From a 3-Room Office to a Multinational Company

May 31, 2021

15 Years Executive MBA Bucharest Anniversary Career Story

Looking back 15 years, what has changed in your career because of your MBA degree? How did the program support you in reaching your career goals? What concrete career opportunities have opened up for you?

As an entrepreneur, the Executive MBA provided the structure I desperately needed, by providing me a highly valuable and attractive knowledge base. Beyond the curricula and the professors, it comes with an extended community of local and international managers or owners with the same kind of problems. It also gives an exceptional opportunity for networking as well as the exchange of expertise and experience across diverse industries, culture, geographies, and functional backgrounds. What you can expect more than this?

How and why did you come to work for AROBS?

I founded AROBS Transilvania Software in 1998 when I was in the final year of the MBA. I had recently returned from the States, and I was working for a Romanian - Italian company. At one point, the owner decided that my wish to complete my business degree was not compatible anymore with the software developer job I had at the time. It was an even more powerful impulse towards my executive education. This is one of the many reasons I wanted to start and complete the Executive MBA. 

I created AROBS because I wanted to do what I liked, programming, but under conditions very different from those that I used to have in my previous company. I started by myself in my parents’ flat then I moved in a 3 room flat with ten other colleagues (the Romanian version of the American garage). We were an extraordinary team, working together long hours but also partying together. We had a very strong bond.

Presently, we try to replicate the same experience we had together in the much bigger scale of an international company. Some of them are still in the AROBS family that now accounts for almost 1000 employees and contractors in Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Serbia, and Indonesia.

What are your goals for the coming year? Your goals in general? Is there still something you want to do/achieve?

I will never stop setting goals to achieve, both in my personal and professional life. I am in continuous search of new ideas and new ways of expanding my knowledge, my horizons, and of course, my company and the many IT companies where I became an investor or advisor in recent years. I want AROBS to grow larger, both organic and through acquisition, in the global market and to launch many impactful software solutions in the Romanian market and beyond. For myself, I wish to return to ironman triathlon competitions for the 8th time. My dream is to compete some day in Kona, Hawaii.

In your opinion, has the importance of having an MBA degree increased in recent years/since your graduation?

I think the current ever-changing, dynamic global economic environment requests strong, innovative leadership and a clear structure – things that an executive education can help to develop. Innovation in leadership has to be built on knowledge and courage and the bad news is: Learning does not stop once the program is over. Doing an MBA means continuous learning. First within the program, but most of it happens outside the program. I think an Executive MBA degree will give future leaders the knowledge, structure and the courage to experiment, in order to reach personal goals as well as company goals.

Why would you recommend the Executive MBA Bucharest of the WU Executive Academy? What did you like the most?

The structure, the amount of information, the professors, the networking and the full experience of being back to school, meant a lot to me. The interaction with the professors and my colleagues opened new ways of understanding the plethora of challenges we face every day in our businesses. The bonding with my colleagues and the “external board” environment where we can search for ideas, and even develop solutions on various topics are the biggest take aways for me.