Cristian Munteanu: “you need to be resilient in the harsh reality of startup failure”

We’ve discussed at length with him for the Romanian Startups: Roaring Tigers of Europe documentary.

The documentary "Romanian Startups: Roaring Tigers of Europe", made by the start-up.ro team, spans across 33 years of history, from the first entrepreneurs in the transitional years to the initial technology company transactions that brought Romania into the international spotlight.

Romanian Startups: Roaring Tigers of Europe - The Extended Series will present the people who built the Romanian ecosystem and who discussed with the VideoCorp and start-up.ro team for this documentary. In this series you will find the extensive interviews and find out the stories of those who built entrepreneurship in Romania.

If you know Cristian's name before the venture capital world, it's because of projects like Qalendra or Scooterson and his experience in startups both in Romania and in Silicon Valley.

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“Man, I got hooked with startups. And I think it's this building process that fascinates me and creating value and presenting a vision and being very creative with it and being very ambitious. The startups are not about small applications doing trifles. But I remember 2010, 2013 when the startup was not a cool world in Romania to be the CEO. Startup was something unusual. “What are you doing, Cristian? Are you quitting your job to do what? Startup was that. Are you crazy?". And I think that at that time people that were founding startups had a true core. They were genuinely entrepreneurs, founders at core. And they were not fleshy. They were not trying to be in the spotlight just to be in the spotlight. Something changed in the years that followed", Cristian Munteanu told us.

Between 2018 and 2022, Early Game Ventures Fund I invested in 28 startups. So far, it has made 4 exits at a yield of 45%.

More than 2.5 million people around the world use every day the products and services of companies in which Early Game Fund I has invested, whether we're talking about parents connecting with their children's teachers in 2,400 schools through Kinderpedia, tourists using Questo in more than 500 cities worldwide, employees of more than 200 large corporations accessing information through Druid or using MeetGeek in conference calls in more than 100 countries and 30 languages.

In April 2024, Early Game launched a new 60 million euros investment fund, Early Game Fund II. To this moment, four investments have been made from the new fund in cybersecurity, AI, and healthtech startups.

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“The VC fund was still a startup. And then I went to this once again, very, very difficult and complex process of building a fund manager and once again navigating the legal system because it's difficult to set up a new fund. And then fundraising once again. It's much more difficult to fund this for a fund than for a startup", adds Cristian.

We’ve discussed at length with Cristian about the evolution of the tech ecosystem in Romania, mistakes he made as an entrepreneur, about success, failure and the investment opportunities for founders here for the Romanian Startups: Roaring Tigers of Europe documentary.

From journalism to advertising and startups

• Cristian told us about his early professional journey, starting as a journalist while still a student at the University of Bucharest.
• He transitioned into the advertising industry in 2003, working his way up from junior copywriter to a creative director and eventually running a multinational advertising agency in Romania.
• After nearly two decades in advertising and media, he made a deliberate career shift in 2013, driven by exhaustion and a lack of further growth opportunities.
• He sought a more collaborative and sustainable industry and ventured into the startup world, inspired by his interest in gaming and the emerging startup culture seen with platforms like Y Combinator.
• Cristian’s first startup experience began in 2010 with an esports management platform which struggled due to its early entry in the market and regulatory challenges.
• Followed by several other startups, he learned about the challenges of juggling a full-time job while trying to launch a startup, leading to a complete focus on entrepreneurial ventures post-2013.
• Cristian detailed a significant experience with his second startup, Qalendra, which was ultimately shut down after facing funding hurdles despite being accepted into several accelerators.
• He discusses the humbling experience of rejoining the early entrepreneurial stages after years of success in advertising.
• Cristian emphasizes the necessity of persistence and the harsh reality of startup failure.

The other site of the table

• Upon shutting down Qualendra, he quickly transitioned to another startup focused on electric scooters and later moved into venture capital.
• By 2017, Cristian co-founded Early Game Ventures, a VC fund, marking this as a new chapter in supporting other startups with learnings from past entrepreneurial efforts.
• He also discussed the differences in the startup culture between Europe and the U.S., particularly the level of obsession and speed needed to succeed.
• Early Game Ventures faced typical challenges of establishing a new fund, such as navigating legal structures and raising funds.

• Cristian highlights the significant role of the European Investment Fund in catalyzing the Romanian startup ecosystem, making the market more attractive for investors and startups.
• The managing partner of EGV reflects on the Romanian startup ecosystem's development since 2018, driven by increased access to capital and more professional investors entering the market.
• He predicts further maturation of the ecosystem with increased sophistication among founders, better integration of universities, and a boost in tech talent pool.
• Finally, Cristian Munteanu stressed the importance of speed and obsession for startups and conveyed optimism about the future of the technology and startup landscape in Romania.
• He is hopeful about the potential for more unicorns emerging from the region and emphasizes the significance of choosing the right investments based on innovative and bold startup approaches.

Roaring Tigers of Europe is a production by start-up.ro and Videocorp, part of the Romanian publishing company InternetCorp, active for almost 20 years on the market. The documentary was made with the support of partners BCR, Orange, and 2Performant. Community partners included Guran Consulting Global, How to Web, Launch, Impact Hub Bucharest, Flaviu Simihaian, Rubik Hub, SoftServe, and the Romanian-American University.

Watch the entire documentary in the video below: