Business Development Manager in Five Months. In a Berlin Made for Startups

"It's simple: you register on Greetzly and choose a celebrity who you can contact to request a personalized video, for example to wish happy birthday to your best friend. All you have to do is donate money, a part of which will be transferred to one of the 39 charities we collaborate with, including WWF, UNICEF and Caritas. Fans can get in touch with their idols and stars can connect with fans. And it's all for a good cause." This is how Mario Arabov (pictured second from the right with his manager and two co-workers), a 25-year-old student in his last year of Management at Bocconi, talks about his work experience at a startup in Berlin. He found the job offer on JobGate: "I sent a few applications and then, to my great surprise, I got three phone calls on the same day: one from a consulting firm, one from a German multinational and another from this brand-new startup," he says. "After my first contact with Greetzly, I was sure: the idea of using fame to do good won me over."

So Mario moved to Berlin, started as an intern and now, after only 5 months, he's already Development Manager for the Italian market. "I basically recruit celebrities so they become our partners," he says. The platform for now is available in Austria, Germany, France, Switzerland, Serbia and Italy, but it's constantly expanding. For Italy, Greetzly's squad includes: Alex Belli, an actor from CentoVetrine, Maurizia Cacciatori, a former volleyball player, Valentina Vignali, a model and basketball player, the players for Orlandina Basket, Mirko Ronzoni, chef and winner of the second season of Hell's Kitchen Italia, PanPers, two comedians who participated in Colorado, and GionnyScandal, a rapper. "Many other just need to be initiated, such as Gem Boy, and we're in negotiations with others," says Mario, who is back in Italy to meet several partners, but also to take his last exam before graduation. "Coordinating work, exams and my thesis is not easy. But when a job inspires you, anything is possible, especially in a city as open as Berlin, where you breath creativity and entrepreneurship just walking down the street," he explains. Greetzly's Berlin office (the other office is in Vienna) is in the "factory," a coworking space funded in part by Google, where offices for Uber, SoundCloud and Twitter Europe are also located. "It's a young and stimulating environment," says Mario. "Towards the end of last year, our bosses took us on a business trip to a chalet in Austria, where we worked together to outline the strategic plan for 2016."

We he returns, he'll coordinate the Italy team, made up of him and 4 other people. "I didn't expect to advance this quickly in such a short amount of time," says Mario, who dreams of one day launching a startup of his own. "Every morning, we dedicate an hour of time to ideas, to develop to side projects. And with Alex Lachinger (pictured second from the left and one of the founders of Greetzly, along with Paul Resch), we came up with another idea," he explains. But without revealing too much, "I can only say that it's for a platform to meet new people, especially during dinnertime, but not in the traditional sense of the word. I tested the idea with a friend of mine and we had a lot of fun. We'll just have to wait and see."