Workshop #14 followed a thread we opened in Workshop #12. Rather than working through each participant's own business case by case, we used the session to step back and look at a question that shapes everything FlexUp does: who actually brings startups into the ecosystem, and how do we reach those people?
FlexUp is usually presented as a tool for founders. It is. But founders rarely build a business alone, and FlexUp does not grow one founder at a time. It grows through the people who already work with founders every day – and this session was about them.
The introduction to FlexUp presented during the session was recorded, so anyone who could not attend can still follow it. (Recording link to be added once published.)
The group brought together a participant joining the FlexUp network as a new collaborator, a participant being onboarded onto the platform, and a startup ecosystem builder based in the UAE – with a background in HR and recruitment and an extensive international network across the MENA region, the US, India, and Europe. That mix of people, each at a different stage of their relationship with FlexUp, set up the discussion well.
Two audiences, one platform
It helps to make explicit something that is usually left implicit. FlexUp serves two distinct audiences.
The first is the businesses that use the FlexUp Model: startups, SMEs, and micro-entrepreneurs that adopt the economic model to pay their team, their suppliers, and their partners with a flexible mix of cash and equity.
The second is the people who work with those businesses: the advisors who structure them, the mentors who guide them, the educators who train their founders, the connectors who open doors, and the investors who fund them. These people are not FlexUp's customers in the usual sense – they are partners. They bring startups into the ecosystem, help them onboard, and often deliver services within it.
Most of our content, and most of our workshops, speaks to the first audience. Workshop #14 was for the second.
Reaching founders through the people they already trust
A founder who hears about a new way to structure their business will, understandably, hesitate. Is this credible? Will my investors accept it? Who else is using it? Trust takes time to build, and a startup evaluating FlexUp on its own has no shortcut.
A founder who hears about FlexUp from their own accountant, their mentor, or the incubator that hosts them starts from a very different place. The trust already exists. The question is no longer "should I trust this platform" but "someone I rely on thinks this is worth a look."
This is why FlexUp invests in partners. Every advisor, mentor, or ecosystem builder who understands FlexUp can introduce it to many founders who already rely on their judgement. Reaching those partners is not a detour around founders – it is the most direct and most credible route to them.
The rest of the session worked through five kinds of partner, and what makes each one a natural fit.
Five doors into the FlexUp ecosystem
Each of these audiences comes to FlexUp through a different door. What makes FlexUp relevant – and how best to reach them – is different in each case.
Local partners in emerging markets
In lower-income regions, the most valuable partner is often someone already working on the ground with very small businesses – the kind of entrepreneur or farmer who operates entirely in the informal economy and cannot access a bank loan.
One concrete opportunity discussed in the session involves a contact based in Paris, originally from Africa, who works with small entrepreneurs and farmers to make them "bankable" – able to secure a bank loan of 15 000 € or more. FlexUp fits into the early steps of that journey. Before a business can raise from a bank, it can raise a much smaller amount – perhaps 1 000 € to 2 000 € – from the diaspora and small investors, including through FlexUp.
The local partner's role is to identify these businesses, explain FlexUp, bring them onto the platform, and help them onboard. Over time, the same partner can act as the project's secretary – the person designated in the FlexUp Charter to make sure the business meets its monthly and annual obligations.
What makes this work is the platform itself. By recording at least three months of transactions in the FlexUp app, a tiny business builds the visibility that an investor would otherwise need an expensive due-diligence process to obtain. The cost of assessing a very small business – normally the reason investors avoid them – drops sharply. That is what makes small-ticket investing viable.
Professional advisors – lawyers, accountants, and HR
In mature markets, the natural partners are the professionals that founders and companies already pay for advice: lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, and HR consultants & head-hunders.
These professionals have a concrete reason to engage. In France, for example, companies above a certain size have a legal obligation to share profits with employees through intéressement and participation schemes. The framework exists; the practical question is how to implement it in a way that genuinely aligns interests, stays tax-efficient, and is easy to manage. FlexUp has drafted a detailed white paper on exactly this.
