Meet Pago, the best way to pay your bills in Romania and, soon, the rest of Europe.

Plus are you trying to do too much? 🤔

Hello from your friend in Bucharest, Romania. 👋

In this issue: daily habits, Innovators Can Laugh with Adrian Cighi, cats, and more!

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Innovators Can Laugh

Adrian Cighi started his career in the financial field having worked in Great Britain, and for companies such as Banca Transylvania and Goldman Sachs. He then co-founded  Pago which is an application that automates payments to suppliers. They have close to 400k active users and are projected to do 3 million Euro in operating revenue in 2023.

In this conversation, Adrian shares how partnerships were essential in growing Pago. By solving a problem for bigger, more established companies like Banca Transilvania, Mastercard and Visa, this helped get them off the ground and grow.  We also dive into the ‘blameless’ culture he is trying to instill at the company where mistakes are treated as learning opportunities, without resentment or regret.

🎙️📺 Catch the interview on Spotify, Apple, other platform, or on YouTube.

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Life: Are you trying to do too much? 

I am trying to do too much at once.

Giving all my talent and a lot of my energy in helping grow a startup.

Producing a podcast that challenges me to step out of my comfort zone.

Spending quality time with my family (and many times juggling both work and kids when there’s no school) 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

And yet, having a goal of learning Romanian by spending one hour a day studying, listening and engaging in conversation. (I am living in Bucharest, hence the reason why I want to learn the language) 🇷🇴

Some days I'd crush it and do 4-5 lessons on my app. However, because life and work gets in the way, I am never consistent.

Then I heard a lot of people talking about a book - Atomic Habits. I was intrigued and read a summary of the book online. That's when I realized that I should just make a small daily goal to study Romanian on Duolingo just 10 minutes a day.

So now I'm on a 45 day streak. Here’s to implementing small daily habits. 🥊

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Cats

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Fun links & Overheard on LinkedIn

😅 AI images of billionaires working service jobs….hilarious

🎵 Spring Sundays Spotify list I’m digging

🏋🏾‍♂️ Supposedly a magical drink that helps shed weight fast (I’m trying a modified version)

🧠 The 5 stages of being a creator by Jay Clouse

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Upcoming Episode

Re-thinking Code-First: The Importance of Discovery Workshops in Software Development with Maxim Rotaru from Webamboos.

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The End

Here’s me and the kiddos enjoying some inghetata (ice cream) in downtown Bucharest this past Saturday. My daughter loves strawberry, I’m a chocolate chip kind of guy. What about you?

Thanks for reading today!

If you enjoyed reading this - it would mean the world if you'd forward this to someone who would benefit from the content!

See you all next week!

Eric M.