Mario Berta

Mario Berta, an Italian national, graduated from the University of Torino with a degree in economics and went on to attend IE Business School in Madrid, Spain. He then joined the Spanish branch of an Italian import-export business and afterwards, joined AFA-Press, an advertising agency focused on producing special reports to promote emerging markets. Shortly after, Mario was recruited by global venture builder, Rocket Internet, and became the Regional Managing Director of Easy Taxi—an experience that taught him the ins and outs of running a two-sided platform. After two years at Rocket, Mario left to become Director of Growth at Nova Capital, a venture capital fund focused on investing in Asia.

Throughout his varied career, Mario has exercised his passion for empowering and enabling entrepreneurs, and that did not change when the entrepreneurial bug bit him. At Rocket Internet, Mario learned that a company’s biggest capital expenditure is often real estate, and he began to brainstorm ways to help startups reduce that cost. In 2015, confident he had identified a solution, Mario launched FlySpaces, an online platform dedicated to aggregating coworking space. With early traction, Mario raised capital from local investors, including Narra Venture Capital and a prominent Filipino real estate tycoon, and recruited his original team from Rocket Internet. Mario quickly realized that his business would only achieve favorable unit economics if it offered short-term office rentals in addition to single seats at coworking spaces. In 2015, FlySpaces became Asia’s first online platform for short-term office space. Shortly after, Mario brought on his co-founder and fellow IEB graduate, Guillaume Martin, to run finance and operations.

FlySpaces’ online platform connects entrepreneurs, SMEs and corporations looking for short-term rentals with property owners interested in monetizing their idle office and event space. Coworking, short-term, conference, meeting and virtual office space can all be booked through FlySpaces’ website or mobile app in hourly, daily and monthly increments. By vetting and aggregating short-term rental inventory, FlySpaces offers customers a transparent and streamlined search process and eliminates the need for property brokers. Today, FlySpaces, with central operations in Manila, features over 500,000 square meters of office and event space in seven Asian cities by partnering with 800 offices, coworking spaces, and top companies such as Regus and The Ascott. FlySpaces will soon introduce Passport, a subscription program that provides its users with access to all coworking spaces in its network, perfect for mobile professionals.