‘We love it when local start-ups like Hotjar and Altaro make it internationally’ – FreeHour CEO

FreeHour’s a locally developed mobile app designed for university and college students to share their timetables with friends and find out who’s free for a meet-up on campus.

Launched in 2017, the app has been an unmitigated success, with 25,000 users to date and new addons including student event calendars, graduate job notifications, and sponsored offers, to name a few.

“This all started back when I was 17, attending sixth-form. I was walking out of a lecture one day and found myself extremely frustrated as I only had one hour of time to myself and was wasting half of it trying to figure out who of my friends was available to meet,” explains Zach Ciappara, Founder and CEO of Free Hour, in the latest edition of Digital Island.

“Even at the time, this was not a new problem, however FreeHour was, and still remains, the only solution for students. By solving a problem students face multiple times a day, we were able to really hit the ground running.”

The fact that most local businesses were not catering to the student demographic was another factor that boosted the FreeHour brand faster than most would have expected. And the lessons they’ve learned from the local market have served Mr Ciappara and his team well. They have already successfully launched the app in Rome and are now looking to take the app to new international markets.

“We love it when local start-ups like Hotjar and Altaro make it internationally, as this is our own goal too. They have reaffirmed that when it comes to digital product offerings, international expansion while being based in Malta is something that is very tangible and possible,” he concludes.

Glass ceilings unequivocally shattered, the sky’s the limit for Malta’s new wave of promising digital start-ups.

This forms part of a wider feature carried in the latest edition of Digital Island.