Mihai Mafteianu » Romania

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

Could we fight corruption in Romania like this?

Mihai — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:22:32 +0000

I do usually post TED videos on my Tumblr Blog, but this is more relevant than most to the social and economic situations we have in Romania.

Is it possible to find corruption in Romania a similar way to how Shaffi Mather, a social entrepreneur from India, does it in his country of origin?

This might actually be a great startup opportunity for a social entrepreneur involved in consumer Internet. Pasted below is a comment from the Ted.com comment section, written by a person named ‘Ted Miller’:

If I have a product that I feel cheats me, I write a bad review on Amazon. Inevitably, bad reviews accumulate, the manufacturer is shamed, sales decline and the product is removed.

Why can’t something similar be done with corrupt officials? Create an online database with their photograph and profile, their work location, etc. It may only be a first name to begin with. But preferably India passes a law that requires all public officials to have a name badge and identity number.

Then if such an official solicits a bribe, you go to the site and anonymously or publicly (just like on Amazon) and post your grievance with the official. Perhaps you even post video footage of the occasion. If an official accumulates hundreds or thousands of bad reviews, it then becomes quite simple for media to expose them and their supervisors for allowing it to continue.

How would you like to be the corrupt official who has to explain to his children why he’s the worst-rated official in the newspaper?

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.

Top Gear visits Romania in opening episode of new season

Mihai — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:49:30 +0000

Happy to announce the new Top Gear season started with an episode dedicated to the greatest driving road in the world, the Transfagarasan.

Overall the episode was true to the Romanian realities as long as one does not forget that Top Gear is a scripted entertainment show. The episode was focused on showing the extremes of Romania, between the Rex hotel in the center of Mamaia and the hidden gipsy towns located far from the residential areas. Be noticed that between Bucharest and Transfagarasan there are no gipsy towns, but only 100km on the highway.

If interested into watching the Top Gear episode outside UK the guys from finalgear.com might be able to help you Top Gear – Season 14, Episode 1 – November 15th, 2009.