Journalists On The Move: Here’s Our Take on How to Web 2022

Last week, a large slice of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Central and Eastern Europe was brought together to shake hands and exchange ideas at How to Web, the leading startup and innovation conference taking place in Bucharest, Romania. It had been two years since this edition was first announced, which built a lot of excitement in anticipation of this reunion of the tech community.

Faithful to the theme of the event, “It’s Time to Build”, the fourth stage hosted startup pitch competitions, putting on the map the entrepreneurs looking for support to start building and expanding their solutions in the world.?

The biggest news came from the Spotlight competition: a jury of the leading regional investors selected the winner of half a million euros? (€465K) prize - Polish startup Braight Technologies. The company is building a tech solution that helps businesses better understand their customers with AI. Runners-up in the competition included INKI.TECH, a device-as-a-service platform for businesses, and SOLO Fintech, an automation service for registering and managing a small personal business.

"As a fully distributed team, for us at INKI events are a great opportunity to meet with each other, with clients, partners, and investors. HTW is already an institution in terms of investor focused events in Romania and neighboring countries. But this edition will be an important part of INKI’s history because we were selected in the Spotlight section, but also made it to the final on the big stage. But more importantly we also reached 500.000 euro in assets under management, the most important metric we were following this year! We felt a lot of enthusiasm as people welcomed an in-person event after the lockdowns," Liviu Huluta, CEO of INKI.TECH told us.

What else happened during the two-day conference (three-day if you include pre-event sessions), what did the community think, and what else would we like to see in the 2023 edition? Continue reading to find out!?

Why were we there in the first place?!

Antoanela Ionita, Deputy Editorial Director: I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, honestly. I’ve updated my vacation plans for this one (and I am one of those who make holiday plans way in advance). I’d say I was there to shake hands with and sit across from people whom I’ve met only through digital screens. I was also excited about hearing from some of the best minds in product management speak on stage - it’s a key topic I want to explore in future articles, so keep tuned!?

Elena Vrabie, Sales & Senior Content Manager: I came for the YouTube party, but stayed for the networking. Joking aside, I did also come for the handshaking. Growing our project during the pandemic made me crave live interaction, which is so weird for an introvert. But I knew Bogdan Iordache’s passing of the leadership baton to Alexandru Agatinei, Ioana Craescu, Andreea Oproiu, and Georgiana Dascalescu, to name a few, made How to Web a safe area to meet creatives, not only founders and investors, get inspired, and even help each other evolve.

And were those expectations met?

Antoanela: I’ve anticipated the high quality of the event - from top notch speakers, to great startup pitches on the stage, to flawless organization. As a journalist, I was a bit surprised by how many new actors in the community I’ve mapped on this occasion. It really speaks to how dynamic and fast the Southeast European innovation ecosystem is. You never know everybody, so you should constantly reach out to meet new people.

Elena: My goodness, yes, we found out about so many new projects. Once I had my ticket delivered through Oveit, I was giddy with excitement to talk on and off stage with so many amazing professionals I already had the pleasure of interviewing via Google Call or Zoom, like entrepreneur Andrei Pitis, lawyer Ana Maria Andronic, Irina Paraschiv from Acertivo, amongst others, but also new ones, like Monica Obogeanu from Orange Fab, Jaco Fok - founder of equalifai, or Aleksandar Stankov - co-founder and CEO of Relaxifyapp. It did feel like a tech reunion!

Where did you hang out the most?

Elena: Thanks to the Brella app, I had 10+ 15-minute meetings scheduled every day, which kept me busy in the garden. I got my dose of tech inspiration from Julius Fabini - co-founder of Agramonia, Sinziana Vladutu - co-founder of the qube agency, and Juliana Jackson - Growth Product Manager at CXL, amongst others.?

Antoanela: Yeah, the garden area was definitely the place to be for networking. But the venue was great in terms of offering different spots for different purposes. Otherwise, I constantly jumped between the three different stages: main, community-focused, and startup-focused.

What were your biggest takeaways from the event?

Elena: To sum it up, I would say that the biggest takeaway was the fact that although people are coming back to their native countries after working abroad to launch solutions, they must develop them with a global mindset. This is what the VCs are pushing forward.?

Then, there is also the importance of communication. I remember from a pre-How to Web LAUNCH panel with Raluca Pantiru from Google and Cristian Tamas, co-founder of TypingDNA, how essential it is to get along with team members, and how it sets the tone for the project’s success. This topic rose in different discussions with investors as well, they all want a good communication flow with the tech startup founders. And a country’s culture, fear of failure, lack of networking skills, or work-life balance can no longer be seen as excuses if we want to skyrocket growth!

