Young and highly educated Burgas-born young men - Alexander Karadjiyan /Harvard, Architecture/ Stoyan Dobrev /International Management, Manchester/ and Zahari Dichev /bachelor in Visual Effects and Computer Graphics, Savannah College, USA, master in Computer Sciences, St. Andrews University, Scotland/ make up the team that has developed the application which allows travels to become easier and more fun. The application is named SpeediFly. It is designed to serve spontaneous travels within the next 10 days by offering the best and most profitable personalized offers, complied with the users’ interests – favorite countries, hobbies, sports, music and culture. Here is what Stoyan explains:

“For instance, if someone is a fan of surfing, SpeediFly will offer a travel to Portugal. Any Spanish football fan will receive attractive offers for a match between Barcelona and Real Madrid, let’s say. Besides that SpeediFly is a social platform where users are able to organize group travels with their friends, create hobby-based menus and what is most important – at the moment of payment they will be able to share the price of the whole thing in an equal manner.”

The idea was born during a Harvard-held lunch between Alexander and a fellow student – they were both watching their colleagues and realized the lack of any platform which could ease their travel bookings. Besides that Alexander says that all the three establishers of the company are keen travelers:

“We see the potential, but also the feeling of visiting new places around the globe, not only because a fresh offer has just emerged in the market, but because the exact place with affordable flights right now matches their interests: diving, skiing, sports events or concerts.”

However, not only its authors see the application’s profitability. A few days ago SpeediFly received a large investment by Czech accelerator and private investor StartupYard. Alexander says how one wins EUR 300,000:

“In fact many would say that you make EUR 300,000 with lots of labor and a good idea. However, startup investments at that stage are the riskiest ones. Usually some 90% of those die at one point. I think that a natural link and friendship appeared from the moment we saw our main investor, Petar Zamecnik, due to the charisma of our team as well, in my opinion. He said many times that he invested not into the idea, but in our youth, education, energy and experience. Luck has always been important, of course – one has to be on the right spot at the right time.”

At the moment SpeediFly is supported by iOS only, because its official promotion will be in London in the beginning of July and that market uses iPhone mostly. The application will start for Bulgaria in October and the team promises that by that time web and Android platforms will support it. Here is more from Alexander:

“At the moment we are planning the integration of hotels, apartments and villas, where our customers will be able to stay, as well as of tickets for concerts, music and film festival and sport events that they can attend. Bulgaria sees a growing number of young people travelling with the stepping of the low-cost companies in the market and we do believe it will continue. Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam and Rome are the other major European cities that we will reach within the next 6 months.”

Although SpeediFly is the debut application of the Burgas-born young people, their ambition and creativity prompt on many others following. SpeediFly has the potential to become a new social phenomenon.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev