Founders Everywhere: Maria Azofra
Founders Everywhere: Maria Azofra
Maria Azofra is the co-founder and CEO of Sharpei, a platform that empowers brands, retailers and telcos to easily launch and manage circular revenue sources.
Welcome to Founders Everywhere, where we highlight the incredible people behind the companies we’ve backed at Everywhere Ventures, a global pre-seed fund supported by a community of 500 founders and operators.
People are changing the ways in which they think about consumption and ownership, moving towards more sustainable practices such as sharing, renting, and reusing resources to minimize waste and environmental impact. The concept of the circular economy has gained significant traction in Europe and is increasingly being adopted by countries and businesses worldwide. Sharpei is playing a pivotal role in facilitating this transition by offering comprehensive technology solutions to retailers so they can boost their revenue and embrace circular economy principles. By streamlining complex processes and providing turnkey solutions, Sharpei empowers businesses to reduce waste, extend product life cycles, and contribute to a more sustainable future.
Sharpei was established in California by three Spanish co-founders Maria Azofra, CEO, Julian Azofra, CSO, and Lucia Clifford, CTO. Maria and Julian are siblings, and Lucia is basically a part of the family, as she’s known them since she was 14 and is the person who encouraged Julian to study computer science in the UK. This is the trio's second company together, having previously co-founded Yakk, the biggest B2B rental marketplace in Spain, which had a successful exit. Maria shares more about Sharpei and her journey as a founder.
What inspired the creation of Sharpei?
While running Yakk, we noticed that major retailers were keen on starting their own rental services. However, they wanted to avoid using a marketplace to retain full control over their customer experience. They sought consultancy to develop their own rental models. Seeing a clear market opportunity, we developed the technology to support these companies in launching their own circular economy initiatives, which led to the creation of Sharpei. We then relocated to the US, joined a startup accelerator, and began pitching our concept.
What is Sharpei’s North Star?
Sharpei's North Star is to empower big retailers to successfully launch and manage their own circular economy business models by providing the technology and infrastructure needed for efficient recommerce services. This ensures that these retailers can create new revenue streams and enhance customer lifetime value without losing direct customer relationships.
What sets Sharpei apart?
We offer comprehensive infrastructure that streamlines the entire rental process for companies. Unlike others, Sharpei integrates risk management systems, recurrent payments, reverse logistics, refurbishing, and insurance services into a single platform. This allows retailers to seamlessly launch and manage various circular economy business models, such as daily rentals, subscriptions, lease-to-own services, and buyback programs, without overhauling their existing systems. We are also connected with more than 100 payment processors, so whatever the customer is using we are a plug-and-play solution for them.
Tell us about some recent milestones that Sharpei crushed.
We recently signed an agreement with Vodafone (one of the major telcos in Europe) to provide a turnkey, white-label solution for launching a B2B rental service. This solution enables Vodafone to offer mobile phones, computers, and tablets for rental to their corporate customers.
We have already integrated plugins for Shopify, WooCommerce, and PrestaShop. This could prove highly beneficial for potential users, as it enables any customer within these ecosystems to easily install our solution within minutes.
Why the name Sharpei?
Julian and I have a Shar-Pei dog named Russell. It also represents the sharpest solutions for payments, “sharp pay.” Our logo is inspired by the balloon dog Lucia and I often saw during our travels together.
Any podcast recommendations?
Lenny’s Podcast with Kenneth Berger is a gold mine. They share great tips and you as a founder can get the scripts and put them into practice in your startup.
Fun fact: Lucia and I met playing football (soccer) when I was 12 and she was 14. We both played professionally; Lucia in Tottenham and Qatar and I played in Madrid.
Check out Brendan Mahony with Jenny Fielding on the Venture Everywhere podcast: Closing Time, Listen now on Apple and Spotify and listen to all our past episodes here!
Watch Scott’s interview on YouTube.