Interview with Ilinca Păun: Lifelong Learning, The Value of Taking Risks, and Understanding the Cost of Innovation
Ilinca Păun is a force in Romania’s startup and angel investing ecosystem. Founder at Bravva Angels, she blends her passion for education with a bold approach to risk—challenging conventional business norms and empowering female entrepreneurs. With a career built on mentorship, transformational learning, and a deep commitment to fostering innovation, Ilinca is reshaping how we think about education and investment in the tech startup landscape.
You describe yourself as being passionate about education. Was there a moment when you decided that education is the key to everything?
I believe it was in middle school that I started to greatly value education. I was lucky to be supported by teachers who were devoted to their vocation, and this early confidence created a mentorship relationship that benefited me greatly. It came with human validation and made me enjoy learning especially if there was a witness to this. It gave me a sense of purpose and a way of living.
Even later on, while organizing training sessions as CEO at Colliers, I chose not to focus on increasing sales, even though that was the direction—business development—but rather to create a culture of education within the company. I enjoyed being in the training room, just sitting in the chair and learning. Applied learning is its own type of power, and I have always been drawn to it. One aha moment for me was during a systemic coaching workshop where I experienced a transformational exercise that made me once again realize what a profound experience it must be as a facilitator as well to be able to have this kind of impact on someone.
Speaking of learning with a witness, who’s witnessing your lifelong learning process now?
My partners with whom I develop educational programs for female entrepreneurs. In Angel Investing, there is no single certified or accredited school—we learn from each other in Romania. When you invest alongside others, this experience is a learning journey in itself. Romania is a new market that has only recently truly become an investment market, and angel investing inherently involves risk—one that you cannot simply eliminate with information.
My colleagues at Bravva are also my witnesses because they are lead investors, and we all contribute to a process where we act as witnesses for one another.
What’s our relationship with taking risks, as Romanians, and how can we approach it in a more healthy manner?
There are a few correlations that I made. Risk is easier to accept in two situations: wealth and education, and you can only be an angel investor once you accept that you might lose your money.
As the math goes, you’ll need to have at least €100K set aside annually for a period of 3–5 years, money you are comfortable losing entirely. This means you need a constant source of disposable income, assuming that all other aspects of your life continue smoothly, like a stable job with a high salary—most likely at around €500K per year to be able to set that 20% aside for angel investing.
Starting with financial hygiene and information—communities, people, courses, access to opportunities—we can, culturally speaking, improve the fact that we are a fear-driven society. A lot has been written about how communism shaped us and the consequences of a collectivist society. The fear of loss and failure is greater than the joy of winning.
As a Romanian angel investor, you might often try not to lose rather than to win—meaning you will opt for safer investments. But this is no longer a bet on innovation. It’s a bet on something that already works. You’re still investing, but you are no longer an angel investor because you are not addressing an early-stage market.
I think we are a country that doesn’t understand the cost of innovation. 90% of innovation is unsuccessful and goes into the trash. Only 10% of it will scale and evolve towards the global market. As an angel investor, you must be aware of this reality and to also have the patience—a long-term perspective, which is also something we struggle with culturally.
Large economies have been free for hundreds of years, whereas we are still a young economy that thinks short-term. But I don’t want it to be misunderstood—angel investing is not charity. It is about the discipline of building a 15-year portfolio and following innovation.
There’s this eye-opening statistic. We have an almost 50:50 ratio of women and men who work in IT in Romania, but a much more unbalanced ratio of women who start tech businesses. Can this mindset be fixed only through generational education, or are there ways to slightly shift these numbers with the reality we’ve got?
You mentioned the difference between women and men, which is something I care deeply about and would not want to trivialize into a generalization.
Generationally, things are improving—young people exhibit healthier thinking and more of an entrepreneurial mindset. However, at the primary education level, things are still traditional and outdated. Even though when you graduate from university as a woman you might be told that you can be on equal footing with men, chances are you’ll already be the product of 12 years in a system where there is still significant subconscious bias for boys.
The need for security is anthropologically ingrained in women, and that is a mindset that will not change in 20 years. But financial and economic equality is a major step forward.
Women are more capable of collaboration, building teams, fostering healthy cultures, and creating communities where the customer is part of the ecosystem—and these are global business trends that help. However, when it comes to aggressive business growth in the first five years, this can feel daunting as a woman. We are socialized into needing to be validated, to know the lesson, and to get a perfect score—but entrepreneurship requires a completely different approach.
The most realistic place to change this reality is in university by introducing risk into the educational matrix, so that students learn to factor it in at all times and to manage it from early days.
You often talk about being a woman in business, and Bravva Angels is a coronation of that. What are some of the biggest myths about being a powerful woman?
One myth is “be more like a man” in business. We are taught to do business like men. I would love for this myth to transform into the mindset that both sexes can learn from each other—when to adopt an aggressive approach and when to seek harmony and consensus.
In startups, there is also the myth that you cannot have a personal life and run a business. Although it was once true, today there are resources and social understanding for women. Fathers now know how to be parents. However, startups are still perceived as the riskiest place to be.
Another myth is that women are not good with money. Statistically, in corporations, finance departments are filled with women.