Short · checked 29 September 2026
The marketplace that asked travelers to shop for strangers.
A 2014 Atlanta beta that matched people wanting hard-to-find goods from abroad with travelers who would buy and carry them; its end is unrecorded, and its co-founder and CTO Francis Plaza later co-founded the Philippine payments company PayMongo.
Muber was listed on Stompstart on 25 February 2014, in private beta and based in Atlanta. It offered to "connect you with travelers to buy the unique items you've always wanted," such as chocolate from Belgium, anime comics from Japan or a book in your own language. Shoppers posted a request; anyone about to travel could share their plans and, the listing said, earn enough to cover hotel fees and taxis. Three days earlier it had been featured on BetaList.
In a SuperbCrew interview on 26 February 2014, chief executive Leo Lofranco called Muber "a peer-to-peer package delivery system and marketplace." He dated its start to 10 April 2013 and traced the idea to his travels with co-founder Francis Plaza, an MIT graduate who built the back end, during which friends and family kept asking them to bring home hard-to-find goods. Muber was seeking investment to hire a mobile developer and sales and marketing staff.
An undated profile on Startup Dope named Lofranco as chief executive, Plaza as chief technology officer and Lofranco's brother Life as chief operating officer, and tied the idea to the "padala" culture it said was deeply ingrained in the Philippines. It said Muber connected the US and Philippine markets, with an average profit of about $10 per item.
No source records what became of the marketplace, and muber.com no longer resolves. Lofranco's biography at WR Numero Research says he helped found Muber, pitched it in Silicon Valley and helped incorporate it in Delaware.
Plaza's later work is a separate story. Forbes named him to its 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2020 as co-founder and chief executive of PayMongo, a Philippine online payments company that had raised $2.7 million in seed funding from Peter Thiel, Founders Fund and Stripe after graduating from Y Combinator. The profile mentions Muber only as part of his background.