Endeavor Romania Officially Launches With Its First Local Event
At the turn of the season, we welcomed the ripening of the Endeavor Romania project in a warm and elegant atmosphere at the Bucharest Diplomatic Club. It was the perfect way to officialize the launch of our local chapter – in the company of our board of directors, Romanian and regional community members, and amazing colleagues from the global network.
“To dream bigger is one of the core credos at Endeavor. But I didn’t dare to dream that just one and half years after launching Endeavor Romania we could bring together over 120 participants in our first public event. Yet, this dream became real this week,” shared Mihnea Craciun, our Managing Director, shortly after the event.
From the get-go, our overarching goal has been to connect Romanian businesses and Romanian founders into a global network of like-minded and experienced professionals, to increase the chances of more local companies making it into the global economy and sharing their knowledge with future generations. We embarked on this mission because, while full of potential, our emerging ecosystem has a limited track record and has yet to develop global scaling support networks.
“Endeavor aims to bring a new experience to the Romanian market. We already have community builders in the startup ecosystem that are trying to help companies grow and scale up. It’s just that Endeavor does it differently. We do it in a more experienced way and with very relevant people when it comes to every continent of this planet. I had the pleasure to listen to or interact with some of them and now I am a believer. I feel that Endeavor Romania brings what we are missing for us not just to help some companies grow or scale, but also to help us get sooner and better to a mindset that is about going outside of our country. It’s about the seriousness of the people, the commitment, and the passion that we see around us. And I think we saw that tonight, the atmosphere was very engaging, everybody was thrilled, so I guess this is Endeavor,” Tiberiu Moisa, Deputy CEO Banca Transilvania, Board Member of Endeavor Romania, remarked.
The event also marked one year and a half of activity for Endeavor Romania. During this time, we took the first steps towards our goal by mapping, meeting, and getting to know the local network of Romanian founders and business professionals who are looking to scale up and would be a fit for our global network.
Already, we’re starting to see recognition from local entrepreneurs: “In the Endeavor community, you have the chance to interact and learn from world-class, vetted entrepreneurs. To have short conversations with them about your challenges is a huge benefit. It’s pretty tough to build a startup, from gathering a team to raising funds and scaling the business. Endeavor is one of those places where any young entrepreneur should try to be. The event tonight was a great way to connect with other local entrepreneurs and people from the Endeavor community,” said Ciprian Dudulea, co-founder & CEO of The Outfit.
To enable a process of knowledge sharing and nurturing within the local ecosystem, we began building a community around Endeavor Romania, including board members and experienced local mentors who can learn from and use the way Endeavor operates globally to the benefit of the local ecosystem.
In one year and a half in the local market, we selected 2 Endeavor Entrepreneurs (FintechOS, led by Sergiu Negut and Teo Blidarus, and DRUID.AI, led by Liviu Dragan, Andreea Plesea, PhD and Dan Balaceanu), started 6 more candidate selection processes, and onboarded 30+ mentors. But we are not stopping here. As the ecosystem matures, we expect to see more and more high-impact entrepreneurs and partners join us on this journey.
The support we felt for our young Romanian Endeavor chapter at our official launch is proof that our mission is shared by many. Particularly, we would like to thank our board members: Marius Stefan, Vargha Moayed, Karina Paval, Dimitris Raptis, Rozalia Nistor, Mark Davis, Voicu Oprean, Andrei Dunca, Tiberiu Moisa and Costin Taracila, for supporting us from the onset; our colleagues Adrian Garcia-Aranyos, Momchil Vassilev, Panagiotis Karampinis and Asli Kurul Turkmen, for joining and supporting us at our first event; as well as to our special guest, the Minister of Innovation, Research and Digitalization, Sebastian Burduja, for inviting us to dream big.
“I’m impressed with the event. Coming in, I didn’t know how many people would attend, or who exactly would attend. I was excited to be here and meet my fellow board members and some of the Endeavor entrepreneurs. I think it’s almost 200 people and I didn’t expect it. When we started Endeavor Romania last year, I honestly thought that getting to an event of this size would take 3-4-5 years. So I am happy that such a large community got together so quickly around Endeavor,” shared Andrei Dunca, technology entrepreneur, Board Member of Endeavor Romania.
“Endeavor is a great initiative and opportunity for Romanian entrepreneurs to continue the expansion and grow faster in a broad ecosystem that will support their growth. As a local entrepreneur, I’m also involved in working with startups at different stages, supporting their growth. In that respect, Endeavor is giving a lot of power and a global ecosystem that will help those companies become the next unicorns. The first Endeavor Romania event was amazing. I would love to have more events like this. I guess it’s something that the market needs because we need all the players in the ecosystem to work together. We need entrepreneurs running their business, entrepreneurs exiting their business, venture capital funds, and consultants, to all come together in events like these to share, network, and help the startup ecosystem reach the next level,” Voicu Oprean, Founder and CEO of AROBS, concluded.
We are both grateful for how well the event was received and determined to use this newfound energy to set in motion an agenda of events and activities for the local Endeavor community. Stay tuned!