiPath investors Earlybird Digital East Fund, which led the round, Credo Ventures together with Daniel Dines, and including the latest CEE VC fund, Underline Ventures.

“We are starting our journey to reinvent legal and help our customers to focus on their business, develop great products and become self-sufficient with Goodlegal infrastructure. Our mission is to make legal easy, accessible, and actionable.”, says Vasile Tiple.

Goodlegal is a one-stop-shop for legal compliance which aims to democratize legal by providing individuals and organizations with a legal infrastructure platform to drive frictionless engagement with the stakeholders. It offers various functionalities, ranging from drag-and-drop document builder to out-of-the-box documents, editor and text analysis, e-signature, automation functionalities, and integrations, through which every organization can achieve a sound legal compliance and operations framework in no time. 

Currently, there isn’t a platform available to provide a prebuilt legal infrastructure needed for the daily operations of a company. The entire legal tech market was built around very specific features without considering the bigger picture of what a company might need to be legally compliant. Even the end-user legal market evolved in two different directions: tools built for external lawyers on one side and tools built for in-house lawyers on the other side. Goodlegal is addressing both these legal market inconsistencies by addressing the needs of both law firms and in-house lawyers.

”We aim for Goodlegal to become the industry-accepted <legal operating system>, a standard blueprint for how to put your legal infrastructure in place. Our immediate goal is to be the go-to legal platform for all startups and help them freely achieve the next stage in their company evolution, while medium and long-term goals include large enterprises for which we are developing various integrations, creating a Goodlegal ecosystem for any company irrespective of its size or industry.”, adds Vasile Tiple.  

Vasile Tiple was UiPath’s General Counsel and the architect of the global legal and compliance team. He was at the forefront of designing and implementing the company’s legal operations, support, and automation vision. In his last role at UiPath as Head of Legal & Compliance Automation, Vasile created the go-to-market of the internal Legal Automation Program he implemented in 2016 in UiPath Legal to use RPA for legal work. Vasile has a Ph.D. in International Law from the University of Bucharest, is an author of various academic papers on law, administration, and AI, and previously worked at various organizations, including Adobe.

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On September 21 and 22, at Face Convention Center Bucharest, 2.000 participants from Eastern Europe will meet at How to Web 2022, an event that will mark an important step for those who want to access exclusive business opportunities, connect with like-minded entrepreneurs, marketers, investors or team managers and meet the experts who have made history through their pioneering work methodologies, books or results in the industry.

The How to Web conference offers a complete experience to attendees, with dedicated meeting areas, four stages with industry leaders from around the world, the most intense competition for startups in the region, a dedicated party in collaboration with YouTube Music, and many more.

“Product innovation occurs in stages. There are several elements that make an idea turn into a scalable business, from the moment of launch, the capital attracted, the people in the team, and the project management in general. What excites me is that in recent years the ecosystem in Southeast Europe is undergoing accelerated development. There are more and more opportunities for mentoring, practice, and attracting funding for projects in IT, agriculture, e-health, and even the high-precision industry. All this effervescence of product development initiatives, testing of new business models, and transformation into scalable businesses, are the basis of the formation of a dynamic entrepreneurial community, with unlimited opportunities, according to the human talent of our region.”, says Lavinia Neagoe, Bucharest Technology Site Lead at Google.

The Complete Conference Agenda

The agenda is complete and showcases over 70 industry leaders, many of them for the first time in Romania. Bruce McCarthy, James Mayes, Alexandra Lung, and Matt Lerner are just a few examples of experts who have managed to propel global companies to success and will share their best practices this month, in Bucharest.

The How to Web agenda is mainly inspired by the startup culture, which is based on rapid and efficient decisions for businesses and the methods by which we can bring transformative results in the shortest time. Therefore, the topics will gravitate around this startup culture, putting the light on building high-performing teams, product development, marketing and growth, or the future of innovation.

The speakers’ line-up includes:

• Julia Steier, Product Manager at Google
• Mick Halsband, Founder of Lunar Ventures 
• Bogdan Ripa, VP of Product at UiPath
• Ivan Burazin, Chief Developer Experience Officer at Infobip
• Martin Olczyk, Managing Director at Techstars
• Sultan Seitbekov, Lead Product Manager at Miro
• Christoph Auer-Welsbach, Founder of Kaizo
• Ivan Kovalov, VP of Product at Payhawk
• Valentin Radu, Founder & CEO at Omniconvert
• Carlos Espinal, Managing Partner at Seedcamp

The complete list and agenda of the conference can be visited on the dedicated page: howtoweb.co/agenda/

The Most Intense Competition for Startups in Eastern Europe

Following the annual tradition, the How to Web conference cannot take place without the competition dedicated to early-stage startups — Spotlight. Reaching a record award this year, probably the biggest in this region of Europe, the Spotlight competition is a not to be missed chance for founders who want to propel their startups to success.

