Loredana Padurean — Resilience And Helping People Grow
Loredana Padurean is resilient and fearless.
She’s managed three startups in three different parts of the world, she’s a University professor at one of the biggest MBA programmes in Asia and she has a lot to say about startups, the Romanian scene and women in business.
Loredana’s path is a bit unorthodox. She failed, she succeeded, but through it all she remembered one important lesson: She doesn’t like working with people, but she enjoys helping them grow.
Early Days
Photo credits to prof-loredana.squarespace.com
Loredana’s story starts way before the Asia School of Business.
She was born in Simleu Silvaniei, a small town in western Romania. Her parents didn’t give her a passion for working with people, her father and brother are both entrepreneurs, but they didn’t give her a passion for numbers.
So where does the resilience come from?
Her mother inspired her greatly. She always sent a clear message to be competitive and rigorous. Whatever Loredana did, it wasn’t enough.
First of her class, her mother was not impressed.
First of her highschool, her mother was not impressed.
When she graduated highschool first in her country, her mother said, “Well, you know, Romania isn’t a big country”.
Perhaps this type of parenting won’t work for everyone.
But it taught Loredana how to be driven.
She studied European Studies at the Babes Bolyai University in Cluj, which really got her hyped considering that Romania wasn’t yet a part of the European Union.
But her dream career wasn’t born out of that education. It was a bit too early.
So that’s when Loredana started her first business.
Business #1: When the numbers don’t add up
Photo credits to Antoine Dautry
All throughout university, Loredana had some gigs in the fashion industry.
She has always been a shopaholic, so this fit her passion greatly.
So she started her first business in this market, and it went well for a while.
Well meaning that she loved what she was doing and she was partying five nights a week, not paying attention to opportunity costs and profits margin.
As you may expect, it didn’t work out.
It doesn’t matter how much you like what you do, it doesn’t matter how many talented people you have around — even clients don’t matter.
As long as you’re not aware of the numbers behind your business, the cash flow will dry at some point and you’ll go bankrupt.
Loredana realized this after a while and decided she needs a better education. She needs to understand the math as well as the message.
So in 2004, she chose a Master’s in the business of tourism in Switzerland. There was a big flood of Romanians at the time, emigrating towards Italy, Spain or the UK, so she chose a different destination.
Business #2: When the passion is lacking
Photo credits to Randalyn Hill
The years in Switzerland were formative for Loredana.
She went there expecting a progressive, forward thinking country. It’s a developed country from the west after all, it must be a socially responsible system.
She didn’t know that women got the right to vote in Switzerland in 1992. She didn’t know that only 40% of women in Switzerland work to support themselves.
She also arrived there to realize she was the only woman in her class.
The second surprise was the unreliability of the education. Loredana was part of the first class in that programme, and after a few obstacles, the programme was due to be cancelled.
How did she deal with all of this?
By being assertive, imposing and demanding respect.
She nagged the dean of the University so much that they ended up hiring her as a programme director for that specialization.
Loredana found a passion for higher education in those years. She liked what she was doing and she did her job well. So well that after she was done with the programme, the University asked her to stay around for a PhD. She still wasn’t convinced to take this path because she thought “Professors aren’t inspiring”. But she gave it a shot and studied for a PhD at Harvard, then later enrolled at MIT. As part of that learning experience, she ran a ski resort in Switzerland. It was great because Loredana loves applied learning. And she did a very good job of running that ski resort, making a lot of money all throughout this experience. But it wasn’t what she really wanted to do.
She hated nature and sports. Winter especially so.
Moreover, she’s not one for hospitality. She understands the importance of people, she loves teaching people, but being nice with them was never her forte. This was the reverse experience to her business back home. She had the numbers skills now, but she didn’t like the field she was working in.
So after she got her PhD, she went to work as a professor in Boston.
Business #3: Meaningful opportunity beats big bucks
Photo credits to Manasvita S.
To understand Loredana’s transition to apps, you need to know she has ADHD.
She just can’t stay put, she needs to be active and doing something all the time.
Mix that with her fancy for shopping and the startup enabling context of Boston and you’ve got a recipe for a successful business.
That’s how, while in the US, she got together a team and launched Dress me, her 3rd startup, an app to aid people in shopping for fashion.
She never went into it for the money, but rather did it because the business model was interesting.
She later abandoned the project to relocate to Malaysia for the Asia School of Business.
Before that, however, while studying the business medium of the US she formulated a framework for the evolution of all startups.
The Nail-up, Scale-up, Sail-up model
This is a project she started with her dean.
The idea came way back, when she was still studying in Switzerland and she was always being told about the importance of processes.
Her natural response was — “Yeah, processes are important, but I’m only beginning, I don’t know what works and what doesn’t.”
But it nagged her.
So she came up with a framework for studying the evolution of companies and apply the right strategies depending on the stage of development.
The Nail-up stage is when you’re barely beginning and you need to execute. Similarly to going through the jungle with a machete, the things you need to do in this stage are not sophisticated, but they’re hard.
The Scale-up stage is like climbing a mountain. It’s still not easy, you still don’t have clarity, but you can at least see the horizon. Finer actions can be taken.
The Sail-up stage is similar to cruising the open ocean. You need a good crew, but you’ve got a 360 degree view around you.
This framework for entrepreneurs helps you think about the workflow you need to set-up and the right processes for your business.
The framework is not make-believe either.
Loredana counseled Tesla in its beginning, showing them the framework and the right approach for each stage.
So far, the model has worked for them, and their development fits Loredana’s model perfectly.
