Innovators Can Laugh

Send us Fan Mail In this interview, I chat with Maxim Rotaru, founder of a digital product studio Webamboos. Maxim shares insights on how he landed his first client, how he hired his first employee (funny interview process), and a mistake he made early on - not having a clear goal beyond creating a company he liked. We also dive into his approach for guiding clients through the entire process of p...

Send us Fan Mail Adrian Cighi started his career in the financial field having worked in Great Britain, and for companies such as Banca Transylvania and Goldman Sachs. He then co-founded  Pago which is an application that automates payments to suppliers. They have close to 400k active users and are projected to do 3 million Euro in operating revenue in 2023. In this conversation, Adrian shares how...

Send us Fan Mail A while back, I stumbled onto a story on TechCrunch that caught my attention - an innovative medical startup from Romania, helped doctors from three countries collaborate to treat Ukraine refugee cancer patients – this of course happening after Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. That startup was Medicai. Mircea Popa is the founder of Medicai which is a collaborative imaging platform t...

Send us Fan Mail Giants Village is a community-owned tech product with a real-world utility that started with a collection of 10,000 unique digital collectibles, known as NFTs, on the Multiverse X blockchain. The project currently has 1,400 holders and aims to raise an additional €500k in 2023 by selling tokens and NFTs to the community. Giants Village is focused on building a strong community fir...

Send us Fan Mail Pushkar Chatterji, is the co-founder of Aiva, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to help businesses become more efficient and productive through the use of machine learning algorithms. In this chat, he shares how he arrived in Romania, steps one can take to incorporate AI into their business, and of course his experience with unusual foods and drinks. *** CONNECT Chambr’s...

Send us Fan Mail One of the challenges that retailers face is attributing money spent on digital advertising to in-store results. Fortunately, Footprints AI is helping retailers overcome this challenge by providing them with the tools they need to accurately attribute money spent on digital advertising to in-store results. Footprints uses advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques to anal...

Send us Fan Mail ▶️ Watch this episode on YouTube *** EPISODE DESCRIPTION Discover the story behind Kinderpedia, the EdTech startup that is changing the way parents are involved in their child's education. In this episode, I chat with Evelina Nicola, the co-founder of Kinderpedia, about how to overcome challenges in building a successful startup, and from funding to convincing people of the v...

Send us Fan Mail ▶️ Watch this episode on YouTube *** EPISODE DESCRIPTION Florin Lazar is the Chief Operating Officer of Freya Sense - a startup that helps other startups reduce their time to hire by 87% and look for the qualities and personality traits they should be looking for when hiring. In this chat, we discuss: - the importance of personality in job performance and how to quantify it  - how...

Send us Fan Mail ▶️ Watch this episode on YouTube *** EPISODE DESCRIPTION Romanian startup founder Raluca Haulica has grown her fashion ecommerce brand Alura to $500k in just three years. In our chat, we discuss: How she started the business utilizing her father’s network The various marketing strategies she’s using such as influencer marketing and PPC How testing a pre-order strategy paid off How...

Send us Fan Mail ▶️ Watch this episode on YouTube *** EPISODE DESCRIPTION How do companies like UiPath, KPMG, and Deutsche Telekom onboard new employees? Through gamification. Chambr is a digital platform used in 22 countries for community building, team bonding, and learning sales and leadership skills. But the road to launching Chambr could have ended when companies canceled their contracts due...

Send us Fan Mail Ionut Vlad is the founder of TokiNomo. TokiNomo is an in-store advertising solution that uses robotic displays to increase engagement and sales. In this conversation, Ionut shares his journey creating Tokinomo. For example, he recounts how he and a group of entrepreneurs had two weeks to create 30 prototypes for a beer company, which they managed to do with the help of a carpenter...

Send us Fan Mail Taking calculated risks can often lead to great rewards if done correctly. In this chat with Alexandru Anghel, co-founder of Solo, Alexandru shares journey from management consultant to startup founder.  To begin, Alex quit his job as a management consultant and joined an incubator run by an experienced entrepreneur who became the first investor of Solo. From this experience, he l...

