Sparking Capital is an early stage fund that invests in entrepreneurs with unique industry insights, focusing on pre-seed and seed investments. Sparking Capital SA is a joint stock company registered as an alternative investment company with private capital in Romania.

Sparking Capital

Sparking Capital is an early stage Venture Capital fund backing entrepreneurs with unique industry insights, powerful vision, passion, courage and excellence in the execution of their plans.

Sparking Capital focuses on pre-seed & seed investments. We are industry agnostic but have a preference for investments in consumer internet, marketing-tech, supply chain-tech, fin-tech, property-tech, circular economy-tech startups with differentiating value propositions, disruptive business models which have the potential to become national champions and/or scale up fast internationally.

We spark the growth of the startups we invest in, side by side with their founders, to become great companies that create long lasting competitive advantages.

Octavian Patrascu

I invite you to read my article comparing entrepreneurial ecosystems in Romania and Bulgaria.

The article is in Romanian, but here are the key takeaways:

- Entrepreneurial ecosystems: Romania and Bulgaria have evolved from a low level, but have made significant progress in entrepreneurship, especially in technology.
- Key differences: Bulgaria launched investment funds earlier, in 2012, which had a major impact on its ecosystem.
- Romania: The first funds dedicated to the local market appeared in 2018, leading to a rapid increase in funding for start-ups.
- Education and example: Educational programs and successful stories are essential for the development of entrepreneurship in the region.

🎉Congratulations to Alex Govoreanu & Claudiu Petria, the co-founders of our portfolio company Questo and to all their colleagues for making it to the top of Deloitte EMEA Technology Fast 500.

Questo registered a revenue 📈growth rate of 663% between 2019-2022, being the 3rd fastest growing Romanian company in the top.

With the strong 🚀growth they are witnessing YTD 2024 in USA, high ❤️consumer adoption and excellent ratings Questo will definitely making it up higher in the top in 2024 ! We wish you the best of luck!

#Questo, #Sparking Capital

Discovering and developing the new generation of entrepreneurs is the most important task of an investor. At Sparking Capital we deeply understand that imperative and spare no effort in working on it.
Together with my fellow professor, Stere Stamule, this week I had the privilege to be in Sofia with my students from Master in Entrepreneurship from Faculty of Business Administration in foreign languages (FABIZ-ASE). We have discovered together the thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem from Bulgaria, share experiences, ideas, future projects and, last, but not least, have fun together. The students visited several organisations, ranging from Embassy of Romania and Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski to venture capital funds, like LAUNCHub Ventures and Eleven Ventures. My gratitude goes to all the people involved, and especially to my friends Dilyana Haralanova, Rumen Iliev, Valeri Petrov, Angel Hadjiev, who shares the same enthusiasm in building the next generation of entrepreneurs.


I strongly believe in the potential of the young people to change the world for good and shape a better future!

Our portfolio company Flaminjoy, a marketing tech platform which connects content creators with brands, advertising and media agencies though end to end automated work flows, from content creation to distribution, 🤝🏻partners with global market research company Ipsos to launch Trend Scout, an AI powered marketing research tool that employs 💡insights from influencers.

The tool was designed with 👩‍🎤Gen Z audiences in mind, but it is applicable for any marketing campaign at any stage.

In the era of 🎯hyper personalisation and ⏱️real time campaign results, Trend Scout responds to the rise of the influencer era, the 🧩increasing complexity of niche audiences, the need of brands to decode the 💡next generation insights and to deliver 📈high return of digital marketing spend via high conversion to sales rates. 

In this partnership, Flaminjoy’s platform provides access to a vast network of influencers and their ❤️ engaged communities, allowing for the automated collection of raw authentic data on consumer behaviours and preferences. Ipsos, in turn, develops the appropriate ⚙️research instruments based on clients’ needs to 🏆gain competitive advantage in the market.

#partnershipsforgrowth #innovation #scaleups

Lansarea Sistemul Garanție Returnare (SGR) în România, încurajeaza consumatorii să fie proactivi în reciclarea ambalajelor cumpărate, întroducând o valoare monetară pentru acestea, garanția, care devine astfel parte integrantă a fluxului de colectare-reciclare.

În cadrul platformei digitale EcoTree.ro, companiile care folosesc platforma beneficiază de mecanisme care diferențiază deșeurile ce intră sub incidența SGR față de restul deșeurilor. Fluxul deșeurilor este deja creat, valoarea acestora este stabilită și informațiile sunt disponibile, totul într-un sistem 100% digital. 

Astfel, platforma eficientizează atât procesul de returnare a garantiei cât și pe cel de raportare, necesare respectării legislației, economisind timp prețios clienților nostrii, EcoTree.ro colaborând cu succes cu una dintre cele mai mari companii multinationale de comerț alimentar din Romania.

#sgr #wastemanagement #reciclare #EcoTree.ro

Intriguing exposure of Professor Watkins on Sam Altman's fire and discussions of his return to run OpenAI, reinforcing his point of view for the need of a #psycholocalfitnesstes for the people leading AI development.

A few questions may arise from this fireworks:
-Is he #psychologicalfit ?
-Why the Board fired him surprising all stakeholders, including main investors and Microsoft? What governance is this?
-What trade offs Microsoft will do between protecting its investment in OpenAI /the edge OpenAI has on LLM vs moral, ethical, privacy, IP considerations related to AI development?
-Will this be a single episode or its more to come ?
-Shall we expect changes in governance and regulation in relation to breakthrough AI developments?
#OpenAI, #ethicalAIdevelopment, #transparency, #ethcialleadership

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