Every month, during a Coffee Break, we dive into the stories of EIC innovators and get a glimpse of the people behind EIC projects. Today’s guests are Octavian Richea and Adela Stefan, respectively CEO and CAO at Svelte, a Romanian company that developed a patented advanced cutting method that changes its shape while moving through foam or wax-based materials to generate the desired surfaces. Find out more about it in this month’s EIC Coffee Break.
Tell us how the idea for your innovation started. Was it something that was bouncing in the back of your head for a long time?
Several years ago, I (Octavian) was involved in developing solutions for the freeform architectural field, very curved designs. And that was when I realised that the bottleneck for these kinds of architectural projects is in terms of manufacturing these unique shapes in a cost-efficient way. This meant the starting point for the company.
How did your family respond to your ideas/innovation?
I already had another startup company in the engineering field, so it didn't come as a massive surprise. But it was interesting to see how the scale of things switched from an organic growth company, where you have a small increase in revenue, to something like this, which is taking a company and putting some rockets onto it, and then see where it goes. I think from time to time our families are a bit worried about our health because it's not the typical nine-to-five job.
Can you tell us a little bit about a tough moment you had had the company and how you managed to push through this?
We can mention a few aspects here. First, we received the EIC funding right before the COVID-pandemic hit. We were developing hardware and we had to improvise how this could work. For instance, in terms of ordering specific electronic components; normally this would take up to a month, now you were looking at 14 months or more. Luckily, with some improvisation and support, we managed to come a long way.
Secondly, seeing as Romania shares a border with Ukraine, the war also had some impact on our company. Since the company started, we had to go through a global pandemic, a nearby war and a value chain crisis.
Lastly, the fact that we were the first Romanian company to receive the EIC Accelerator funding. It was on the one hand a great honour. On the other hand, it was a big challenge because we had no ecosystem to get support. For example, there were no other Romanian companies with experience in what implementing such a project means, someone we could turn to. Luckily this has changed for the better over the past year.
What are you currently reading or what book inspires you the most, be it personal or professional?
Octavian: Currently I’m reading ‘Leadership is an Art’ by Max DePree, the son of D.J DePree, founder of the Herman Miller office furniture company.
Adela: Because of the Russian war in Ukraine, we have a lot of refugees coming to our city. Many shocking stories and images are coming out and to understand them better, I’m reading the memoir of war photographer Lynsey Addario.
If you could talk business over lunch with either a large CEO or global leader, who would you choose and why?
I think now I would discuss this with the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who gave a speech at COP27. Usually, these speeches are quite diplomatic, so I would be interested to hear his honest opinion regarding the current state of our climate.