With more than 100 renowned mentors and investors from Europe, unique opportunities for collaboration and scaling, an investment prize of almost half a million euros, and other surprises for founders from the event’s partners, Spotlight participants will be able to enjoy an unforgettable experience in their business life.

Following the evaluation of the investor panel, 40 startups were selected to enter the Spotlight 2022 matchmaking program: 121tribe, Adapta Robotics, Atlas Navi, Avo Cool, Avokaado, Beesers, Bitskout, Bloomcoding, Braight, Clastr, ClientZen, CPV Lab Pro, DEA Medicine, Directimo, dMonitor, Epic Visits, ExigoHealth, Eyelet, Fagura, Getpin, Gorilla Link, GuidefAI, Help2Go, Holoma, Hyperhuman, Hyperjob, INKI.TECH, INPUT SOFT, InRento, Licenseware, LINK, MediNav, NRGI.ai, Palmo, Prime Dash, Proofminder, SOLO, Synaptiq, Vestinda, Virbe and Voxa.

Of these, 20 will be selected as semi-finalists during the conference, entering the race for the grand prize and benefiting from multiple opportunities such as exhibiting the startup in the dedicated pavilion, mentoring sessions, meetings with investors, or other prizes from BRD – Groupe Société Générale or F6S, the platform dedicated to founders.

Last Days to Get Your Ticket

The event takes place between September 21 and 22 in the most modern event space in Romania, Face Convention Center Bucharest. Created to meet the needs of each type of participant, the event will be a complete experience with professional inspiration, business meetings, discovering the latest innovations, or spending quality time with the team or friends.

These are the last days when you can get your ticket and join the leading startup & innovation conference in Eastern Europe: howtoweb.co/tickets/

The event is created in partnership with Google for Startups, Mastercard Romania, BRD – Groupe Société Générale, Underline Ventures, and Orange Romania, and with the support of UiPath, Bitdefender, eMag Ventures, KPMG Romania, European Innovation Council, Tazz, Mobiversal, Fortech Investments, LAUNCHub Ventures, Endeavor, SeedBlink, Startup Wise Guys, Make IT in Oradea, Rubik Hub, and Vienna Business Agency.

About How to Web

How to Web is the leading startup & innovation conference in Eastern Europe.

Initiated in 2009, How to Web is one of the earliest influential European startup conferences, which has accelerated the adoption of the startup culture and innovation in Eastern Europe & Romania.

Our main focus has been to create a web of learning and networking opportunities that can empower the innovative minds in this region.

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The fifth edition of Launch Community Evenings will take place at Club Expirat, Bucharest, on September 20. Among the guests of the event you can find representatives from Fitbit, BCR, UiPath, TypingDNA, archbee, Flip.ro, The Recursive and FameUp.

Launch – the startup founders’ community – brings the meeting as a satellite event of the How to Web 2022 Conference, which takes place in Bucharest on September 21-22.

The event is moderated by Mircea Serediuc (Product Manager, FameUp) and comes as an opportunity to discover innovative products and projects, but also for networking with founders, company representatives and technology enthusiasts. Founders from top startups of the Launch community will pitch their products to the public and receive feedback from the evening’s guests:

• Daniel Rizea – Director Software Engineering, Fitbit
• Ionuț Stanimir – Director of Marketing & Communication, BCR
• Lavinia Cojocaru – Co-founder, UiPath
• Cristian Tamaș – Co-founder & CMO, TypingDNA
• Dragoș Bulugean – Founder, archbee
• Alex Burghelia – Co-founder, Flip.ro

The program also includes a talk with Cristian Tamaș (TypingDNA) and Dragoș Bulugean (archbee) about their journey in startup life, from the beginning to the present. The moment will be moderated by Elena Vrabie (Sales & Senior Content Manager, The Recursive) and is intended to help the founders of the community learn new ways to overcome their obstacles related to the development of their companies.

The meeting takes place five months after the launch of Launch Community Evenings event series, which has already gathered hundreds of founders, enthusiasts and actors of the technology and innovation industry from the local entrepreneurial ecosystems in the capital, but also in Timișoara, Cluj-Napoca and Iași.

