Mihai Mafteianu » Meetings

Keynote Presentation about Lean Startups

Mihai — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:35:45 +0000

I was invited to keep a presentation about lean startups and lessons learned implementing this set of processes in my startups. The presentation took place at Bucharest Hubb which is the HQ for the first and only seed fund for IT startup in Romania. I am also an advisor the seed fund and it was nice to talk to the teams about my area of expertise and what I can help them with.

Embedded above are the slides I used to support the presentation.

Lessons learned by attending OpenAgile Romania

Lessons learned by attending OpenAgile Romania

Mihai — Tue, 18 May 2010 06:42:13 +0000

OpenAgile Romania 2010 took place in Bucharest between the 14 and 15 of May. The conference was aimed at putting the local Agile practitioners in front of some of the top international domain experts and speakers.

The organizers did a great job at inviting some of the people that were part of the Agile movement from the very beginning and this definitely made a difference in the level of experience and expertise showed by the speakers.

With the organizers being domain experts as well (experienced agile practitioners and coaches), they very well understood the need to have the talks focused on answering questions as opposed to raising new ones. All the talks were focused on practical approaches to improving Agile methodologies as well as methods to implement Agile in organizations just getting started. Not a single talk was focused on theory or theoretic approaches to methodologies or frameworks.

I’m sure that most if not all of the attendees left the conference with a clear view on how to improve on their company’s Agile approach. There were talks on coaching, writing user stories, testing, product ownership as well as other topics, but the most important aspect was the general openness of the speakers to give advice and discuss about problems one might have with implementing Agile to their organization.

More info on the conference talks and speakers can be found at http://openagile.ro/talks/. From what I understood from the organizers, sooner than later they will publish on the website the talks along with interviews with the speakers.

Photo made by Lucian Daniliuc

Mentoring young entrepreneurs in Brasov at Arena Ursilor

Mihai — Sun, 16 May 2010 20:23:40 +0000

I was invited to be a mentor on a local entrepreneurship event called Arena Ursilor. The idea for the event was to put 10 promising entrepreneurs and their projects in front of the best mentors and business angels Romania has to offer and help them push their projects forward by advice and possibly financing.

The level of the projects was surprisingly high as the vast majority of the entrepreneurs pitched project with some level of technical implementation, at least at proof of concept stage. The others were domain experts, having worked in their line of expertise for many years and having the necessary experience to move to stating a business on their own.

The projects with the greatest potential to make a difference in the near future from the ones pitched at the event, in my opinion, are (in no particular order):

VideoGuide.ro is a built to order video tour platform. Emanoil Serban, the project’s founder and CEO came to the event to raise money to develop the project further. He was asking for 60.000€ for 20%, giving the project a 300.000€ valuation. Currently they have 150 clients for their video tour filming and publishing service at a revenue of 300-600€ / client / year. The company is operational for around 2 years now and Emanoil plans to raise money to expand the sales effort to more cities in Romania.
Tjobs.ro is a job platform with a twist. The twist comes from the fact its co-founders are domain experts in recruiting romanian employees for foreign employers and they formed a union of local recruiting companies. Those over 300 companies then submit their open job positions to Tjobs, while Tjobs makes sure that the end-users submit CVs only to verified companies that have a proven track record. This makes for a great win-win relationship for both the end-user and the employment agencies, with Tjobs being more like a trust partner for both than a usual recruiting platform. The Tjobs founders came to the event to raise money, asking for 150.000€ for 5% at a 3.000.000€ valuation.
Fantasy Accelerator is an animated comic project. The project, in the idea state at the moment, is started by a young ambitious romanian guy who studied in the UK for all his university years. He came back with an idea of how to make online comics more interactive. Guy’s name is Claudiu Revnic and you can find him on Facebook.

The event went really well, with both the investors and mentors getting to know about new projects and the mentees and participants getting to interact with a group of experienced and successful local technology people.

Entrepreneurs on Transfagarasan (OpenGrill #2)

Mihai — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:47:10 +0000

I have had the opportunity to organize an event with the OpenCoffee Bucharest people. We have decided on getting to the mountains in a road trip. For this we went to the most famous road in Romania, the Transfagarasan. The view there was amazing and the whole event went great.

