From Founder to Fund Builder: Iulian Circiumaru on Antifragility and the Blind Spots Investors Can’t Ignore

With a career spanning consulting, entrepreneurship, and venture capital, Iulian Circiumaru brings a rare clarity to the founder’s journey. After co-founding 7card and scaling it to a successful exit, he shifted focus to backing other entrepreneurs through V7 Capital. Now, as an Endeavor Romania Fellow, he shares the lessons of building antifragile companies, why stress can be a performance tool, and how intuition (not spreadsheets) often holds the key to breakthrough decisions.

 

You began in strategy consulting, built 7card from scratch, then pivoted to investing with V7 Capital. What thread connects these chapters and how has each role shaped the next?

 

The connecting thread has been understanding how crafting business models with competitive advantages can produce superior returns on invested capital. Consulting gave me structured thinking and foundational business knowledge, while 7card took me through virtually every aspect of developing a business—from idea generation to exit. These experiences collectively shaped my approach to investing in other entrepreneurs and businesses.

 

You’ve been on both sides of the table: founder and investor. What do you secretly love about each role that most people don’t understand? Where do you feel most useful?

 

Despite the clear differences between these roles, what brings me joy and fulfillment in both is the same: witnessing how innovative business models combined with proper capital allocation create new markets and niches, unlock latent demand, and generate significant economic value.

 

You often speak of stress as a performance tool. In your experience, do you remember a mis-step that shaped your current worldview?

 

Several missteps reshaped my view of the business world: rules without reasons lead to revolt; imbalanced incentives and objectives create too much or too little constructive stress—the importance of skin in the game; average ideas executed by average people with average capital don’t produce average results, but very poor ones; and compromising my gut instincts under external pressures has consistently proven to be a mistake.

 

You argue that intuition is the product of distilled experience fed by clean data. Can you recall a recent business decision where the numbers said “no” but intuition said “yes” (or vice-versa) and how did it play out?

 

There are plenty of situations where numbers look appealing—they can easily be manipulated to appear favorable—but intuition says “no.” However, I believe there’s limited learning from these cases beyond calibrating one’s intuition. The real challenge lies in pursuing opportunities where numbers don’t look promising—high valuations, stagnant growth, declining markets—but intuition says “yes.” I have one such case in V7’s portfolio and am currently working on a similar deal. The key ingredient in these situations is ensuring downside protection.

 

How can antifragility be translated into venture deals or board work: milestones, cap-tables, follow-on strategy?

 

Antifragility in venture investing means creating space for healthy volatility. This involves milestone-based financing rather than front-loading capital, maintaining clean cap tables to avoid decision gridlock, and building optionality into follow-ons so the best founders have runway when they need it most—not when it’s convenient for the fund. It also includes asymmetric upside/downside triggers through earnouts and ratchets.

 

Let’s take a look at the Romanian ecosystem. Which ingredients: capital, talent, regulation, culture, are now abundant, and which still hold founders back from building global companies?

 

The truly abundant resource isn’t capital or talent per se, but the collective intelligence and creativity of local entrepreneurs. What holds us back is partly regulatory friction, partly limited exposure to internationally scaled operational know-how, and partly the middle-sized country trap.

 

You’ve helped grow more than just companies. You’ve grown people. What’s something you do with intentionality to build up founders that doesn’t benefit you directly?

 

I would give two examples of situations where my actions didn’t benefit me directly but were in support of the founders. First, in certain syndicated deals, I have taken the founders’ side on specific negotiation points, even when that meant pushing back against other investors. Second, I make it a point to stay in touch and continue supporting former founders I once backed, even after I’m no longer invested in their companies.

 

As a new Endeavor Fellow what specific gaps do you hope to close for Romanian scale-ups?

 

I want to address topics related to growth financing: attracting the right capital, structuring deals effectively, optimizing capital allocation for growth, measuring performance accurately, and preparing for successful exits.

 

One sentence each:

• Biggest blind spot you see in first-time founders? 

The lack of coherence between their business model, resource allocation (especially for customer acquisition), market size assessment, and financial projections.

• Book or course that changed your investing lens? 

“Antifragile” by Nassim Taleb and the RWRI program in New York by the same author.

• Daily ritual you’d never skip during a crisis? 

Running and meditation for maintaining clear thinking.

• What’s a small thing you’ve done recently that made you feel like you’re part of something bigger than yourself? 

Participating in a traditional sangoma ritual during a retreat in Botswana.