A 23-year-old successful Romanian entrepreneur, Laurentiu Victor Balasa, comes with a new perspective on business and entrepreneurship. In an interview for Business24, he said: “Business is a kind of applied, practical, religion in motion because it gives people bread and happiness “, pointing out that “to be an entrepreneur is useful to society, so I think everyone should do it. It is really, really fun”.
He is an entrepreneur with years of experience in the business world. He started at 16-17 with a relocation firm. Then in high-school he borrowed money and started a bagel shop with an associate and two employees. He started this from an idea his brother gave him, that a bagel shop in a certain busy intersection will sell a lot of bagels. And he was right. They recovered their investment in no time. They developed the business in a pastry shop with three locations and deliveries, including to his former high-school.
Meanwhile he started ReduceriAzi.ro and then he went on with such sites based on collective discounts (E-redus.ro, Mutari-totale.ro and, most recently, T-Me Studios, alongside another young entrepreneur, Matei Paul).
His most successful business was ReduceriAzi.ro, sold with a large profit. He started this from an idea given by a friend from a tattoo parlor, who noted that these sites with collective discounts would have success on the Romanian market. Remember this idea that friends and family can give you valuable ideas on new business.
ReduceriAzi.ro was started from zero with very low costs for: a simple site, black and white flyers, and some students to distribute them for three days. So, it is obvious, that if you have initiative and creativity, money is not an impediment in starting a business.
Laurentiu Balasa, himself, says that he is not a miracle entrepreneur, but he just took advantage of the fact that the Romanian IT business market is a young “jungle”.
He points out that his business grew very fast also due to some innovations. They were the first to make video presentations of the partners of the site. For this he employed the help of a friend, a star-up too, who filmed and edited the videos. This is a lesson to be learned, appeal to friends and relatives for help. They will do it for nothing or very cheap.
Another innovation was the payment in cash at delivery, a system preferred by Romanians. He offered several payment options to known pizzerias, cinemas and salons. Thus, knowing his target was helpful in adapting his offer.
When he started hiring people, the first person he employed was a very emphatic and charismatic sales agent. So, keep in mind his strategy, choose wisely your key-personnel.
He mentions business relations turned into friendships with people with different background from his own, stating that: “business is a similar sport, with unchanging principles, regardless of industry. Regardless of age. Regardless of background.”
He sold his business when it reached a certain turnover, but he denies having a special technique in business, he considers his asset is unconsciousness and exhaustive desire.
His preparation for entrepreneurship consists of readings
about poster-like entrepreneurs: Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Peter Thiel, and Kevin O’Leary. The most useful thing for him was listening to all Richard Bandler and Tony Robbins’s seminars.
