The .Me Entrepreneur – Milos Milosevic, Founder of Fleka.Me and Mosquito.Me

“Fleka (stain) is a fingerprint, a little trace that we leave behind. … fleka is alive and it lives through itself and the others, changing consequently throughout the time and “suffering” the positive evolution.” – this is what Milos Milosevic, a young Internet entrepreneur says about Fleka.me, his most recent online project.

After a short interview, I would use the exact same words to describe Milos himself. His work, a transformation from developer to a true entrepreneur as well as his ability to adapt are matched only by his enthusiasm and endless energy. This 28-year old entrepreneur from Cetinje became a global success story in just a few years.

His current project is Mosquito.me which is currently in public beta. It lets you discover, rate and follow events in your area. It’s currently available as a web service and iPhone application you can download from the iTunes App Store. I asked Milos quite a few questions about their plans:

I understand why you named the company Fleka, but how did you come up with the name “Mosquito” for your other project?

Something I am asked quite often by the people who speak Spanish or English, is why we named the service after this little pest. First of all, there is quite a bit of misconception about mosquitoes, since most of them are harmless and even useful, but the true reason for such a decision was very simple – we started off with an idea of creating a small pocket-size tourist guide that provides an interesting and useful info about places people visit, compiled by a “swarm” of people who notice good stuff here and there.

To reinforce the idea and make it accessible to everybody we named it “Mosquito” and launched across the web and mobile platforms. Right away we were overwhelmed by the buzz of online “mosquitoes” giving their own contributions to the service.

Mosquito has a slogan “Discover the world around you”. It describes the service perfectly. Please give a brief description of the service.

With Mosquito we wanted to create a quality location-based service from the very beginning. That said, I really do believe that it is hard to set the high standards without any editorial staff in the very beginning and some ground rules. Many location-based services create a product, make it viral, and then everything else is up to to the community.

This is great, but in my opinion people nowadays want something more. What I mean is that we who are working on location based apps need to get outside of our offices, talk to the  businesses and meet their and their clients’ needs (after all, they are all our users). We want to focus on events – places do matter, but it is organization that matters more.

This might sound like a lot of work (and it is, trust me!), but we feel that there needs to be more connection between the real world and the Internet. Now days mobile devices are definitely helping a lot, but this ever-existing gap needs to be bridged. The line between us living online and using only what is necessary from the real world, and us living in the real world and using technology to make our lives more fun to enjoy is getting thinner.

Are you planning to connect with Foursquare or some other location service?

Yes, definitely. We are planning to connect with other location based services using all features that can help us improve our product. All these check-ins and thoughts shared across various platforms related to a single place or event, should be aggregated in a standardized format and we are working hard to make this happen. The tasks ahead are to give the right weight to certain features especially in terms of relevance to the overall rating of a certain place / event.

What is your next destination? Italy?

Since we operate in Italy as well as in Montenegro,  Milan and Rome will be among the first places to be introduced with the service outside Montenegro boundaries. At the same time we want to focus on the Balkans since these countries are investing a lot in tourism and are lacking quality location based services with coverage of local events.

You are a bootstrapped start-up. Do you plan to work on finding investments? If so, where?

“Since the business grows, we will need investments. We will see what our options are. A financial boost would speed up the and process and help us scale the project.

I heard from so many VC’s and angels that when they invest they think: “It is better to invest in a first-class team and a second-class project than the opposite. Well, I believe that both “Fleka” and its project are first-class and will remain optimistic throughout 2012…

You can find out more about Milos’ company Fleka on their official website – Fleka.me. When it comes to Mosquito, you can try it out for yourself at Mosquito.me even before it arrives in your country. You’ll get a chance to get a little more information on Montenegro so its well worth it!