A Cornell University graduate and a backpacker team up to solve financial literacy with tech startup

ELIZABETH, N.J. - Aug. 12, 2013 - PRLog -- In 2012 Phroogal founder, Jason Vitug, was backpacking around the world while Cornell University student, Max Martinez was working hard on and off the football field.  The two exchanged tweets sporadically throughout the year but it wasn’t until Vitug returned from his yearlong excursion that they both realized a common passion for helping people and entrepreneurship.

After returning from his goal of visiting 20 countries, Jason set out to help people realize their dream lifestyle. In 2013, Vitug laid the groundwork for a technology startup, called Phroogal, to focus on tackling the issue of financial literacy. Vitug states, "We learn our money habits through social circles and through search engines. That's the basis of how Phroogal will address financial capability."

He adds, “Bootstrapping a company with very little knowledge of programming have proven to be quite difficult but not impossible.” Since launching his startup with a simple landing page, Phroogal has attracted over 3,000 eager beta testers. What was his secret formula? Social media.

Jason states, “In the past 4 months, I’ve pretty much lived in front of my computer or on Skype with my programmers. It’s a 24 hour operation trying to create a tool that I feel will make a difference in people’s lives. As the demands of building the product escalates, my time is better used on product development and partnerships."

Welcome Max Martinez. Max joins Phroogal as co-founder using his expertise in social media, fundraising, sales and marketing to further Phroogal's pre-launch goals. Martinez is a recent Cornell University graduate and ex-football running back.  Before the age of 22, he built two successful startups, MaxyClean and Cornellious.com. MaxyClean was an instant hit at Cornell and was purchased a month later.  Cornellious.com, a college humor website, gained a 20% following among Cornell students with the Cornellious YouTube channel reaching over 600,000 views.

Vitug has known Martinez socially for a couple years. It was during Martinez's last semester at Cornell that Vitug learned about Max's entrepreneurial ambitions. Vitug states, "I was impressed. I waited for Max to graduate and moved to San Francisco before approaching him about Phroogal. My patience worked." This is an example of how social media helped like-minded entrepreneurs to collaborate. It's that premise of social collaboration that Vitug and Martinez hopes will increase people's financial capability.

Martinez shares Vitug’s passion in helping people and pushing the limits of social collaboration in financial literacy. “Our goal is to connect people to resources and tools. We want to make it easier to find the right money answers.” states Martinez.  Vitug adds, “People have money questions and the majority of us learn about money through friends, family and coworkers or we seek the answers online. But, what we find is a confusing amount of information and advertisements. We are solving that problem with Phroogal.”

Social is the key to connecting with the right resources. Take it from Vitug and Martinez, their partnership started on Twitter because of a retweet from a mutual friend.

For more information visit www.Phroogal.com

Launched in March 2013 in Mountain View, CA, Phroogal founders are currently operating from various couches around the country. Jason Vitug is currently blogging out of New Jersey and Max Martinez is settling down in San Francisco.

Photos:
https://www.prlog.org/12191369/1
https://www.prlog.org/12191369/2