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I first meet Razvan three years ago when I was working for a very cool startup and we were having issues with a Blackberry app. Out of everyone in the world, the one phone that could help us with the necessary log files was Razvan’s. And thus a friendship made in tech heaven was borne. I’ve learned a lot by watching Razvan do his “networking magic”, as he has that special ability of making his way into one’s business heart.

Razvan is doing great things from very early on, being involved in wonderful projects such as Appnor or UberVu as Sales Consultant and Business Development Manager. He lives in London, comes to visit Bucharest from time to time [he arrived on Friday] and makes Business Development, Marketing and Sales seem so very easy.

With curiosity being my middle name, I wanted to find out more about Razvan’s activities and business objectives. As expected, it turned out to be a great and insightful interview. Enjoy!

VC: Tell us a little bit more about Razvan Roman: what do you do and how did you get started?

RR: I’ve started off on a Spectrum since before I could read and I think I’ve been incredibly lucky to have good timing in being passionate about a very high impact domain that’s driving innovation in a lot of businesses.

That pretty much lead to being a part of many startups and companies playing different roles along the way. I’ve transitioned from development to marketing, operations and more recently sales. It really helps to see the overall picture from all department’s point of view and there’s no easy path or shortcut to gaining experience.

I’ve started my first project at 16 and experimented for the next couple of years. From then on I focused on working on projects where I could learn as much as possible and also meet people that I’d like to work with in the future. I’m currently doing sales and business development for uberVU from the London office.

VC: You live in London in the management team of a project we hold close to heart: UberVu. Do sales goes smoother from London compared to Bucharest?

RR: It’s a whole different process throughout. In Bucharest you need to rely on conference calls to sell to big global clients — travelling doesn’t scale when you’re working with clients from almost all continents. In London however you can meet up with pretty much any big client so you’re building a much more personal relationship with people.

Reputation is also more important in the UK. Compared to the US, where it’s mostly about wether a transaction makes sense rather than who you’re buying from and what’s their reputation. However, once reputation starts building up there’s a snowball effect so long term effects are positive i.e. clients start recommending you, talking about your product etc.

B2B sales is all about making a good deal for 2 or more sides. For that to happen somebody has to have a need for your product, you have to somehow be there at the right time and control the whole process along the way without making mistakes.

London makes it easy to meet the biggest clients in Europe but there’s also more competition for their attention. It’s the place to be in Europe if you’re looking for big deals, definitely.

VC: Taking into consideration your experience and business intuition, what line of work would you chose as an entrepreneur in 2012 and why?

RR: I’m definitely sticking to online based models. You’re going to experiment a lot as an entrepreneur focused on innovation and new models compared to the sort of entrepreneur that opens a small restaurant franchise for example, where the model is often set in place and allows little flexibility. In order to accommodate all that experimenting you need a continuously growing industry to cushion for your inevitable mistakes. The online medium definitely grants you that and most models (even ecommerce) are still on a very high growth curve if you look at the overall economy.

VC: From your point of view, could you name top three key milestones which entrepreneurs in Romania should consider?

RR: That’s a bit too broad for a generalisation but I think the focus should be all about experimenting and learning as much as you can in order to really jump on a good opportunity later on when planets align.

A part that seems to be missing to a lot of Romanian entrepreneurs is a general understanding of the global market as opposed to focusing only on the local one. Even if you decide to make a local play in Romania I still think understanding what works on other markets is essential.

Three milestones though: the 11th employee, managing EUR 1.2MLN in yearly revenues, offices in multiple timezones. These all come with their own trials and difficulties and usually change your organisation significantly.

VC: Looking back at the way in which UberVu grew and developed in the last couple of years, is there anything you would have done different?

RR: No. All decisions make sense at the time they’re made. As long as you have the proper knowledge to assess a situation you can’t really regret any decisions you’ve made.

VC: I told myself I wouldn’t ask you that, but I cannot help it. Which is the hardest sale you’ve completed and how much?

RR: The hardest sales aren’t necessarily the most expensive. You can sometimes have a really hard time selling an average sized contract –5 figures in yearly revenue– to a big corporation. If they’re running a long and strenuous RFP process you can end up spending months on end on such an opportunity and you get very low leverage over the situation. There’s no way of sweetening the deal for them.

By comparison you can win big business in only a few days if there’s ways to push the sale — like an internal deadline on their end, flexibility on your pricing, payment options etc. The hardest thing however in big deals is applying the same strategies as you do on smaller deals. Not caving in to pressures from the other side to issue discounts or extras is really hard when you really want to sign that huge contract. But being consistent, offering a great service and being congruent about your offer will get the deal sealed. It’s all about execution rather than great ideas here.

VC: We all have mentors and gurus we look up. I am fortunate to work with all them and here I’m referring to the VentureConnect Board. Which is your business figure you admire most and why?

RR: There’s too many to chose only one. Elon Musk definitely stands out lately and I love the way he’s been an underdog for 5+ years and only recently media started reconsidering his whole efforts and backstory. That looks like the next Steve Jobs story to me and certainly the media jumped on the opportunity to portray him so.

There’s distinction to be made between being inspired versus learning something very useful that you can apply today in your organisation. While Elon ranks high as somebody that inspires, you often learn more by following Ben Horrowitz, Marc Andreessen, Martin Varsavski or other big name entrepreneurs that share a lot of practical advice.

Biographies can teach you so much about the psychology of winning, losing and getting up again. And I also tend to look for inspiration in highly successful people in other trades of life or even historical figures. I’ve learned just as much from Arnon Milchan’s biography or Keith Richard’s “Life” than from Steve Job’s or Founders at Work.

Success can either take you by surprise by accidentally riding a fantastic wave of change at the right time and being up to par on executing on it — think Mark Zuckerberg  or The Rolling Stones — or you can plan for it and it will only look good while looking back — like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs post 2000.