Rather than FlexUp pitching FlexUp, the approach is to co-develop that document with respected professionals, then present it together at joint workshops and conferences – a lawyer, an accountant, and a business advisor in the room, walking 20 to 50 of their own clients through a concrete solution. One accountant has already agreed to review the white paper and co-host such sessions.
Senior advisors
Many experienced executives and entrepreneurs, once retired, still want to stay active and useful. They do not need the income. What they want is meaningful engagement.
The conventional answer is light-touch mentoring – an hour over coffee every month or two. It feels good, but it costs little and changes little. FlexUp offers these senior advisors a different option: roll up their sleeves and genuinely help a founder, five or ten hours a week, with real responsibility. Because that level of involvement deserves real compensation, and because early-stage startups rarely have the cash, FlexUp lets them be paid in equity instead.
Retired senior advisors also have something most prospects do not: the time to understand FlexUp properly. The model takes a little effort to grasp, and busy people rarely make that effort. Someone with experience, judgement, and time can not only adopt FlexUp but also vouch for it – and they tend to be exceptionally well connected.
Universities and competition organisers
Business schools ask students to develop a business idea as a training exercise. Hackathons and startup weekends do the same over a few intense days. In both cases, the work usually stops at simulation.
FlexUp can be built into the curriculum or the event so that students develop a real business on the platform, not just a paper exercise. When the course or competition ends, there is no administrative cliff to cross: through FlexUp's incubation service, a dedicated incubator acts as the legal entity hosting the project, so students do not need to register a company or handle their own accounting. The project runs as a business unit within the incubator.
FlexUp can also sponsor competitions directly – as it did in Georgia – by awarding the winners 20 000 € in FlexUp Credits, which fund real services and investment in their business rather than a one-off cash prize.
Investors and the Investor Club
Finally, there are the investors. FlexUp's Investor Club is deliberately not aimed only at venture capitalists and business angels. It is aimed at ordinary people who want to put a modest amount – starting at around 1 000 € – into small businesses, often in regions where that money has real impact.
The Investor Club gives them a secure framework. Startups presented to the club must have used the FlexUp app for at least three months and must apply the FlexUp Model within their own team. The promise to investors is not a higher return – profits are shared with the team – but a better balance of risk and return, because every contributor has a stake in the outcome and the business is more resilient as a result.
The Investor Club also solves a chicken-and-egg problem. Startups join because investors are there; investors join because startups are there. Partners are how both sides get built at once – and the diaspora, in particular, offers a large pool of people already sending money home who could instead invest it.
One model, many kinds of partner
A theme ran through all five cases. Because FlexUp applies the same economic model to everyone – the principle of non-discrimination – a partner does not have to stay outside the system.
A lawyer who reviews FlexUp's contract templates can be paid for that work in equity, and so becomes a FlexUp Associate. A service provider who prefers a mix might agree to 50% in cash and 50% in equity. A senior advisor with no need for cash can be paid entirely in equity. The same model that startups use to pay their partners is the model FlexUp uses to bring partners on board.
That also defines a natural path for any new partner. It begins with learning about FlexUp and referring clients. It grows into onboarding those clients onto the platform. It can extend to delivering advisory or other services directly. And it can reach the point where the partner brings in other partners and helps grow the network in their own region. Each step deepens both reach and impact – and is rewarded accordingly.
Want to join our next workshop?
Our workshops are open to entrepreneurs, founders, and professionals who want to explore fairer ways to structure partnerships, finance growth, and collaborate when cash is limited. They are equally open to the advisors, mentors, educators, and investors who want to help startups thrive – and grow alongside them.
You can find the schedule and register at:
Further reading
- Startup Networking Workshop #12, Online – the Collaboration Agreement and the FlexUp Hub model: www.flexup.org/blog/workshops-8
- How FlexUp works: www.flexup.org/economic-model
Startup Networking Workshop #14, Online