1. Please introduce your business and share your role. 

I am the founder and CEO of Wolfpack Digital, an award-winning web and mobile app design & development company with a team of 80 people, based in Cluj, Transylvania, Romania. We work mostly with companies in Europe (UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Denmark etc.) and North America (US, Canada), ranging from tech startups to multinational corporations, in fields such as fintech, health tech, mobility, beauty tech, or education and entertainment. Some of our clients include Sephora, Deezer, Transreport, etc. 

Our team has the skillset to help clients with digitalization and digital product creation from start to end, continued by the support offered for scaling the products and permanently adapting them to the market needs. We call this building “powerful web and mobile apps start-to-end”, and our reason for being on the market is that of bringing performance and beauty to the world through technology. 

Our entire culture is inspired by the Wolf as a symbol: agile, collaborative, performant, communicative, dedicated, and playful. So far we’ve been featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, BBC Radio 4, and other publications, and we won several awards, including the European Technology Award for App Development (Paris, 2021). 

2. What’s your backstory, what kind of challenges did you face, and how did you come up with your business idea?

I’ve always had diverse interests. I am a software engineer at base, and I used to work as an iOS developer for several years. However, I was always interested in psychology, communication & advertising, business management, etc., which inspired me to formally study these domains too. 

In my view, technology is world-changing at its best if it succeeds at truly embracing the human spirit, and this is why business and thought leaders have a responsibility to understand and consider multiple facets of decision-making in the interconnected world we live in. 

I had a point in my life when all the dots connected, and I realized that the best way to bring my interests together and integrate them was by becoming an entrepreneur and creating a digital agency with a great culture – in this way, I could touch the lives of many people & companies from various fields while coming in contact with innovative ideas that really light my inner fire. I went straight ahead and registered Wolfpack Digital as a company in 2015. 

I would say that the top 3 challenges I faced in the beginning were: finding the initial customers for the company, having to do everything myself as a founder for the first few months, and facing the bureaucracy attached to owning a company in Romania. In retrospect, these challenges helped me level up and shape my mindset to become more productive. 

3. How did you prepare for, and go about your launch? 

I was in “exploration”/play mode, so I would say I jumped forward and I did it: I registered Wolfpack Digital as a company and announced that on my personal social media pages. 

Initially, I went for a word-of-mouth approach, where I also reached out to people in my network to let them know that I had opened a web & mobile app design & development agency. This failed to produce any immediate results, so I had to learn to be patient.

Looking back, my approach was a more reactive one overall, – as I had no practical marketing experience per se – rather than a proactive one. However, what really helped me was my willingness to learn from how the market behaved, and explore creative/proven solutions to enter different promotion channels. 

For the most part of the first couple of years though, most of our clients – since we have a B2B model – came from my own network. The coherence of our brand from day one has always been a plus, regardless of any plan or marketing strategy.

4. What are your favorite marketing platforms/tools?

We’ve always believed in organic growth, so we rarely used or use paid advertising. We prefer to remain active on relevant topics on all main social media channels, plus our own website, www.wolfpack-digital.com. 

Having happy clients spread the word about our capabilities still remains one of the best ways to attract new customers, and there are some platforms available for client reviews, Clutch being one such example.  

We found that overall people really love our visual identity, which was built coherently from the ground up. The symbolism of the wolf in our brand is a powerful one, and it also relates to my surname, Lupu, which means “Wolf” in Romanian. 

Overall, like many other tech companies out there, we really love the minimalism, passion, and storytelling in the marketing that Apple presents to the world, and personally, I am also a big fan of Adidas, Disney, and Coca-Cola. 

5. Who or what inspires and motivates you?

I am inspired by great ideas, the beautiful execution of those ideas, and witnessing the impact of our work, which is best seen not just in numbers, but also in the emotions of the people whose lives are actually improved by technology. 

6. What are some lessons you’ve learned along the way that you would share with entrepreneurs hoping to launch or who have just launched? 

Be patient, do not expect things to go perfectly, and learn from every small signal that the market sends to you as feedback on your launched product/services! Validation is key, and pivoting and continuously adapting to your market is what makes a business successful. 

So embrace flexibility as a lifestyle, without forgetting who you are! Additionally, be sure to surround yourself with people who love to learn and have a passion for bettering themselves. Honesty and seeing the truth together as a team are essential to the success of a company, and to making the best decisions regarding what your next steps are. 

7. What do you believe are the qualities of a good entrepreneur? And what makes a team successful?

In a nutshell, the top 3 qualities of a good entrepreneur, in my view, are: grit – to keep going and continuously learn from success & failure alike, focus – to make sure the energy flows in productive directions rather than getting scattered all over the place, and caring about people and listening to them – this applies to both team members and clients. 

A team is made successful by having common values and loving to play & work together, while truly believing in the mission/objectives of the team. This is partly accomplished by the successful communication of vision and plans delivered by leaders, and also by the intrinsic motivation of individual team members. Going beyond collaboration, the qualities and determination of each person in the team matter a lot too. 

8. Let us know where we can go to learn more! 

A good place to start is always our website, and you can also find us on most social media channels:

• LinkedIn:
  • Wolfpack Digital 
• X:
  • @DigitalWolfpack
• Instagram
  • @wolfpack.digital

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