Work in Progress | A start-up.ro podcast

Can investors and founders become friends? What kind of a relationship do they enter once the deal is signed? What do each side of the table expect from the other one? For this episode of the Work in Progress podcast we’ve searched for answers on the dynamics of the founder/investor relationship beyond just a transactional part. Pavlos Pavlakis, a principal for VentureFriends investment fund, gave us some pointers.The Work in Progress podcast is a Green Start-Up and start-up.ro production focused on the investors and founders that change the startup ecosystem.We've centered the Work in Progress podcast around two major themes, and were going to split the episodes into the Blue podcast – for start-up.ro – where we'll discuss with venture capital managers, angel investors, startup founders from Romania, Europe and around the world about their role in the ecosystem, business, trends, and the Green podcast – for Green Start-Up – where we will put a sustainability layer on our discussions and we'll approach topics relevant for impact founders as well as impact investors.

Raya Yunakova is a principal for LAUNCHub, a venture capital firm in Bulgaria. She started working in venture capital after creating her own startup and working for tech corporations such as Microsoft. She feels comfortable in the tech space and one of the reasons might be the fact that this passion for tech comes from her mother, a software developer herself. For the Work in Progress podcast we’ve discussed women in tech and venture capital, entrepreneurial challenges and resilience.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution from both outdoor and indoor sources represents the single largest environmental risk to health globally and causes 7 million deaths a year, worldwide. In this context, Romanian born startup Airvolt brings to the market a solution that can cleanse and raise the air quality, at the same time involving businesses, public authorities and us, the average citizens. For our newest green episode of the Work in Progress podcast, we’ve talked with Alex Fredericks, the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the Treasurer of Airvolt, and Raluca Creanga, Chief Research Officer of Airvolt. Capitalizing on two markets - Air Purification and Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) - Airvolt harnesses the potential of advertising to go beyond communication and actively help monitor and purify the air we breathe. By integrating ads with air quality initiatives, the team behind Airvolt strives to create a healthier and more sustainable future for all.

Matei Dumitrescu is one of the well-known Romanian angel investors and mentors. He is the founder of the acceleration program Commons Accel. For our first green episode of the Work in Progress podcast we’ve discussed at length with Matei about impact investments and founders that want to make the world a better place for all of us to live in. The Work in Progress podcast is a Green Start-Up and start-up.ro production focused on the investors and founders that change the startup ecosystem. We've centered the Work in Progress podcast around two major themes, and were going to split the episodes into the Blue podcast – for start-up.ro – where we'll discuss with venture capital managers, angel investors, startup founders from Romania, Europe and around the world about their role in the ecosystem, business, trends, and the Green podcast – for Green Start-Up – where we will put a sustainability layer on our discussions and we'll approach topics relevant for impact founders as well as impact investors. Matei wears many hats. He is also the Vice President of Tech Angels Romania, the largest organization that reunites the private investors in our country and he is also a part of the Investment Ready Program in Vienna, the largest acceleration programs in Central and Eastern Europe for teams that create scalable solutions to societal problems. Matei was our guest for the first green podcast from the Work in Progress series and we asked him about impact investments and social entrepreneurs, about what sustainability means from the perspective of investors and about investing with a purpose.

Pete Benedetto is the Head of EMEA for Endeavor Catalyst, the venture capital arm of the Endeavor global network. He was our second guest on the Work in Progress podcast and we learned more about the power of networks and referrals, about how to track unicorns and building businesses on the model of families.Endeavor is a 26 year-old organization that is leading the global movement to drive long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring, and accelerating the best high-impact entrepreneurs around the world. To sustain Endeavor’s long-term operations in a mission-aligned way, Endeavor created Endeavor Catalyst, a rules-based, co-investment fund, set up to invest in the same High-Impact Entrepreneurs that Endeavor supports. Pete Benedetto has been working for Endeavor Catalyst for almost a year now, having joined the Endeavor family, as he describes it, in the spring of 2015. The Work in Progress podcast is a Green Start-Up and start-up.ro production focused on the investors and founders that change the startup ecosystem. Listen to our discussion with Pete, hit subscribe and join us for our next episodes.

”It's not all party, good times, celebrations, and then ringing the bell at NASDAQ. It's not all that. Most of it is a bit of misery and sadness and impostor syndrome and doubts”, tells us Ondrej Bartos, our first guest for the Work in Progress podcast. Ondrej Bartos is the co-founder and general partner of Czech venture capital firm Credo Ventures, one of the largest VCs active in Central and Eastern Europe. A former entrepreneur turned investor, Ondrej entered his first successful business venture when he was still in college, in the late 90s. Several companies later with activities in event management, consulting and IT, Ondrej realized that entrepreneurship isn't his game, so he turned consultant and angel investor.  He is currently managing the early stage venture capital firm Credo Ventures, which he co-founded in 2010. Credo has built a portfolio of over 60 companies in countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Serbia, Slovenia, and has a track record of exiting more than a dozen companies through an IPO or sale to companies such as Oracle, Cisco, or Miro. Ondrej and his team at Credo Ventures also supported two unicorns emerging from the region, RPA leader from Romania, UiPath, and global customer-centric product management platform from the Czech Republic, Productboard. Ondrej was our guest for the premiere episode of the Work in Progress podcast and we talked in depth with his about his shift in career that led him to confounding on the most appreciated venture capital firms in Europe, how his experience as an entrepreneur helps him relate to the founders, as an investor, his process when evaluating startups and the fear of missing out among investors.

We've started thinking about doing a podcast with the relevant actors in entrepreneurship, venture capital and green startup world for a couple of months, gathered some interesting interviews and here we are, ready to release the first episode of our Work in Progress series. We've centered the Work in progress podcast around two major themes, and were going to split the episodes into the Blue podcast – for start-up.ro – where we'll discuss with venture capital managers, angel investors, startup founders from Romania, Europe and around the world about their role in the ecosystem, business, trends, and the Green podcast – for Green Start-Up – where we will put a sustainability layer on our discussions and we'll approach topics relevant for impact founders as well as impact investors.