Fligoo – Gifting is always about Endowing Happiness

Parties, functions and occasions are moments to share and endow as much happiness as possible and that’s the reason we also carry gifts along to add more to the cheers.

Surfing online and offline looking for the perfect gift your buddy, soul mate or close one may like is not easy, we have all gone through that. The main intention behind is to see that wide smile when the thing you gifted is revealed.

This is where Fligoo comes in, with a cute name, this team of geeks wants you to share and spread happiness by helping you select the best possible gift that will add to enlargement of the joy.

Fligoo is founded by Juan, Marcos, Jose and Lucas.

Lucas is the CEO and believes that creativity + passion in the highest levels leads to success.

Juan Cruz is the CFO and is the one that makes everything work. He is the engine of fligoo and definitely the most detail-focused member of the team.

Marcos is the CTO and is the best developer in the world. There is nothing Marcos can’t take care of and with him on the team everything is possible.

Jose is the CMO and is the one who focuses on fligoo’s users. He has the ability to put himself in their shoes and completely understands our users’ behavior.

We had an opportunity to get in conversation and quiz Juan Cruz and know more about Fligoo.

Where did the idea for Fligoo came from?  What would you say is the USP of Fligoo, compared to other gift recommendation engines online?

The idea of fligoo came from a situation that I (Juan Cruz – fligoo’s CFO) was stuck in. It was my mother-in-law’s birthday, and couldn´t find her a gift that she liked. I and Lucas (fligoo’s CEO) have been best friends since childhood, so we began to create a solution to a problem we have faced – of not knowing what to give as a gift.

The main difference between fligoo and other gift recommendation engines is that fligoo’s algorithm has three main parts: Physics, Statistics and Consumer Behavior. In this last component lies fligoo’s competitive advantage. fligoo does not do literal iterations from “likes” as many of the other gift recommendation websites do. Instead, fligoo does a complete analysis of people’s interactions on social networks, and our algorithm determines a specific profile this person has, and then makes the most accurate gift recommendation according to this profile.

How do you map the friend’s interest to an actual possible gift for her? Please explain how your product engine works.

We not only analyze the interests people show and share on social networks, but we also analyze every interaction users have, which provides fligoo with a profile of the person. This profile is a combination of more than 50 personalities, and fligoo determines how much of each personality the person has. We choose the top five personalities and provide recommendations based on these top personalities. For example, a person could be 23% Geek, 17% Sports Fan, 30% Trendsetter, 12% Music Lover and 18% Hipster.

As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?

I strongly recommend not making small problems big. Every obstacle you are faced with as an entrepreneur has a solution and can be solved. It is important not to get upset when things don’t go as planned, but rather get busy finding solutions and the issue will be resolved much faster than you think.

What’s the secret behind such impressive traction, within such short time of launch? Please tell us how you plan to spread the word out about Fligoo. Please provide us with numbers regarding the traction/ gifts sold via Fligoo / revenue made if possible.

In one month, fligoo established a base of more than 7,500 users with an average transaction of over $10 per user. We believe the secret to our success is our approach to solving the entire problem when it comes to finding the perfect gift, in a new way that no other company is doing.

We are currently spreading the word about fligoo in the US market and planning to move to the Bay Area.  Lucas, CEO of fligoo, has already made the move and is busy establishing fligoo in the US. Our goal with the move to the US and for the coming months is to continue expanding the fligoo platform and gain brand recognition so we can launch new features on the site with success.

Fligoo is a startup from Argentina. Would love to hear how the scene in Argentina is for Entrepreneurship, and what would you like to see changing there?

Argentina is a beautiful place to start a company!  There is a very friendly startup scene and everyone is super collaborative. Argentina is home to many extremely intelligent people with big aspirations.

What should change in Argentina is the access to funding for startups. It is quite difficult to obtain funding because there are not many VCs or angel investors looking to invest in startups in Argentina at the moment.

What is coming up next?

We plan to expand fligoo beyond gift recommendations and give our users a way to discover new things to love that they didn’t know exist, whether it is new movies or music, all personalized according to fligoo’s personality profiles built on information from social network activity.

Is Fligoo self funded? Are you looking for Funding at the moment?

Fligoo is not self funded, we have already raised 250K and we are looking for 500K in a new funding round that we have recently began.

If you were asked to give 3 growth hack tips to the entrepreneurs who have just started their journey, what would it be?

1. Fall in love with A/B testing, is the only way to really know your users.

2. Track and Measure everything!

3. Have a great team and no limits!