The People Behind Startup Grind Cluj

Stefan Koritar is a product manager, entrepreneur, business developer and all-around jack of all trades.

He’s the Founder of Kraian Ventures, Partner of Techmatch, and he’s held management positions in a lot of companies like Telenav, Cachette Capital Management, and Bombardier.

And he’s also the Chapter Director of Startup Grind Cluj Napoca.

Which is exactly why he and Madalina Vasiu sat down for a Q&A last month, which you can watch here.

Or if you want, you can read this article for a short summary of what we talked about.

Stefan’s Past

Stefan was born and raised in Nadlac, a small town on the border of Romania and Hungary. He finished high school there, all in Slovakian, and then he moved to Arad to get his Bachelor’s in Business Administration, and his MBA.

The passion for tech would come later, when he moved to Cluj.

Ending up here, he didn’t have a clear idea of what he wanted to do, or if he’d end up where he is today. He just had a powerful drive to leave home and be independent.

He didn’t start a business right away, he had to work a lot in different support positions. But in time opportunities started to show themselves.

We’ll talk about those in a little bit.

For now, let’s talk about something even more important: being human in an increasingly evolving tech and business world.

The People Behind The Business

Business isn’t separate from people, they work together, and without the chemistry within a team that works perfectly, you can’t have a sustainable business.

For one to evolve, you need to always keep searching for what you want and what you can do. If there’s no willingness to grow inside your team, you won’t make it far

“The process of finding yourself is a never ending story.” — Stefan Koritar

And that’s something you need to be mindful of, regardless of your industry, audience, or challenges.

What Motivates and Inspires Stefan?

Constantly growing isn’t an easy task, so you need the right motivation to ride the trend we mentioned earlier.

For Stefan, it depends, so it’s a hard question to answer.

But if he’d have to settle on something, it’d be finding and understanding more, everyday. It’s thrilling and energizing. Growth also motivates him constantly, but that’s something hard to do when you’re tired, which was the trend lately.

However, it’s all for the better.

Tiredness is also good because you get clarity on your problems and you can work on them.

Another important thing is the excitement for collective evolution:

“What motivates me in business is the sheer amount of innovation happening in the tech world right now.” — Stefan Koritar

And that’s something that helped Stefan grow a lot in his career. He went from being a simple support agent to holding product management positions in respectable companies, and then eventually starting his own company.

Product Manager from Support Roles?

After he had a lot of positions as a customer support agent, Stefan felt the need to do more with his time, so he became the Chapter Director of Startup Grind Cluj — Napoca, which was a pivotal moment in his career.

He got inspired by his guest, Phillip Kandall, which taught him the importance of authenticity.

So when his next interview for a product manager position came up, he was honest and fair.

“I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t know everything, but I’m more than happy to learn.” — Stefan Koritar

That’s what he told them.

And it went a long way, because he landed that job.

What Makes You Say You’re An Entrepreneur?

If you’re bootstrapping, chances are you have your attention and energy divided into dozens of areas.

And that’s normal.

But what is Stefan up to?

He and his team are building something brick by brick, taking it slow and building it right.

It’s sometimes harder to build a business here in Romania than in other countries, but Stefan decided he won’t let that slow him down.

He’s here, so he’ll make the best of it, which is a very important mindset shift that anyone struggling in the Eastern European market should default to.

When the business is moving slower, it may feel a bit unreal, especially when you see the big headlines of companies getting huge investments. So you feel like you have to move faster, but when you take a step back you realize that moving slow is normal if you build something the right way.

You shouldn’t get bogged down in other people’s success. You have no clue what’s going on behind the scenes

But don’t go to the other extreme either. Don’t surround yourself with nothing but positive thinking, try to be realistic, and measure the bad and the good whenever you can.

Ok, enough hinting.

Let’s talk about specifics.

Stefan and his team are building Grai Group, a composition of teams and departments that help companies expand their digital reach, as well as improve their business processes and positioning.

The Grai Ventures department deals with venture development, corporate innovation strategy, startup deal sourcing and a lot of other services meant to help startups make a break. This department helps build startups.

The Grai Media department is focused on content strategy, copywriting, graphic design, podcast producton, video production and a lot of other media avenues meant to help both Grai’s clients, and Grai’s internal platforms grow online. This department helps startups in their Go To Market processes.

The Grai Digital department is working on things like growth hacking, marketing funnel automation, customer journey analysis and conversion rate optimization. This department helps startups grow online.

And lastly, The Grai Consultancy department helps companies secure european funds, get legal advice and implement digital transformation strategies. This department helps startups scale.

It’s the all-inclusive offer.

And that’s what Stefan is working on now, because Europe lags behind in those categories. When compared to North America, we’re not that focused on traction, marketing and especially pulling off the right Go To Market strategy.

Yeah, that sounds like a lot.

So this begs a question:

Where Does The Energy Come From?

How can one person oversee so many things?

The answer is very insightful for our go getter culture. Stefan was honest in our interview: the energy isn’t there, his “system was failing” when we had the Q&A.

But that’s expected.

When you really want to build something great, you’ll experience tough times like these.

In general, the energy should come from building something you’re passionate about.

So yeah, Stefan may struggle at times.

But he’s able to stay on top because he’s involved in something he loves.

And having done that for so much time, he learned a lot about the Startup scene in Eastern Europe and specifically Romania.

These are his insights.

The Startup Scene

Stefan thinks Romanian startups make three big mistakes.

First, we’re not as focused on marketing and promoting ourselves as we should be. We are an engineering based startup culture. Engineers put a lot of love and passion into the product.

That’s something the North Americans appreciate.

But we’re not that focused on marketing, which may lead to some missed opportunities.

For example, it’s better to have a designer from the beginning, get a sketch of your idea on paper and get investors onboard, and only then start writing the code.

Second, we start focusing on operations too early on. In the beginning, you should be as adaptable as possible. So do the right things when they are needed. If you feel like you can’t prioritize what you need to do, get a mentor or coach for that.

Thirdly, we fear accessing European funds. Stefan gets it: there’s a big learning curve, and a lot of bureaucracy involved.

But if you want to succeed, you need to overcome that fear, because European funds can make a lot of difference in your business

“If I ran any Romanian startup, I’d apply for European funds.” — Stefan Koritar

The thing is Stefan didn’t just come up with these mistakes.

They’re all things he got wrong in the beginning, and overcoming these challenges helped him a lot.

Another thing that helped him a lot is that he’s extremely good at networking, which he also shared some insights about.

Networking For Startups

These days, it’s very hard to network because of the Corona virus. It’s something he misses a lot, and he’d like to get back to it.

But in general, networking wasn’t an active process for Stefan. He didn’t approach it with the purpose of networking, he was just curious and approached people honestly, with no objective or ulterior motive.

“Be authentic when you network. Don’t have a hidden agenda, just ask and answer honestly.” — Stefan Koritar

Practice that to learn how to network.

And in the end, if you exercise that, you’ll be able to follow an objective in networking and still be honest.

And In The End

It’s important to find a balance between excitement and disappointment. You shouldn’t grind yourself into a burnout, but you should also take action even if you’re afraid you might not make it.

As long as they’re calculated, risks are good.

And that’s one of the few things Stefan learned throughout his career, his ventures as a business owner, and his involvement in the Startup Grind community.

But it’s not by far the only thing he could teach you.

So if you made it this far, and you’d like more, subscribe to our Medium journal and check out the full interview here.