Hello wonderful people,
July was a busy month: we sponsored a startup bootcamp in Paris, and started onboarding some of the winning teams. A shepherd in Occitanie used FlexUp to launch and fund his new project. A new team member went from job interview to signed contract in about five minutes. And two founders walked out of a workshop having replaced their funding round with a plan.
Here are some highlights.
Bootcamp: Six winning teams at The Future Lab 2026
FlexUp co-sponsored The Future Lab 2026, a four-day bootcamp in Paris organised by IJSchool and LSE Generate, the London School of Economics incubator. Ten teams pitched across two cohorts, students and professionals, and we funded 20 000 € of prizes for the top three of each.
First-place winners at The Future Lab 2026, Paris — read the LinkedIn post
The first-place winners:
- Ordo-Med (left) – Omneya Mansour. A triage system that prioritises hospital appointments by medical urgency. Omneya arrived already in conversation with hospitals about co-funding the build.
- WorkBridge (right) – Ondrej Kucera, Lucy Lönnqvist, and Bennet Bastian. A platform matching companies that have spare staff to nearby businesses that need them. It already happens informally across Germany; WorkBridge is building the structure for it.
Both teams found a real problem in their own work and built for it. That is exactly what we look for.
Are you organising or taking part in a bootcamp or startup competition? We would love to sponsor it → Get in touch
Case study: Pay me half in cash, half in equity
A young entrepreneur needs a tonne of potatoes to launch his chips factory and cannot pay for them all up front. The merchant offers him a deal: half in cash today, half invested in the business. Two minutes, and it explains the model better than any deck:
Video: Business made simple with FlexUp
Interview: Why did I build FlexUp?
When a company succeeds, who captures the value? Almost always, the founder and the investors. Everyone else gets paid and moves on.
FlexUp starts from a different assumption: everyone who helps build something should hold a stake in it, written into every contract from day one.
I sat down with Alexis Chehat and Alexandre Sirot from ACS Agency at Station F to explain how and why.
Interview: Fabrizio Nastri, Founder of FlexUp, at Station F
New user spotlight: Not every FlexUp project is a tech startup
Louis Lentz joined this month. He is building Les Solognotes du Minervois, a sheep farming operation in Occitanie designed as a service to the local area.
He started last year and is working towards a flock of 250 heads, across lamb production and eco-grazing. He is raising funds now, and uses FlexUp to structure his business, streamline operations, and secure funding from his bank and from private investors.
"Creating Les Solognotes du Minervois means choosing an agriculture that produces value while providing a concrete service to society."
FlexUp is not only for tech startups. Regional entrepreneurs and SMEs build on it too. Louis has put together a presentation of the project.
Louis Lentz and his flock of Solognotes, Occitanie, France → Watch the video or Contact us to support him.
New feature: No legal entity yet? Or several? No worries!
A FlexUp project no longer has to map onto a company. It can exist before you have incorporated anything, or span several structures at once.
- Start a project before any legal entity exists
- Or span several, in different countries
- Share equity with your whole team – employees, freelancers, consultants, and advisors
- Keep bookkeeping separate per entity
- Run equity, voting rights, and cash distribution at project level
- No holding company, no extra layer
We ship new features every month, and the best ones come from users telling us what is in their way.
In app illustration → Try it in the sandbox or Book a demo
Anecdote: From interview to signed contract in five minutes
This week I interviewed someone who wanted to join the team. Near the end of the call we agreed on her package, paid 100% in equity. Then, while we were still talking, she created her FlexUp account, I sent her the contract via the app, and she signed it in the app.
She left the interview with a signed contract, about five minutes after we settled the terms.
None of this is a new feature. It is simply what happens when an equity-payment system and a standardised legal framework are built into the same app. I wonder if anyone can structure a transaction faster.
Want to know how this could work for your own business? → Book a demo
Workshops: Get your users to fund their own CAC (Client Acquisition Cost)
Two founders came to Workshop #21 at Station F certain they needed to raise money to scale their startup. Their platform helps content creators earn a living, and they had no cash for ads or for salaries.
What we worked through: pay the sign-up bonus to users in equity rather than cash, and add an equity referral bonus on top. Your most enthusiastic users start funding the next wave. For hiring, state the full market salary in the job post, then see how you can split it between cash and equity.
The founders left the workshop with a plan to replace their funding round with a combination of user-funded CAC and equity-based hiring.
Join the next one: Workshops are weekly sessions where founders and the people who help them bring a real situation and we work through it together. One hour, followed by informal networking.
Team: We run on the model we build
Every person who works with FlexUp, from product to partnerships to marketing, is paid in a mix of cash and credits. We do not pitch equity-first collaboration and then pay ourselves in straight salary. The team holds a stake in what we are building together.
The team keeps growing, and we are looking for more people.
Photo: the FlexUp team. Want to join us? → Apply
Want to see how any of this would work for your own project? → Get in touch
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Fabrizio Nastri
Founder & CEO, FlexUp
Reinventing the way we do business with FlexUp