Day 3 — Screw It, Let’s Do It!
Windy day 3 in Cluj-Napoca meant our appointment with Jennifer Austin from Spherik Accelerator, situated in Liberty Technology Park had arrived. It is often said that Romania is the country of contrasts and the Liberty Park’s setting confirmed this. The bumpy road to the park ended in a part of the city close to the train station, filled with decrepit buildings in the close vicinity of construction sites that would become prestigious company headquarters. The modern Liberty Park is at the meeting point between urban and rural, being situated on the bank of the Somes river, next to chicken farmers’ houses and under the mountains.
Tours were a leitmotif of the week and of course we got one around the Liberty Park as well. As we had already observed in the previous two days, the beauty of visiting co-working spaces is that they are hubs towards endless wisdom of the multitude of entrepreneurs operating in them. At Spherik is where we met the guys behind Tulemod, a company specialized in 3D scanning of shoes and clothing items, which aims to revolutionize the way consumers interact with fashion and its online shopping. On the outside, we took a long stroll around the park and were met with a multipurpose sports ground, a grill area, paved paths meandering through the abundant green space and even more pavilions hosting companies such as Siemens. Liberty on Bike is an event organized yearly hosted on the premises, where a conversation with the neighborhood is being perpetuated.
Back inside, we got a presentation from Angela about the history and future plans of the Park. Just like the Paintbrush Factory, Liberty Park used to be a factory, but for chairs. Moreover, we found out that the theme of the park and one of the criteria for new tenants is product development as opposed to the all so popular outsourcing to western markets.
Back in the hands of Jennifer, we found out some more about her perception of Cluj-Napoca. Jennifer is originally from California, but life brought her to what now is starting to be called the Silicon Valley of Europe, Cluj-Napoca and she wasted no time, but with her “screw it, let’s do it” mentality began shaping Spherik Accelerator, for which she got full funding of 200 000 euros. She feels strongly about all types of entrepreneurship being bound to solve problems rather than create them and that applies to Silicon Valley. She tells us that she comes from a modest family, her mother being a factory worker in California, who lost her job due to the inhumane company policies once the competition steeply increased. Jennifer predicts that a development of that scale could endanger Cluj-Napoca’s sustainability and advocates for thoughtful growth. As a side project she is working on a bird tracking app that will showcase the immense diversity of birds flying over Transylvanian lands.
“All entrepreneurship should be solving problems, not creating them.”
Jennifer Austin
As for her perception of her now fellow townsman, she observed that vision is not a problem in the city, but action is, as people in Cluj-Napoca wait for others to make things happen. The youth does not take advantage of opportunities and is a poor judge of quality. In fact, the chief editor of Tech Crunch ran a workshop in Liberty Park and more than half of the people who signed up for the event, failed to show up.
The difference between an accelerator such as Spherik and incubators like the ones we have previously visited is found in the entrepreneurs’ level of flexibility for managing priorities and time. At Spherik, as opposed to other co-working spaces in Cluj-Napoca, a rigurous plan of action is put into place from before applying to the program, needed adjustments being made on the way during the 4 months program.
At the end of our visit Jennifer had exciting news for the Innovation Makers, delivered in the most random way possible: they were to support any idea promising enough that was to be born in the social entrepreneurship Hackathon we were about to organize. After getting our jaws reattached to our skulls, we were pumped and ready to roll with the Hackathon.