Access to the event is free, and invitations are limited: https://bit.ly/launch-community-evenings-5

For over a year and a half, Launch – the community of startup founders – has been contributing to the increase of founder’s success chances, at the beginning of their journey, providing access to individual meetings with experts and representatives of companies from various industries, group activities together with other founders from the entire ecosystem in Romania. Currently, the community includes over 300 founders from over 100 startups, and registrations are always open. Launch is an initiative of How to Web, Google for Startups and InnovX-BCR.

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Spotlight, the leading startup competition in Eastern Europe, announces the investment prize up for grabs this year, reaching a record 465.000 euros. The award is syndicated by a group of the most active investors from the region: Tech Angels, Seedblink, Hellen’s Rock, GapMinder VC, Fortech Investments, Growceanu, V7 Capital, RocaX, Startup Wise Guys, and Transylvania Angels Network.

In addition to the big investment prize, participants can benefit from unique opportunities for collaboration, business, and scaling. On top of these, the conference’s main partners BRD – Groupe Société Générale and Mastercard will offer a prize in the form of a preferential package of banking services for all startups admitted to the program, and the prize from F6S Alpha, who will facilitate access to exclusive offers and opportunities, worth 1 million euros.

Dedicated to early-stage startups, the Spotlight program represents one of the best platforms for accelerating business growth, as founders have the opportunity to connect with over 100 internationally recognized mentors and some of the most active investors in Central and Eastern Europe, to present their innovations in front of more than 2,000 conference participants and compete with the best startups in Eastern Europe for the grand investment prize, worth almost half a million euro.

The application session is open until September 1st, and the organizers expect over 250 registrations. This competition invites all Eastern European technology startups with high scalability potential, a product with proper stability and traction, a business life of up to 5 years, and up to a maximum of 1 million euros in investment so far. Of the total of registered startups, 40 will be selected and will enter the Spotlight program on September 20.

During the program, happening pre-conference, and the 2-day competition, happening at How to Web conference, participants will interact directly with global experts in investment, innovation, or scaling, from companies such as Credo Ventures, Startup Core Strengths, Google, BRD – Groupe Société Générale, Orange Romania, Mind the Product, Infobip, UiPath, Point Nine Capital, Mastercard or Techstars. Moreover, most of How to Web’s speakers for this conference edition are also eager to take part in the mentoring program from Spotlight, enabling founders with access to numerous areas of expertise.

“BRD is involved in the development of a new generation of tech entrepreneurs, and How to Web Conference represents a context where they can enhance their business opportunities to learn and connect. We support innovation and entrepreneurship, and in the Spotlight competition, we contribute with mentorship, networking facilitation, and matchmaking for startups with potential. For us, BRD people, it is essential to stay connected to the latest trends and ideas in the world of technology and business, as we are interested in using and putting technology in the service of our customers, in an efficient and sustainable manner”, says Flavia Popa, Secretary-General of BRD – Groupe Société Générale

On September 21 and 22, during the How to Web 2022 Conference, 20 semi-finalist startups will enter the pitching competition, and the best 6 startups will enter the final stage of the competition, where they will present their business in front of over 2,000 attendees on the event’s main stage. The most innovative startup will go home with the record investment prize of 465,000 euros.

These are the last days in which startups can enroll in the program, the application session being open until September 1, on the How to Web website: howtoweb.co/spotlight/

The Spotlight program and competition, part of the How to Web conference, is created in partnership with Google for Startups, Mastercard Romania, BRD – Groupe Société Générale, Underline Ventures, and Orange Romania, and with the support of UiPath, Bitdefender, eMag Ventures, KPMG România, European Innovation Council, Tazz, Mobiversal, Fortech Investments, LAUNCHub Ventures, Endeavor, Seedblink, Startup Wise Guys, Make IT in Oradea, Rubik Hub, and Vienna Business Agency.

Launched in 2011 and organized as part of the How to Web conference, Spotlight is the best-known competition in the Eastern European region for technology startups that want to develop globally.

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Investor and founder Bogdan Iordache is launching Underline Ventures, a solo general partner venture fund targeting early-stage high-growth Eastern European startups with global ambitions, thus joining the ranks of solo VC managers emerging in Europe. Underline Ventures’ debut fund has raised €10m, with a final target of €20m.

Best known as the founder of How to Web, one of Europe’s top 10 startup conferences, started in 2010, Bogdan has also been the founder of Conectoo (exited in 2013) and a former investor for Gecad Ventures, 3TS Capital Partners, and MVP Academy.

”Our fund thesis is generational. We believe the Eastern European tech industry hit a critical mass of experienced founders and operators from scale-ups that are now starting or contributing to new startups, along with many young ambitious founders. While their expertise is excellent on the operational side, we believe Underline Ventures can help them understand the venture way and connect them with the world of venture capital, so they can build high-growth startups, not only successful companies“, Bogdan says.