But innovating the fashion start-up scene and developing a framework for the development of all start-ups was not enough for Loredana.
And when MIT partnered with the Malaysian Government to start the Asia School of Business, she was offered the Assistant Dean position.
So she made the leap.
Asia School of Business
Photo credits to ASB
The Asia School of Business is a 1 billion dollar partnership between MIT and the Malaysian Central Bank.
They offer a high-quality, applied learning MBA programme that prepares leaders.
It’s working too. In their first year, they had their first batch of 47 students. That was back in 2015 and Loredana has been an Associate Dean for the institution ever since.
Loredana thinks a great MBA is important, but you shouldn’t enroll in one if the school is not prestigious enough.
That’s because an MBA has a few clear benefits:
- The educational value, teaching you the numbers and sophistication of running a business
- The networking aspect, with an emphasis on the alumni you graduate with
- The ability to solve complex problems.
Loredana felt it helped her a lot.
But her experience at the Asia School of Business allowed her to put a lot of things in perspective.
First of all, there’s the differences (and similarities) between startup ecosystems.
Whether you’re in India, Switzerland, Italy or Malaysia, you’ve got the same problem — you need talented people to execute your ideas.
On the other hand, culture is drastically different from one case to the other. The US medium is extremely driven, with a workaholic at every block.
Malaysia is different. South Eastern Asia for example is dominated by family businesses and the culture is extremely traditional (making it very bureaucratic too).
Regardless of the medium, she thinks that even for Asia manufacturing is a thing of the past.
What will work are intelligent businesses that attract talent back to the country.
Running something as big and important as the Asia School of Business also taught her the importance of having a mentor.
She knew how to do stuff, but it was hard for her to be a leader.
So she asked her boss to be her mentor for a while. It did help her a bit, but Loredana and her boss are very different people.
When she met the CEO of Citibank and saw he was exactly like her — assertive, with an aggressive energy — she asked him to be her mentor.
“I believe a lot in mentors, but I believe in the right mentors”.
So if you’re looking for guidance, make sure you click with your prospective coach or mentor.
Lessons on working with men
Photo credits to Tim Gouw
The best advice Loredana got (and ever gave) is that “The job is easy, the people are not”.
Everyone has a personality, and when that comes into play, every plan or strategy goes down the drain.
She also considers her biggest failure to be the incapacity to deal right with people all the time.
This is amplified when you think about gender roles and the expectations people have of women in business.
It’s tough and some cultures might not take you seriously all the time.
Her solution is to not be afraid to tell you how she feels. She believes that having a hands-on, assertive approach to all interactions is key to overcoming some of the gender bias intrinsic to our modern society.
So when she moderated a talk show in Malaysia and the main speaker said “I don’t think women want it as much as men.” you can bet she was very vocal with her outrage at the statement.
Another way Loredana deals with men in business is by being very unapologetic and playing the woman card.
She has an old, male secretary around her all the time.
Often in meetings, people will assume she is the secretary and he is the boss. When they realize it’s the other way around, they feel ashamed and can be better dealt with.
While working in the US, Loredana was greatly offended by the wage gap and you already know the cultural shock she had in Switzerland, where she expected a “social justice Mecca”.
As far as helping other women, she leads by example. She’s a strong, successful manager and leader.
Besides that, she’s also impressed by the Lean In movement, which made her realize that there’s power in unity for gender equality.
Lessons for the Romanian startup scene
Photo credits to Mario Gogh
Loredana considers there are three important things that every start-up needs to have:
- Clarity. She’s seen a lot of startups that are either undecided on what they want to do or that want to do everything. That’s a big mistake, you need to be laser focused from the beginning.
- People and Culture. It’s hard to work with people and diversity comes with complexity. Different people like different things, so you need a unifying culture to manage that.
- Resilience. It will always get tough and it’s hard to maintain the enthusiasm and drive, so you need to have (and find) resilience.
That’s true for all startups.
Specifically for Romania, Loredana thinks we should focus more on people.
Municipalities and big businesses should find a way to grow and develop talent pools.
Right now, our talent (which Loredana thinks it’s the most important thing for a successful startup) is fleeing abroad.
That’s why she thinks education is a promising niche in Romania. We need to find ways to attract and keep our talent.
One thing that’s happening in the US is sharing talent. Promising graduates are promised a full entrepreneurial education if they relocate to secondary towns like Cleveland or Ohio and develop businesses there.
She thinks there’s a lot of things that could happen, we just need to focus on this niche.
This stance is consistent.
If she’d suddenly get 10 million dollars to invest in Romania, she’d organize a 48 hour make or fest, give people a few tools and have them build something similar to what they’d sell.
She’d then have a capable jury analyze the pitches and invest in the three best startups.
A better stance for education could also help in the shift from outsourcing to products. This transition is natural, but if you invest in intellectual capital and build an industry around that, you catalyze the creation of better products.
“People make everything” and if we don’t want our everything to break, we need to focus on talent more.
Another tip she’d give Romanian businesses is to share.
“Power Comes with Unity” and good things can come out of working with your competition, because it can generate bigger energy.
This is especially important considering how small our market is compared to San Francisco or Tokyo.
But Americans realize this.
We need to learn being better at sharing, especially since we’re so good at finding excuses.
Loredana Padurean’s story is filled with lessons learned from making mistakes. A reluctance to people, but not to working with them and a lot of hard work.
If she wasn’t a professor at the Asia School of Business, she’d be an actress.
To her it’s pretty much the same thing because a good professor should be able to inspire people just like performers do.
Watch full interview on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q30wbXiy_-k
