Dear readers,

This week’s issue looks at what startup ecosystems in SEE become when they stop trying to imitate Silicon Valley and start building around something much less glamorous, but far more durable.

The main story takes us to the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca, where angel investor Emmett King and the Transylvania Angels Network have built one of the region’s most connected founder-investor communities.

Across the region, we track fresh capital moving into startups solving practical problems: Romanian AI company DesignVerse is upgrading Europe’s air traffic software, Slovenian oral care startup FRESH 32 is scaling beyond its home market, Croatian food-waste startup Crumbs pushing regional expansion. We also explain one of the more talked-about rumors in CEE venture circles: the internal collapse of Presto Ventures, where partner disputes reportedly froze one of the region’s best-known funds.

And in this week’s interview, investment expert Gergana Stoichkova breaks down where capital is actually going in 2026: why vertical AI is still attracting attention, why fewer startups are raising larger rounds, and why many founders are still misunderstanding the economics of building on top of foundation models.

Enjoy this week’s read!
Bojan Stojkovski
Editor-in-Chief, IT Logs

When I first asked Emmett King what brought him to Cluj-Napoca in Romania, he put it bluntly: an airplane.

The joke “landed” instantly. But like many things King says, the humor concealed a more serious point underneath. His journey from the US to Romania eventually became something much larger than relocation. Over the last two decades, he has become one of the most recognizable figures in Romania’s startup and angel investing ecosystem.  

Perhaps more importantly, King is one of the rare foreigners that are trying to explain what angel investing actually means in Eastern Europe. It’s not the dreamy Silicon Valley fantasy version, the LinkedIn version full of unicorns, AI buzzwords, or billion-dollar exits. The real, messy version of angel investing is built around mentorship, introductions, failed bets, late-night founder calls, and investors willing to wire five or 10 thousand euros into people they genuinely believe in.

That single sentence probably explains more about the startup ecosystems in Southeast Europe than most conference panels ever will.

Building an angel network from scratch

King’s own entrepreneurial story stretches across industries and continents. Before arriving in Romania from the US, he had already helped launch or manage companies in logistics, waste management, recycling, real estate, documentary filmmaking, specialty coffee, consulting, and public accounting. One company was taken public on NASDAQ, through a procedure called a reverse merger.

“I’ve been blessed with entrepreneurial success on two continents,” he tells IT Logs.

In Romania, his focus gradually shifted toward technology, cybersecurity, AI for visual analytics, telemedicine, and startup mentorship. Then, in 2018, together with other entrepreneurs, he co-founded the Transylvania Angels Network (T.A.N.), an NGO-backed angel investment network that has since grown into one of Romania’s most active startup communities.

The network now counts more than 100 members and has participated in around 40 startup investments totaling roughly four million euros. But King insists that the investment numbers are only part of the story.

In emerging ecosystems like Romania or the Balkans, startup communities often become much more than capital allocation vehicles - eventually, they evolve into support structures for founders struggling in environments where institutional support is still developing.

In that sense, T.A.N. organizes mentorship sessions, networking dinners, workshops, educational programs, and monthly startup pitches. At the center of it all is human interaction. “Networking is for me and my businesses, connecting is for others.” King emphasizes.

Then, he adds another line that feels less like business advice and more like philosophy. “Give to the universe, and the universe will bring it back.”

How Cluj became one of Eastern Europe’s startup magnets

To understand why T.A.N. emerged in Cluj-Napoca, you also need to understand the city itself. Over the past decade, as Romania’s second biggest city with a population of over 400 thousand, Cluj has developed into one of Eastern Europe’s most active technology hubs, often referred to as Romania’s Silicon Valley, even if King himself laughs at the comparison.

Still, he admits the city developed something unusual for the region. Compared to many Balkan ecosystems still struggling with fragmentation and limited collaboration, Cluj created a dense network of founders, engineers, startup communities, accelerators, educational institutions, and investors that constantly overlap.

The city’s growth as a startup hub came partly from its strong technical universities and STEM talent pipeline, but also from something more cultural. People stayed connected, communities formed around recurring events and startup founders became mentors. During that time, engineers became angel investors, while former operators turned into ecosystem builders.