Underline Ventures is backed by 20+ founders and early-stage operators from companies such as UiPath, Green Horse Games, Telerik, Elrond, MorphL, Smartbill, CleverTaxi, Tremend, and many others, along with professional investors in venture funds.

The fund is already a one-year effort, and the team includes experienced founders and operators from the tech world: Vlad Ionescu – Venture Partner, ex-UiPath, Iulian Circiumaru – Venture Partner, ex-7Card, Iulia Ghita – Investment Manager, ex-Bookster, Adriana Spulber, Sebastian Boureanu, Mihaela Ciobanu.

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The refurbished smartphones of Romanian startup fenix.eco are now on sale in two of Auchan’s Bucharest hypermarkets, as part of a pilot project. Over 10 refurbished Apple and Samsung models are on display in a dedicated stand in the hypermarket’s IT & Electronics department. Depending on the results of the pilot project, distribution may be extended to other Auchan stores across Romania later this year.

“At a time when most retailers are expanding online, fenix.eco is doing the exact opposite. We are an online store expanding into traditional retail. I believe this is the right move for our startup, given the nature of our products. Refurbished smartphones are still a new concept in Romania. We need to give our consumers direct experience of it and earn their trust by letting them see our products. For this reason, it makes sense to sell to our customers face-to-face as well as online.”, said serial entrepreneur and business angel Grégoire Vigroux, co-founder of fenix.eco.

Launched in April 2020, fenix.eco started operating as an online store that boasts over 20 models of refurbished smartphones, costing up to 50% less than new. Besides the refurbished handset itself, fenix.eco phones come with new accessories, as well as a 12-month guarantee. The company sells four brands of smartphone (Apple, Samsung, Sony and Huawei). iPhones account for more than 80% of sales, with the iPhone 8 the company’s bestseller.

Ionuț Ardeleanu, CEO of Auchan Romania, added: “We are glad to start this collaboration with fenix.eco, a startup which, through its business model, aligns with our mission to reduce our environmental footprint by extending product usage time. We are subsequently introducing into our range an innovative solution for large trade industry – refurbished phones, with warranty, at excellent prices.” 

At the European level, refurbished smartphones are becoming an increasingly popular choice, especially in Western countries, where consumers can already buy such devices both online and in physical stores. In France and Germany, they made up more than 10% of the market in 2019. According to IDC, the global market of refurbished mobile phones was estimated at nearly 207 million units in 2019, a rise of 17.6% versus 2018. IDC projects that refurbished mobiles will reach 333 million units globally in 2023, marking an annual growth rate of 13.6%. 

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Bucharest-based Mingle is a friendly online platform designed to make recruiting easier for companies. It provides HR teams with simple ways to collaborate, organize and automate their work so they can hire the best people. Mingle is currently focusing on the Romanian market, an emerging economy with relatively low digitalization that is ripe for disruption. The founders of Mingle shared with us the story of their startup and some key insights into the challenges they faced and how they’ve managed to overcome them.

The story

During the final months of 2019, most of our afternoons were spent searching for the idea. We knew it was a matter of time before we would fall out of love with our jobs, so we wanted to build a business that could make us happier. Eventually, we found the niche market we were looking for: small enough to be able to dominate it one day, but big enough to be profitable. It also matched our expertise and skills, so we went further: we pitched the idea to possible customers, then adjusted. We built a prototype, collected feedback, then adjusted it some more. Talks were going well, so we quit our jobs in March 2020, two weeks before a nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19. Oops.

All panic aside, we spent the first days paying a lot of attention to the market, trying to determine if our poorly-timed venture was worth pursuing. And we did see an interesting shift. Our target market – usually not very enthusiastic about tech – was now adopting technology at an unbelievable pace. Betting that this change would be here to stay, our business model was still looking solid in the long run, despite the pandemic. So we decided to give it a shot.

Why is it hot? Because we do this at a time when recruiting in our market is being redefined. Companies are starting to reform the way they hire people, and this is only accelerated by the health crisis. The days of paper CVs, complicated spreadsheets or candidate databases that resemble Black Holes are coming to an end. Companies need better software that is suited for remote hiring teams and recruitment. Software that is easy to use and can help recruiters make smarter decisions, faster.

Why do we matter? Instead of adapting old software to modern times like most alternatives, we design a fresh experience from scratch, suitable for tomorrow’s users. With Mingle you get started fast, you find everything in the right place and you get things done. It has all you need and nothing you don’t. We use advanced technology to build a platform that is modular, light and fast. And most importantly, we use real customer data and feedback to grow our product.