Some of the entrepreneurs joining the event include (in no particular order):

Mircea Pasoi – Ex-Google Intern, Co-Founder at Balaur.ro, Software Engineer at uverVU
Cristina Scheau - Google Summer of Code Student
Cristian Strat – Ex-Google Intern, Co-Founder at Balaur.ro, IT Consultant
Adrian Zamfira - CEO at KuBu Stream
Marius Sigheti - Managing Partner at Sigheti & Sigheti
Viorel Spinu - Managing partner at Sety
Iulia Spinu - .NET Developer at TeamNet
Petronela Serban – Co-Founder at BloggerWork
Mihai Mafteianu - Founder at eWiki.ro, Co-Founder at TwiMarket.com, IT Consultant

Looking forward for the next event in the OpenGrill series.

Online Wiki of the Romanian Internet Market

Mihai — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:55:25 +0000

Today at OpenCoffee Bucharest I presented my most recent startup initiative, an online wiki for the Romanian Internet Market. Feedback from the community was amazing, with everyone in the room looking forward to contributing with content.

The main reason for starting this is to help provide an unbiased information source for people looking into the local entrepreneurship effort.

Topics featured into the wiki will include, but not limited to, who the entrepreneurs are, what projects are they working on, who are the local investors and advisors, who are the non-core business professionals with experience in working with entrepreneurs (lawyers, accountants, etc.). Also an entrepreneurship guidebook will be featured with articles about various processes an entrepreneur encounters in his activity (raise capital, make a partnership, hire the right people, etc.).

Anyone will be able to edit, as long as their submitted content is correct and unbiased.

Attached below is the Keynote I have used to support my speech. It is not very self-explanatory, but will offer you a general view of what today’s OpenCoffee was about.

If you want to know more about the project or how you can help please use the comment section or the about page.

Pitching TwiMarket.com at Net Start-up – CERF 2009

Mihai — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 07:45:22 +0000

Video clip from the Net Start-up event held at CERF this year to which I was invited to preview TwiMarket.com. The aim was to make a pitch similar to the one at Mini Seedcamp and improving it with the help of the feedback panel. In the end I ended up pitching differently compared to this clip based on the feedback I received privately from some people.

I am a Mini Seedcamp Berlin finalist with TwiMarket.com

Mihai — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:11:57 +0000

Just got the news via email. I am a finalist at the Mini Seedcamp Event in Berlin that is going to happen on the 9th of June 2009. The great thing about this event is that I am going to be joined in the contest by 2 other Romanian entrepreneurs that I know already from the industry. One of them is Viorel Spinu from Sety / The Java Company (the company that I developed TwiMarket.com with) and the other is Mihai Gheza.

Now I must complete the final details and make a great Keynote presentation.

TwiMarket.com at Lucky 7 done at OpenCoffee Bucharest

Mihai — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:49:32 +0000

I’ve shown TwiMarket.com again at OpenCoffee in a slightly different environment and to a larger audience of people from the local Internet industry. It makes me very happy to see people appreciate our effort and are able to see what we do as an example of promoting the Romanian entrepreneurship activities with examples done by people that have enough experience with start-ups to develop something from an idea to a product.

Actually the great thing about TwiMarket.com is that the best is yet to come. So far we only gathered feedback and shown a proof of concept to small audiences. Very soon the real marketing will begin and start having tons of new ads daily and strong promotion to support our efforts.

Attached below you can find the shorter version of the presentation I did some time ago for the website:

OpenCoffee Bucharest and why I attend it

Mihai — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:09:24 +0000

OpenCoffee is a weekly meeting taking place every Thursday morning in some 100 places around the world. People from the online & IT industry gather to have a coffee together and exchange ideas. There are also various projects launched at our local OpenCoffee, projects consisting mostly of online startups.

Why I attend it?

For some reason, possibly due to it’s flexible format, top people in the Bucharest online market love it. It is a great opportunity to get to meet the top players and see what’s going on. Actually, my recent project TwiMarket.com was initiated at OpenCoffee Bucharest and launched there.

If you come from outside Bucharest or Romania and want to get a quick impression on some of the people and initiatives here you should attend OpenCoffee.