FuckUp Nights Bucharest Volume XV welcomes four new personalities, from completely different fields of work, who will unveil, through personal stories, how they managed to turn professional failure into genuine learning experiences. Dr. Mihail Pautov, medical specialist, surgeon, and host of Medicool, Matei Păun, co-founding partner of Black Sea Fund, Andreea Runceanu, violinist with Amadeus Electric Quartet, and Andreea Moldovan, owner Pastry Chef at Love you Choux & Livrez Fericire are the four guests invited to the 15th edition of FUN, who will reveal new perspectives on career failures.

The event is moderated by radio and TV journalist Julia Nagy.

Dr. Mihail Pautov is a medical specialist, and surgeon host of the show Medicool. He worked for 6 years at Fundeni ICU and 2 years at Curtea de Argeș Municipal Hospital. In the meantime, he also began communicating on social media, where he gathered a large community, as well as on blog and TV. He is the host of his own show, Medicool, broadcast on Antena 1, the first leading medical show in Romania. Mihail eventually retired from classical medical practice. He's on his own path, he tells us, on which he tries to convince as many people as possible not to get sick in order not to be treated.

Mihail believes that professional, financial, and entrepreneurial failure is to be welcomed. After the failure of a business we can build a new one, implementing the lessons we've learned and that are talked about a lot these days. The one area where we should not rejoice in failure is our health, and allopathic medicine, which Mihail practices, is paved with constant, stubborn, and repetitive failure in health and preventive care. Under these circumstances, Mihail enjoys his own professional failure, as a surgeon, in order to minimise the failure to his own health and that of his patients in the area of functional medicine, so poorly addressed by allopathic medicine.

Matei Paun is currently a Founding Partner in Black Sea Fund, a Romania focused private equity fund, founded in 2019. As well, Matei founded in 2005 BAC, an investment banking firm focused on mergers and acquisitions and capital raising. Prior to that, Matei held different roles including CEO at DNT, a leading Internet Service Provider, Director at Financial Advisory Services, Deloitte and General Manager of Regent European Securities. In the early Nineties in New York, Matei joined Firebird Fund, the first US hedge fund to invest in the CIS region. Matei was educated at Trinity College in Connecticut.

Failure is often misunderstood. The word implies something definitive and final. But it shouldn’t be. Failure, ideally, should be considered a course correction. It’s feedback. And feedback should always be welcomed. But for failure to represent feedback and be seen as useful, it requires what I call “brutal honesty.” And acceptance. Doing this turns a bad thing into something good. Failures actually become invaluable, precious and generate experience. Something everyone aspires to have.

Andreea Runceanu is a violinist for Amadeus Electric Quartet, founding member and leader of the classical crossover band of the same name, to which she has dedicated her entire professional life.

Launched in the 2000's and turned "DIY artist" in 2010, Amadeus has built a beautiful community of fans all over the world, has performed in over 40 countries on four continents, their music videos have gone viral and reached over 170 million views on their official Youtube channel. They have released six albums of original music, and their latest one, titled Joy, was released at the end of 2020.

When it comes to failure, Andreea first discovered it at the age of 7, when she came home from her first violin class and tried to replicate what she had learned from her teacher. Andreea believes that anyone who has managed to play the violin well has had so many sonic failures over the years that people would consider them crazy for not giving up from the get-go.

Andreea Moldovan is the owner pastry chef of Love You Choux & Livrez Fericire, graduated from the Faculty of Economic and International Relations at ASE, is 36 years old, married and has 2 children. Andreea has been baking since she was 2-3 years old, practically training to be a pastry chef from a young age. As for entrepreneurship, she hasn't trained consciously, therefore she doesn't know exactly for how long she's been doing it. She's presumably still training.

Andreea worked in event planning and sales for a few years until she felt that another calling was hers. She entered the HORECA field in the hot food kitchen around 2012, but found the environment far too harsh and aggressive, so she retreated back into baking by 2015. In 2016 she opened her first workshop making Fatty Cakes, burger buns and cakes. Then, in 2018, she launched her first star products, choux pastries. In 2020 she opened her first single-product shop, Love You Choux. Andreea is a Pastry Chef and Owner at Livrez Fericire and Love You Choux and loves what she does. The classic folk saying that "any kick in the butt is a leap forward" holds true for Andreea. She learns from most of her mistakes, and the ones she doesn't learn from quickly, she repeats until she does. She's self-taught in her craft, and mistakes have worked like a drive - they've made her ambitious, curious and eager to learn so she can excel at what she does.

Previous FuckUp Nights Bucharest editions are captured here: Vol I, Vol II, Vol III, Vol VI, Vol X.

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