Endeavor Romania

🇦🇪 Sergiu Negut, Endeavor Entrepreneur, panelist in the Dubai International Selection Panel 👇 🌍 Endeavor has gathered for the 102nd International Selection Panel, where we welcome new high-impact entrepreneurs into our global network. 🏗️ It’s a rigorous process, with less than 3% of applicants being selected each year, and we are proud to see Sergiu featured as one of the visionary founders who take part in the selection process. The panelists make their evaluations in 3 days - orientation, interview and deliberation days - based on three criteria: 📌 the business maturity & whether sales and acceleration show great promise; 📌 the profile of the applicants, to see if their ecosystem impact recommends them as #EndeavorEntrepreneurs; 📌 whether the business is at an #InflectionPoint in its scaling journey, ready to make its global mark. #Entrepreneurship #MoreThanScaleMultiply #EndeavorISP Endeavor UAE

ANIS Romania has kicked off registrations for the 2025 IT Industry Excellence Awards—a good opportunity for all high performing IT companies to showcase their standout achievements and innovations from 2024. If your startup is ready to shine, apply now for the "Startup of the Year" category: ⌛ Deadline: February 20, 2025 📩 Apply at: awards@anis.ro 🌐 For more details and the competition rules, visit: https://lnkd.in/dGSbfnYH Whether you're an ANIS member or not, all innovators are welcome to join this celebration of IT excellence in the annual ANIS Gala on April 2, 2025—marking 11 years of tradition. #Innovation #ITExcellence #StartupOfTheYear #EndeavorRomania

You’re probably not prepared to scale globally & other hard truths from our first Business Breakfast of the year 👇 We started our Business Breakfast series with a Q&A with Vargha Moayed (White Star Capital, UiPath alumnus and Chairman of the Board at Endeavor Romania). With a great turnout from the local entrepreneurial community, the talk was centered around practical tips with immediate value. While the conversations were mostly applied on different cases, here are some general ideas we left with: 📌 knowing that it’s too early to scale globally is business critical, and you’re more likely to be ready to enter the US market successfully after series A; 📌 if you’re scaling globally, talent is your most expensive resource when scaling to the US. Coming from an emerging market, chances are you’re first going to hire a below average sales team, and work your way up from there. To make this happen, you need to reach a scale of talent redundancy that allows you to send key talent in the US to set up for success; 📌 a go-to-market playbook is much more than product-market fit, and it involves nailing down in a predictable way what results your actions will yield with little margin of error. #EndeavorRomania #MoreThanScaleMultiply #BusinessBreakfast

👉 Tough lessons our Program Manager Mara Ilie learned from inside our first Scale Up Program: https://bit.ly/3Qevmm5. 🔎 From unlearning to stop relying on yourself and asking for support, to discovering playbooks and finding the right scaling pace, our Romanian ecosystem is looking at some specific challenges, which can build a lot of pressure. 🎙️ 'After 8 months at Endeavor, I’ve seen how isolating scaling can feel because the weight of "what’s next” falls heaviest on those steering the ship. Honestly speaking, the loneliest work happens in the gaps between strategy sessions and investor updates.' #ScaleUpProgram #EndeavorRomania #MoreThanScaleMultiply

Can fintech be broken down into different stages? 👇 Fintech changes how we manage and access money, and its evolution seems to be happening in waves, as we’ve seen through the companies that have joined Endeavor, as well as other significant players in the industry: 🌊 Digitization is the first wave Emerging markets have created the condition for successful early fintech companies such as dLocal, Nium or EBANX which make cross-border payments easier, digitalize payments and democratize commerce across geographies. 🌊 Disruption is the second wave The next stage takes place in fast-growing markets, with digital banks such as Nubank and Tyme driving financial inclusion & bringing millions of people into the financial ecosystem for the first time. 🌊 Deployment is the third wave Companies like Mercado Libre are infusing financial tools directly into their ecosystems, which makes fintech solutions easy to integrate. Fintech companies in emerging markets are becoming real growth catalysts, addressing systemic problems and creating local impact, while also scaling globally. #Fintech #VentureCapital #MultiplierEffect #Entrepreneurship

📰 Endeavor Catalyst’s Annual Report is here, and the findings are promising (link in comments) 👇 Latin America and Europe are at an intersection of success stories and supportive government initiatives, which puts us on the map for AI initiatives. We’re also showing promise on the regional level with: 📌 Greece showing a powerful talent pipeline, which is shown by the recent investment in Numa; 📌 Romania & Poland emerging as leaders in AI with companies in our Endeavor network such as DRUID AI and ElevenLabs; 📌 Endeavor Catalyst’s AI investment portfolio has shown significant progress through different contributions such as Alcatraz AI in Bulgaria, Picus Security in Turkey and Hack The Box in Greece. 🔮This adds to this year’s prediction made by our fund at the end of 2024, according to which investors will be turning to Europe more for AI-based deals in 2025.

🎤 Yesterday, we held a CTO Roundtable with Andrei Pitis, Founder and CEO of Genezio, with the companies in our ScaleUp Program. We talked about shaping leadership and innovation in tech. We learned that effective management lies in putting yourself in your colleagues' shoes to know how they see the world. The rulebook starts with intimately knowing your team and staying connected to their needs, aspirations and challenges. 🚀 Product and engineering alignment plays a crucial role in keeping the whole company in sync—every team member should understand the “why” behind each feature. We addressed some ways through which this can be achieved, from gathering anonymous feedback to collecting insights from the support departments. 💡 We also analyzed the anatomy of a good product manager, and we talked about periodic one-on-ones and how they provide the necessary space for honest, personal dialogue. Vision and trust work top-down and start with the founders, they’re an exercise in confidence and the bet you’ve placed for the future. #Leadership #CTO #EndeavorRomania #MoreThanScaleMultiply

🚀 We’re partners of How to Web in their launch of the “Venture in Eastern Europe 2024 Report”, taking place this month in London. 🗓️ 📢 We believe in the power of gathering the CEE diaspora with any pretext, let alone a comprehensive X-ray of 2024. Expect learnings on relevant milestones, major deals and significant trends, with focus on the countries that are gaining more traction and the verticals that are making waves. 📍💬 Be part of the conversation and join industry leaders, investors and entrepreneurs for this in-depth overview of 2024 and beyond.

We’re excited to share that FintechOS has been recognized as a Challenger for the first time in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Retail Core Banking Systems, Europe! Teo Blidarus, CEO and Co-Founder of FintechOS, shared: “We appreciate this recognition from Gartner. At FintechOS we are committed to helping our customers execute complex tech transformations. By augmenting core systems, we empower financial institutions to streamline operations, enhance customer engagement, and accelerate product innovation without replacing legacy infrastructure.”   Download a complimentary copy of the report: https://bit.ly/4hg1jX0 Read the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/dRJ5tXiY   #Banking #Innovation #Finance #GartnerMagicQuadrant #Gartner

🚀 Bogdan Axinia, Endeavor Romania Board Member, is a self-defined optimist with extensive investment experience and a lot of trust in the growth potential of our local ecosystem: https://bit.ly/4jHTX08. 🎙️ In this interview, he talked to us about the criteria they use at eMAG Ventures for new portfolio companies, and there are two non-negotiable commonalities: a solid tech component that allows scaling and a team of challengers who are driven, resilient and focused on growth. #MoreThanScaleMultiply