What started as a university friendship grew into a lasting bond and later a business partnership for two international graduates.

Angel Gechev and Boris Kostov found each other at Salford, both being international students from Bulgaria. Through their friendship, they found trust, support and stability, learning to lean on each other throughout their university life.

With Boris studying BSc Business Studies with Marketing Management and Angel studying MSc Project Management, they gained the skills they needed for their careers. In 2024, they co-founded their own AI-native payment management platform, Orchestr. Recently, we caught up with Angel to learn more about their friendship and business venture.

How did you and Boris meet?

Boris and I met during our time at the University of Salford. We were both international students from Bulgaria, and naturally we ended up crossing paths quite early through mutual friends and university life.

Even though we studied different subjects, we connected very quickly because we had a very similar mindset. We were both ambitious, very driven, and always talking about business ideas, technology, and what we wanted to achieve long-term.

What was your friendship like while you were both at university?

We had a very close friendship during university. We spent a lot of time together.

We were both trying to adapt to living abroad, building our future, and balancing studies with work and personal growth. I think going through that experience together created a strong level of trust between us.

We also had very complementary personalities. We could challenge each other’s ideas, but still work extremely well together. Looking back now, many of the conversations we had about business and technology probably shaped what we are building today.

How did you navigate your friendship once you had graduated and Boris was still at university?

Even after graduating, we stayed in close contact. I started progressing in the FinTech and payments industry, which helps people and businesses manage money digitally, while Boris was still finishing university. We always kept exchanging ideas and supporting each other professionally. Once Boris graduated, he joined the FinTech and payment industry too.

Over the years, we both developed our own careers and experiences, but we never lost that connection.

You and Boris took two different courses. How did that help when founding your business?

It actually helped us a lot because we approached problems from different perspectives.

My background in project management helped me think structurally about execution, operations, scaling, and managing complex moving parts, which is extremely important in fintech and payments infrastructure.

Boris came from a business and marketing background, which helped shape areas around commercial strategy, positioning, partnerships, and growth.

I think having different academic foundations made us more balanced as founders because we naturally complement each other rather than overlap too much.

How did having that friendship help you in your career?

Having someone you genuinely trust makes a huge difference both personally and professionally.

University can be challenging, especially when you move countries and build a life away from home. Having that friendship created stability and support during an important stage of our lives.

We understand how each other thinks, where our strengths are, and how to support each other during difficult moments.

What is your fondest memory of your friendship with Boris?

Honestly, it is probably not one single moment. It is the whole journey.

From being students together in Salford, talking about the future and what we wanted to achieve one day, to now building an international fintech company together over ten years later.

I think that full-circle journey is something very special and something we are both proud of.

You co-founded your business in September 2024, which is over 10 years since you both graduated. What brought you both together for Orchestr?

After more than a decade working in payments and fintech, we both saw the same problem in the market. Payment’s infrastructure is still incredibly fragmented, outdated and operationally heavy for businesses.

At the same time, AI started creating a completely new opportunity to rethink how payment operations should work.

We realised there was a gap for an AI-native payment management platform that could intelligently optimise payments, automate decisions and help businesses scale globally much more efficiently.

Because we already had years of friendship and trust behind us, it felt very natural to start building Orchestr together. Timing, experience and vision all aligned at the right moment.

Thank you to Angel for sharing his and Boris’s story! If you’d like to share your Salford story, we’d love to hear from you – get in touch at alumni@salford.ac.uk.