Events like Techsylvania helped place the city onto the broader European startup map, bringing founders, investors, and international speakers into Romania’s growing ecosystem. T.A.N. itself organizes breakfast networking events around Techsylvania specifically because, as King jokes, “If somebody shows up at eight o’clock in the morning, they’re not there for the wine. They’re there to learn and network.”

The ecosystem also expanded beyond investing itself. Cluj Startups became a central organizing force for founders in the city, while newer initiatives like Founders Hive were created to solve another major regional problem: isolation.

The downtown Cluj space now hosts dozens of founders and startup teams working side by side. The startups get mentorship, networking access, community support, and something harder to quantify: proximity to other people going through the same chaos.

King recalls one late evening where he watched a solo founder helping another startup team troubleshoot problems. “There’s a solo founder over there talking to another team and helping them out. That’s what we wanted.” he says.

That collaborative culture helped Cluj become more than just an outsourcing destination. Over time, the city started producing founders willing to build products instead of only offering services for Western European companies. Yet King also believes the ecosystem still has limitations.

Even so, Cluj managed to build something many regional ecosystems still struggle with - continuity. Communities survived beyond hype cycles, and angel investors collaborated instead of competing. One of the strongest examples came during T.A.N.’s early years, when the organization began collaborating with other Romanian angel groups such as TechAngels Romania in Bucharest and Growceanu in Timișoara.

That cooperation eventually led to Romania’s first nationally coordinated angel investment into the telemedicine startup Telios Care, bringing together investors from multiple cities to help grow what is now the largest telemedicine company in the country. 

“We raised investments from TechAngels, and from Growceanu. It was the first angel investment in Romania to raise money from around the country.” King recalls. 

Pizza after the pitch

The mechanics of angel investing often sound glamorous from the outside. In reality, however, much of it happens in ordinary rooms over ordinary conversations.

At T.A.N.’s monthly meetings, founders pitch their startups in five-minute presentations followed by ten minutes of questions from investors. Afterward, the startups leave the room, and the pizza arrives.

This process eventually determines whether a startup advances into a deeper due diligence phase involving financial analysis, product reviews, market discussions, and investor conversations. But even when startups are rejected, T.A.N. looks to provide feedback.

This also reveals something essential about angel investing, as early-stage startups rarely have enough hard data to evaluate purely through spreadsheets, investors are assessing people as much as products.

The difference between angels and venture capital

One of the more nuanced parts of King’s perspective involves the relationship between angel investors and VC firms. Globally, the line between the two has increasingly blurred, as VC firms now invest earlier than before, sometimes entering even pre-seed rounds traditionally dominated by angels.

King sees both advantages and problems in that trend. Back when T.A.N. started, he says, VCs typically entered at much larger ticket sizes. Today, many local funds invest much earlier because there are simply not enough scalable startups available.

Then comes one of his sharper observations. “Their Achilles heel is that they’ve never had a month where they have enough money to pay half the salaries or half the bills, and the next month is coming fast.”

That tells the difference between theoretical investing knowledge and entrepreneurial survival. King himself has lived through cash flow crises, scaling challenges, failed partnerships, and difficult negotiations.

Still, he avoids turning the conversation into a simplistic investors-versus-founders narrative. “Not all angels are angels, and not all VCs are sharks,” he points out. 

One of the most revealing parts of King’s philosophy, though, emerges when discussing growth.

“How difficult was it to grow to 100+ members?” I ask him about T.A.N.

“For me, the importance is the quality, not the quantity,” he replies immediately.

That mindset has shaped much of T.A.N.’s culture. The network intentionally allows non-investors to participate because, according to King, communities become stronger when knowledge circulates freely.

And in many ways, this is the deeper story behind angel investing in Eastern Europe, since regions like the Balkans or Romania still operate very differently from mature startup markets like London or Amsterdam. “Networks are smaller, trust matters more, and reputation spreads faster,” King points out.

And this is exactly why people like him matter. Not because they can predict every winning startup - he openly admits nobody can. “You’re never going to predict them all,” he says.

However, King and his peers are helping build something much more important than individual exits: a culture where founders, investors, and operators keep showing up for each other long enough for ecosystems to mature. And more often than not, having a pizza after a pitching event is the right place to start. 

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