Who’s behind this? Into building this, passionate people had to put in real work. Our team scores well across a spectrum from creative to technical. Catalina is the creative doer – she rocks marketing and design. Alexandru is the genius architect – he makes amazing software. All while Bogdan makes sure everything fits into the masterplan – he does product strategy and sales.

Key insights from launching a startup in COVID times

Even with a great team, opening our doors as a business when everybody was shutting theirs down was uncomfortable. Such an unprecedented situation brought us new challenges we didn’t study about in business school, but also a few unexpected advantages as well. Now that you have the big picture, we’ll share 3 stories about the impact of the COVID crisis on our early stage startup.

1. Getting your product validated when people have much bigger problems

When social distancing became the norm, HR teams rushed to migrate their workforce remote, restructure their organization and freeze recruitment budgets. To our newly launched hiring software, this seemed like a nightmare. How do you convince people to try your product when they first have to worry about job loss and depression and disease?

The original plan would have us validate the product via direct sales – a typical B2B practice which we were familiar with – but at that moment it just didn’t feel right. So instead we switched focus towards building a content marketing strategy, something none of us had done before. This turned out to be good for 2 reasons:

• Better insights about our market. Before anyone knew anything about us, we created a blog and started pushing daily relevant articles, free resources and updates about the changing HR trends. By measuring audience response (reading time, resource downloads, reactions, shares etc.) we got to know more about our target market: what subjects spark their interest, what areas they want to improve or what challenges they want to overcome.
• Better awareness. We thought this could help us increase the chance of people replying to our sales emails later on. And it did! 20% of HR professionals we get to demo say they read our blog.

Finding early adopters who pay money for your product is hard. It’s perhaps the hardest thing we had to do. But being empathetic with the customers in those early days helped us turn a bad situation into a chance to know them better.

2. Failing faster

Being in a startup environment, failure is mostly inevitable. We had our share of poor decisions that lost us time or money. And since our time and money are limited, it’s usually better we fail faster, so we can learn faster, so we can move on faster. From this point of view, we believe the pandemic actually helped us.

Initially, Mingle was supposed to be a tool for boosting employee referrals. The concept seemed very interesting for many HR professionals to whom we have talked, so we built an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). 

Fast forward 2 months into the crisis, the MVP was ready to be validated in the real world. We started reaching out to companies, trying to sell them our software.

Such a process usually looks like this: you find suitable clients, you convince them to meet you, then there’s the meeting, after which they talk to their bosses about you, get approvals etc. It’s a lengthy cycle that may take months until you collect enough feedback to validate or invalidate your product.

But there’s one different thing about collecting feedback in the COVID era. Meeting clients online opens up the possibility to be much more efficient.

We saved tons of time of preparation and travelling between meetings, allowing us to have up to 5 client demos per day without even leaving the house. We were able to talk to as many clients as possible right when we needed them the most.

Eventually, when final decisions started coming in, they were mostly bad news. We learned that helping companies get more employee referrals was just a part of a bigger problem they had – and solving referrals wouldn’t make that main problem go away.

Unfortunately, we had to pivot the business and change the whole strategy. But on the bright side, it only took us 3 weeks to reach that conclusion. Failing faster saved us months of development and resources spent in the wrong direction.

3. Bootstrapping through uncertain times

Mingle started out with 3 people and €30.000 initial investment from personal funds. Bootstrapping during a pandemic can be quite scary – it comes with lots of challenges we can’t control, like the market reaction to another lockdown or wide scale job cuts. Nevertheless, it can be fun if you are comfortable with some compromises. 

For example, you may need to change your way of life as a human to improve the likelihood of success for your company. And with many activities restricted due to COVID, minimizing living expenses has never been more convenient.

The past few months have also been amazing for focus. Working from home gave us better control, allowing us to remove unnecessary distractions and work on the things that mattered the most. And this was crucial in a stage where everyone’s contribution to the grand total is so significant.

It’s certainly not easy to bootstrap, but for us it felt like a suitable choice for those early times.

Future plans

Going through a rollercoaster of validation, failure and compromises while everyone was running away from a deadly virus was both an exciting and challenging journey when looking in retrospective. But what’s more exciting to us is the future.

At this point, Mingle has reached some important milestones. We now have a validated product, with real clients and ambitious plans for the future. We will continue to pour all our passion and talent into developing a service that will become the absolutely obvious solution for all HR needs in a company by 2025.

In order to get there, we are considering working with partners and investors who could help us take this to the next level and deliver on our promise. 

Learn more about Mingle and get in touch with its founders, here.

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