Fuckup Nights Bucharest: Three exceptional stories, an inspiring audience and valuable lessons at the 25th edition of the event organized by DiFine PR
Fuckup Nights, the global series of events organized in Bucharest by communication agency DiFine PR, returned on May 22nd with new stories full of emotion and sources of inspiration for those who want to learn from failure.
Fuckup Nights Bucharest, edition number XXV, took place for the first time at the Bucharest International School of Management (BISM). The event brought to the audience a unique mix of speakers from completely different fields, but with the same ambition and courage to move forward and learn from any challenge.
Adrian Stanciu – BISM Associate Dean, renowned entrepreneur and business and leadership consultant, Andra Munteanu – entrepreneur and co-founder of Narada, and Olimpia Melinte – actress, took the stage at Fuckup Nights Bucharest and shared their emotional stories about challenging moments in their careers and how they contributed to their personal and professional evolution.
Adrian Stanciu shared with the audience an older experience from which he learned essential things about teams and the business environment.
”I only worked three years of my life for someone else and it was a time when I learned a lot from my mistakes. I happened to organize a sales competition internally, at the behest of the then director. Everyone expected the team members to be competitive, to fight for the best position, but the reality was totally different.
I realized that if you aim to build an organization of winners, you will actually build an organization of losers. The problem with being a winner is that you have to have a lot of losers. And I was about to create an organization of losers”, he says.
Adrian Stanciu also talked about the tendency of some leaders to justify their failure externally, instead of seeing it as a learning opportunity: “The real losers are those who explain their failure by blaming others – sometimes even their own people. But good leaders, those who guide others or even lead themselves very well, understand that failure does not define their identity. It is not they as people who have failed, but their actions. And from actions you can learn. It is a lesson, not a label”, concludes Adrian Stanciu.
Andra Munteanu entered the business world early. At 25, she had already founded a company with a €3m valuation and franchises in 10 Romanian cities. Today, she has raised 26.4 million lei through her NGO, Narada, which she has invested in schools across the country, in projects that have impacted the lives of over 200,000 children.
”When you hear all these figures, they sound successful, don’t they? I can tell you that much more often I feel my failures than my successes. So often that a Narada sponsor and friend of mine said to me ‘Andra, have you ever counted all the things you’ve done that are extraordinary? It seems to me that you’re still counting what you haven’t gotten out”, she says.
Narada has grown exponentially in a very short time, but Andra believes that sometimes growth can be a failure. “I think that in general growth can be terribly dangerous and that before you want to grow, you have to think very carefully about what you are growing on. For me, trying to deliver value all over the place has exhausted me”, she says.
Sometimes, the real victory is to stay small, but to change and change in depth. That’s why today Andra rethinks Narada as a smaller organization, but one with a profound impact on society.
Actress Olimpia Melinte says failures in her career are frequent and impossible to avoid. From an early age, her dreams have been met with painful rejections, but she has experienced them with all that they entail and learned to accept them as part of the process.
”The day I turned 17, I received the most painful “no” of my life at a casting. I felt the shame of having let everyone down and a pain that made me wonder. Am I able to take all these rejections? Because there will be many. The answer was yes, because acting is home for me; without it, I wouldn’t be me. That’s what I encourage you too, to discover that one thing without which you couldn’t look in the mirror”, she said.
Olimpia Melinte ended her moment on stage with a piece of advice to the adults in the audience: “I had my wings clipped when I was very young. Therefore, if you have young people at home who want to take an artistic path, encourage them. If they do it out of passion and a desire to go further, I guarantee that one day they will be able to make a living from the profession they love. Support them“.
For yet another edition, Fuckup Nights proved that failure has universal value as a source of learning, regardless of title, field or time in life.
“We live in interesting and challenging times that keep us in constant suspense. Times in which I think it is even more evident than before how important it is to learn from our failures and the failures of others, in order not to repeat them, to progress and to be well, but also to make the right choices in life. But there are also times that teach us to be honest with ourselves, to recognize our failures and look beyond them”, said Diana Iosu, founder of DiFine PR and event organizer.
The 25th edition of Fuckup Nights Bucharest is over, but a new event is coming on August 21. On the FUN XXVI stage will be new guests with valuable experiences and lessons, where failure begets stories worth telling.
Fuckup Nights Bucharest is part of a global series of events taking place in 215 cities in 62 countries around the world. The events are changing the paradigm on career failure and are aimed equally at small and large entrepreneurs, corporate workers, freelancers and students.
Fuckup Nights is organized in Bucharest by DiFine PR communication agency.
Partners of the event were: BISM (Bucharest International School of Management), FAN Courier, Radio Guerilla, Maidan, Centrul EKA, Complice, Fonduri Structurale, Bizilive, Learning Network, Psychologies, IQAds, SMARK, IQool, Revista CARIERE, Techcelerator și ROTSA – Romanian Tech Startups Association.
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About DiFine PR
DiFine PR is a full services communications agency that combines the team’s solid experience of over 20 years, both nationally and internationally, with the satisfaction of creating success stories. Besides full PR, communication and business consulting services, the agency also organizes technology and business events (e.g. NASA Space Apps Challenge, TechFest, Fuckup Nights Bucharest). The agency’s client portfolio includes NN, Stefanini, TH Essers, Dulcinella, Seedblink, GapMinder VC, FintechOS, Techcelerator, ROTSA (Romanian Tech Startups Association), Examin.ai, Goldring, Klass Wagen, Eyerim, Bricklofts, Undelucram.ro, Restart Energy, Tema Energy, Verita International School, Bitcoin Romania. Over the six years since its launch, DiFine PR has worked with over 250 tech startups.