Another major take is to #justdoit! I had the chance to offer feedback on a startup pitch and I have to admit that I enjoyed it, even though my impostor syndrome took the lead first - my brain: “Who are you to offer feedback?!”. I thought again: “Well, I do have 13+ years of experience as a writer, both for journalist purposes, as well as for marketing ones.” Thank you Nikolay Dunev, co-founder of Green Kilometers, for asking for my opinion.?

In the end, I found it interesting discussing with Matei Pavel, entrepreneur and investor in Soleadify, about his major take from the conference, how new generations are coming up with the same solutions for the same challenges as older generations. I believe it has something to do with launching at the right time to provide a real solution to the mass market, not only to fix one’s challenges, you know?

Antoanela: Completely agree with your first remark. Given the size of our regional markets, founders from CEE are expected to build products with global markets in mind. And I think this sets them up for success early on. Thanks to community builders such as Endeavor (and its local branches like Endeavor Romania, led by Mihnea Craciun), founders in the region have the opportunity to tap into a global network of successful entrepreneurs and mentors.

I’d also mention:

• As heard on the “My name is Europe, Eastern Europe” panel with Andrei Pitis and Monica Obogeanu, which you moderated: Being an emerging ecosystem, we have more opportunities here to step in, to have a voice, to get involved. We’ve accelerated and made substantial progress in the last 10 years and we have the right ingredients in place; what we need more of is patience.
• As heard on the presentation by Cathy White, startup communications expert and Founder of CEW Communications, and as our fellow journalists Mirel Bran (Le Monde) and Vlad Andriescu (Start-up.ro) could attest: Media can be a great partner for founders, but PR needs to build trust, it needs to be earned. There are ways for founders to enhance the synergies they can achieve with media - and we’ll explore those in a future guest post, as well as a dedicated event. Stay tuned!
• I was happy to add new startups to my map of future stories to tell, by talking to their teams, from Younichoice (Andrei Nicolae), to Pythia Sociodynamical Technologies (Luca Mihaiescu), Rastel.io (Horea Toniuc), and Motum (Paul Cozma-Ivan).

What was the coolest session you attended?

Antoanela: I think it’s the first event where I focused more on the networking, and less on the sessions, yet I’ve attended a few very good ones. Matt Lerner’s (growth market founder of Startup Core Strengths) presentation comes to mind, especially his emphasis on why experimentation is crucial in building a product and how it can help take bad ideas off the table. He also explained why marketing is more like a machine learning problem with lots of unknowns and from that perspective harder than coding, which is something I always felt, but couldn’t articulate so well.?

But I have to say I was equally impressed with other sessions on product management and strategy from James Mayes, co-founder Mind the Product, Bruce McCarthy, Founder of Product Culture, and Liviu Herman, Chief Product Officer of Tazz - more on that in an upcoming article, stay tuned!

Elena: I do regret not being able to listen to the panels on my to-do list, but one that remained with me was by Robert Katai, product marketer at Creatopy, on “Strengthening Your Brand Through Product Marketing Strategies”. The idea to use a case study to make a brand go viral is a must-try. And, of course, the one I led with Alexandru Iliescu from Mondly, where I discovered what is next for the EdTech vertical, like VR reading, and AI solutions to help with homework, or interview answers. By the way, #hatsoff to the How to Web team for the great copywriting behind the panels’ titles, right?!??

What else would you like to see in the 2023 edition??

Antoanela: In general, I would love to see more focus in the SEE ecosystem on climate tech, both from the startup, and the investor side. Leading events such as How to Web can help encourage this direction, with dedicated panels involving key stakeholders in the region to see what are the challenges and presentations from experts outside of the region to learn from solutions and approaches deployed elsewhere.?

Elena: I think the next edition should be bigger and bolder! So, I look forward to seeing different panels about women in tech, Generation Z's challenges, as well as more innovative tech gadgets.?

I know the event is more for startup founders, but there are a lot of tech professionals and enthusiasts that would love to see live solutions like Petre Georgescu’s pliable motorbike with high autonomy that I heard from Radu-Sebastian Amarie - Senior Engineer at Jellysmack, that he will launch soon. I highly appreciated this camaraderie of people pitching their friends or how Mihai Darzan - co-founder and CEO of Procesio, introduced me to his co-founder and VP of Business Development, Lucia Darzan, who recently joined the women’s investment community - Bravva Angels.