Send us Fan Mail How can you empower working moms and bootstrap a platform? After facing initial rejection from investors, she bootstrapped a platform with her own money that provides resources and a supportive peer community to empower working women and Moms. In this conversation, Alexandrea Badea, founder of She is Mom, shares: How networking is key to finding mentors who can help you grow your...

Send us Fan Mail I chat with Dragoš Duse and Diana Andritchi, co-founders of medtech startup Synaptiq. Synaptiq creates software solutions based on AI for improving medical devices, with one tool using revolutionary software to separate cancerous tumors and organs at risk. Currently, they have seven customers in Romania and are projected to generate 400,000 euros in 2023. We discuss the importance...

Send us Fan Mail Diana Florescu is the founder of Media Growth. In this episode we learn about Diana's journey as an entrepreneur and her current project Media for Growth which involves exchanging equity for media assets. Plus, hear about the survival rate among companies that have raised media for growth funding and the insightful conversation on valuing time and self-reflection. Show highli...

Send us Fan Mail Listen to Maralina's inspiring journey from wanting to be a painter as a child to becoming an NGO volunteer in countries like Egypt, Mexico, Turkey, and Suriname. Hear her discuss her work in creating ecosystems for people to exchange knowledge and creating safe spaces for local kids and women empowerment programs in Haiti. Plus, learn about the unique winemaking tools found...

Send us Fan Mail Discover how Claudio Descalescu, the chief growth marketer for Y Combinator-backed ArchBee, uses chess, manipulation, product-led growth and surveys to improve products and gain insights into customer behavior. Listen to Claudio's interview on Innovators Can Laugh to learn about his experience with ArchBee and the tools he uses to increase conversion rates. Do you wish to con...

Send us Fan Mail Matthias Rettenbacher is the founder of Carbony - a European marketplace for high quality carbon removal projects. In this conversation, he shares his passion of reversing climate change through biochar and enhanced weathering technology. We also discuss his preference for dinner with Gary Vee over $50,000 cash and he shares an amazing gift he received from a friend who was like a...

Send us Fan Mail Can you imagine a plant-based food that can help prevent diseases? Well it exists and is beginning to sprout globally. Jivko Djamiarov is the founder of Ancestral Superfoods. His mission is to bring the healing power and benefits of plants and foods to others. On this episode of Innovators Can Laugh, Jivko shares his entrepreneurial journey of opening the first vegan restaurant in...

Send us Fan Mail Can you imagine working as a hotel GM, being exhausted after working a 16-hour shift and then getting a call from a customer asking to translate to the waiter “to not put onions on the pizza”? Sounds horrific right? Well Elitza Stoilova, founder of ai chatbot startup Umni, felt the same way.  After watching a YouTube video on chatbots, Elitza, with no technology background, began...

Send us Fan Mail If you thought you knew Irina Obushtarova, think again.  In this conversation we learn about her days working as a waitress while wearing short shorts to her first gig at a media company in Vienna. We touch on her first startup (sounds like a script from a Telenovela) to why Eastern European startups are so admirable. We even dive into a story about a hilarious bad date she had. O...

Send us Fan Mail Can you imagine your dad giving you a spreadsheet at the age of 8? Telling you to fill out all the chores you completed and penalizing you if you didn't include 'playing with friends'? Why penalize? Because her father wanted her to know that just working and hustling won't improve your mental or physical health. Check out my conversation with Aleksandrina Ikono...

Send us Fan Mail Do you wish to connect with our special guest? Visit the Lamon website: https://lam-on.com/ Tune in to every conversation about exciting European Startups and Innovators on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon! Leave a rating and review so we can keep making amazing interviews! Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Innovators Can Laugh in your favorite p...

Send us Fan Mail From a body builder to creating innovation in protein snacks. Jasmina Gevezieva-Berova is a performance nutrition coach and co-founder of Cardinal Bites. These are delicious protein balls with no sugar! Perfect for people who want to maintain their figure. With projected revenue of $120,000 for 2022, Cardinal Bites is just getting started. Highlights from the show: 0:50 – what was...

Send us Fan Mail In the communist regime back in Soviet times, you didn’t have a labor market. The job is found for you. So if you had quit, you couldn’t easily find another job especially if you were not a communist party member. So in Zornitsa Nikolova’s eyes, her father was like a hero.   This shaped her beliefs and desire for personal freedom. For creating for yourself options when others didn...