Three years ago, Groupon was booming. The online discount leader’s stock has slowed but the concept remains ever prosperous. When the online deals business floated on the NASDAQ in 2011, competitors watched with eager anticipation – one MBA graduate more than most.

Euclides Major sat down with his future co-founder and took stock. The concept of discount deals was a boon and the tech sector’s supposed bubble was expanding. Euclides recalls the moment the light bulb lit up with a degree of excitement.

“Before Groupon’s IPO, we really tried to understand why the concept was booming," says Euclides, as he explains MYGON, the business he co-founded two years ago

"Where can I go for lunch? What am I going to do tonight? Open up the app, locate where you are, and see what deals are available to you right now."

He is hoping that his start-up, which allows users to discover hundreds of deals in Portugal via a free downloadable smartphone app, will strike gold in the mobile mine. He launched a beta version in April 2012 and in less than 48 hours MYGON was the most downloaded product in the App Store Descargas. Today, the business has more than 150,000 users.

And if his download statistics aren’t convincing, his track-record might be. Before officially launching MYGON in February two years ago, Euclides co-founded another start-up in Lisbon, Portugal’s capital city. The company, GoCar Tours Portugal, is a go-karting franchise which was originally established in the United States.

It brought innovation to the Portugal’s tourism sector and the business achieved recognition from the country’s Tourism Board a year after launching.

But Euclides is quick to steer our conversation back to his mobile start-up. He remains a stakeholder and non-executive advisor at GoCar Tours, but it’s clear which business is his focus.

After graduating from IE Business School’s MBA program in 2010, and a brief stint as an investment professional in PE funds, he pooled his personal capital into MYGON and raised about €550,000 through a seed-round. The company has swelled to eight employees, as well as the two co-founders.  

When we talk tech, Euclides lights up. “We tried to take the best parts [of the discount concept] in terms of daily deals together with mobile technology. So we built a platform which is a very convenient way for users to book any type of service, and for merchants to build a local, real-time deals platform,” he says.

The user grabs a cheap deal, while the trader sells their products or services. The business takes a cut for each customer the merchant gets. MYGON has about 2,000 merchants under its arm in Portugal, but Euclides wants more. He has ambitious plans to internationalize.

“For the last few years we’ve been trying to prove the business case in Portugal, but now we aim to internationalize,” says Euclides, who is the joint managing director with his business partner Ricardo Villares. “We want to go to another European market and have a few [countries] under evaluation.”

He has utilized his MBA alumni network while planning this expansion. He can’t tell me where exactly they will go, but hints at the UK or Spain. For that, he says, they will need to raise an investment round with Spanish investors. “And the IE network allowed me to contact and approach them,” Euclides says.

He points out that even for entrepreneurs – who have become a rarity at business schools this decade – an MBA is valuable for the contacts you develop. IE has one of the highest MBA rankings in Europe, but that is neither here nor there.

“IE opened a lot of doors,” he says. “You also develop a lot of skills and once you enter start-up life, you can leverage [them] and apply them in real-life.”

Euclides has, like many others, studied an MBA and changed track. Funding a start-up was not his first experience of finance either. After an associate year with PwC, he joined Standard & Poor's, the leading ratings services agency in 2007. He was promoted a year later and worked as a risk specialist until 2009.

“After studying in Portugal, I had to try the finance world in London,” Euclides says. “But on other hand I had always wanted to try to do something by my own. At first I thought working for a large corporation would be a good experience, for personal and professional growth. But then I got the chance to do an MBA.”

That year at IE in Madrid flipped his mind-set – although start-ups have always been a big incentive “since ever”, he says. Euclides worked at a small boutique private equity firm after graduation before a friend approached him with the idea for MYGON.

And we haven’t even touched on GoCar Tours Portugal yet – the business he helped run throughout his MBA degree. Tourism, he says, is held in high regard nowadays. But six years ago, the co-founders had an opportunity to take advantage of “an amazing city, nice weather and good food”.

They discovered the go-karting concept through an article on the cover of Time magazine. They approached the U.S entrepreneur who had the original business idea, which consists of renting yellow convertible cars to tourists, with the intention of franchising the operation.

It was Euclides’ first start-up experience. And what a good one it was. “It’s been running for six years and has been a very successful business in Portugal; at the moment we are one of the largest tourism companies,” he says.

You couldn’t draw the dots between go-karting and mobile apps – no more so than you can link his career with Standard & Poor's to the entrepreneurial track. But his record has been enviable so far.

And it’s not as if the technology sector has stopped growing. Portugal too is hailed as an emerging market with huge potential.

Groupon may have slipped in stock value, but Euclides is confident MYGON will ride the discount wave through Europe. “For the last few years we’ve tried to develop the technology product,” he says. “But we’re approaching investors outside Portugal in potential new markets.”

He will hope, then, that MYGON can download an even bigger slice of the mobile market elsewhere.