In a video call during the confinement of the covid, Gabriel Rubió, David Lerma, Willka Ficapal and Pablo Félez realized that the four of them were going on vacation to the same place! “It was a coincidence, but there had to be an explanation, a reason…” Rubió remembers. They immediately realized that all of them, each one on their own, had made the decision pushed by content they had viewed on social networks.
“David and Pablo worked as tourism consultants. They saw how the sector had not changed the way it related to new technologies, but people had. On the other hand, Willka and I are great travelers, and between the four of us we have created the startup Beder, which was born from combining the concept of TripAdvisor with that of TikTok,” explains Rubió.
Beder proposes to stop planning trips through Google searches that end up with many tabs open to search for information about a tourist destination. New generations like to consume information on video, quickly, easily and visually, and Beder precisely proposes searching, booking and deciding what to see and do in a tourist destination through short videos.
The four friends founded the startup in November 2020 and for the name they played with the pronunciation of the English be there. They target large suppliers in the tourism sector, with clients such as Booking or Civitatis, to whom they charge a commission for each sale made through the Beder website or app.
To take the first steps, the co-founders had the help of Barcelona Activa and made an initial investment of 84,000 euros from their own funds. Currently, they are being mentored by Netmentora and have just closed an investment round of 490,000 euros, between private capital and an Enisa loan. Thanks to this, they plan to reach half a million euros in turnover in 2024.
