Startup the beginnings: Techsylvania and Codiax
This is the second article from “Startups: The beginnings series”, where we try to bring to light the entrepreneurial journey of successful companies from Cluj. In the first edition we had the opportunity to talk with Visitor Analytics (link). Today we had the privilege of talking with Vlad Ciurca, who is the co-founder of Techsylvania. Vlad has shared with us his journey of creating one of the most successful Tech Conferences in Romania.
Hello Vlad it’s very nice to have you here. Could you please tell us a bit about you and your background?
I’ve finished economical studies and specialized in marketing. After that I have worked in various fields. One of the most significant ones, also as length, was in operations and warehousing at Nokia. I was responsible for a shift, at a company that provided the logistics for the factory. I was a very interesting experience that helped me a lot in terms of personal development. After that I’ve crossed over to IT. Where I’ve worked for five years. Out of which, four of them were on the Product Management side and the last one in Business Development.
That is quite of range of expertise! How did you get to organize events?
During all this time I got involved in the organization of various events. The majority of them were out of passion. One of the first ones was a communiton LinkedIn called Romanian Managers Cluj with the purpose of creating business networking events. At that time the concept of business networking was pretty new in Cluj, and LinkedIn was also in its initial stages of usage in Romania.
During that time I started to become more interested in technology. It was also then, when I met Philip Kandal, one of the co-founders of Skobbler, currently Telenav. By talking what can be done on the start-up scene and already having some experience with organizing events, we have decided to bring a start-up related event to Cluj. We have studied various concepts and from what we found was that Startup Weekend was one of the most easiest to implement and which had some tangible results. As you could actually see the projects at the end of the event. So we have decided to organize a startup weekend in Cluj, which was the first event in Cluj that was focused on startups.
Our initial idea was to have a team that continues to work on their project at least 6 months from when the event is finished. In those four years that I have been involved in Startup Weekend, there were 4–5 teams that received funding from international accelerators. And the event grew from 90 participants in the first year, to around 150–160 participants in the years to follow. This was also the upper limit of participants suggested to us by Startup Weekend. So we have seen that there was clearly interest on this area of startups, technology, entrepreneurship.
How did you make the transition from organizing Startup Weekend to Techsylvania ?
I saw that there were a series of conferences in Cluj, that were IT focused, but not really on entrepreneurship and startups. They did not have international speakers. The majority of them were romanian. In 2014 I have started working with Oana at a new concept which is called Techsylvania. There were several reasons why we wanted to start this event.
One, was the wish to organize a truly international event where to participate international founders, investors so they can see the ecosystem, various experts on the steps needed in order to create a technology company and this is how Techsylvania was born. During that time I also was working at Skobbler on the project management side. During that time at Skobbler, I noticed how important than knowledge actually is, when developing a technological company , that knowledge was not really present in Cluj and this is how Techsylvania was born.
In the first year, we had around 400 participants. We started with a conference and a hackathon. During that time the main focus was on wearables and connected devices. There were alot of gadgets, that were not really accessible at that time, as they weren’t really sold on the market in Romania and we have managed to get them to Romania by collaborating with the manufacturers and out them in the hands of the developers in order to see what creative projects they could develop.
During the conference, we had the majority of the speakers, international speakers, international founders, founders of startups listed to the stock exchange, managing directors from international accelerators such as Techstars. Seeing that the feedback from the first edition was positive, we have continued to further develop the concept.
For example, in the second year we have added another conference day, in the third year we have added the startup competition and some workshops that we tested as a concept. And this year, besides the conference, the hackathon and the startup competition, we have focused further on the workshops. This year we had 9 workshops and the feedback for them was really positive. It was a great method to educate the participants on various topics such as pitching, technical and so on. During all this time the event has gradually grown, from 400 participants, to 800 to 1300 and 1500 this year. This year we have managed to bring some names that we are very proud of and it was the first time they came to Romania, such as Mark Shuttleworth , which is the founder of Ubuntu, or Tim Draper which is one of the early investors in Skype, Tesla and Hotmail and this is pretty much the story about Techsylvania until now.
How would you explain your evolution?
Every event that I did up until Techsylvania, had a learning curve and provided me with knowledge. The knowledge accumulated during the years has helped me organize Techsylvania. Hopefully Techsylvania is one of many things, that we want to achieve both locally and internationally. I have also noticed that, a lot of the international speakers are very pleased with what they find here. Maybe they first come here being drawn by the touristic side of things, such as Transylvania, but when they can see a community and a vibe of over 15.000 people that are working in IT, they are very pleased. One of the things that really contributed to the development of Techsylvania, was that I was present at many international events and I saw that there were alot of things happening there and in Romania weren’t so we decided to bring them here.
How hard is it to bring an international speaker in the country?
It is still hard. It is not as hard as in the first edition of Techsylvania, although at the first edition of Techsylvania, we were a bit lucky that we managed to bring some really good speakers, such as the CEO of Telenav which is a company listed on the stock exchange or the manager director of Techstars Boston or Johannes Reck which founded a company valued at over half a billion dollars. Each edition contributes to develop a reputation. What matters a lot is the experience that we offer to the speakers that come to Romania and this is one of the aspects that really help at improving the brand. With each and every edition we always try to outdo ourselves and always try to be a bit ahead of the trend and bring topics that are relevant.
The next event your organizing is a true challenge for any software engineer interested in Deep Tech. Can you tell us more about Codiax?
After we have developed the concept of Techsylvania and we managed to get it to a point in which is pretty successful and known in the entire country, we wanted to set a new challenge for ourselves.
When we were still deciding what topics we should cover, we have made research in order to see what are the most important trends. This theme of AI was a topic that we were following for some time and we have noticed that, the majority of events on AI where mainly focused on the academic side of things and research and not necessarily on the application side of things. For example how can AI influence the processes inside a company or how it can help a company to be more efficient in their departments using machine learning and so on.
Deep technology is no longer a myth or a phase, it is a reality. It will be explored in the current and future tech-related products, be it websites, applications, software or wearables. Romania has more engineers per capita than the US, China, India or Russia, according to Forbes. More than 1,000 people are in progress of developing their deep tech skills and some of them are showing a real interest in pursuing the depths of it.
With Codiax our aim is to help software engineers enhance their deep tech skills and comprehension. We connect the dots between the conceptual and the practical sides of deep tech by seeking for the best content and showcasing real life applications.
How about the topics?
The event will revolve around main topics like Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality, Internet of Things and Frontier Hardware. Our speakers from around the world will go in the depth of this topics and address categories like Machine Learning, Data Mining, 3D Technology, Smart Homes, Nanosatellites and much more. Keep an eye on Codiax on Facebook and Codiax.co for updates.
What are you advices for those who want any type of project?
For us the biggest factor that kept us going was that we really enjoyed planning events. It might be a buzzword to do what you like but for us this was the main driving force. The fact that we always thought of our events as something we would like to attend. This has forced us to focus on the details which most might ignore and we wanted to close those gaps. You always have to try to be the user of your own product. Lesson that I’ve learned during the time that I have activated as a Product Manager.
