"While understanding contexts and solving problems, learning just happens."
"While understanding contexts and solving problems, learning just happens."
"When I realized that the next stage of my professional career was coming up, I took the time for personal soul-searching: What do I want? What am I capable of doing? What will push me further? It's sort of my philosophy of life: First I try to understand my needs and wants, I set my intentions and right after I act on them. So the path to the position of a Mobility Venture Architect at Baloise was actually paved automatically. I gathered experience in the fields of insurance and automotive, also I've been involved in innovation and digital transformation. Hence I knew: I want to continue and combine what I learned so far – thus, exactly at the intersection of venture building, VC investments and media-for-equity investments. And here I am."
Which solutions, what services and products, does the world need? How do we meet persistent challenges? Venture building exploits market opportunities and solves unsolved problems. It combines business development and risk financing. "Baloise acts as venture resource here," Stefan explains. "In the Mobility Ecosystem, we connect different startups and innovative approaches that get people from A to B: smart, safe, sustainable. As a team, we define a framework for how we build new ventures – either internally or in collaboration with partners. Innovation is often born at the intersection of two fields: So in addition to experts from mobility, we also collaborate with the industry, with universities and others and combine diverse specialized knowledge. Luckily, in doing so, we are in the unique position of being able to freely discover and try things out."
«For the first time in my life, I found the perfect match between my professional experience and a new job adventure.»
Stefan is a person who likes to think and reflect. He perceives his environment very consciously and absorbs it curiously. He wants to understand connections and ways of thinking. He asks questions, listens attentively, reshapes impressions and repaints pictures: "In my search for the solution to a problem, I want to dive deeper into a subject, as deeply as possible, and make sure I understand it. Unfortunately, my interests are annoyingly diverse," he laughs. "It's not unlikely that I get lost in details and fall in love with the side insights. Likewise with learning. It's core to my personality."
This love Stefan professionalizes in business life: "Venture building creates new things and in the effort to connect various business cases, new ideas and products emerge. We at Baloise follow this idea in the Mobility Ecosystem and we look for synergies - both between our portfolio companies and between them and the core business."
«Solving problems has always fascinated me. I might get lost in it.»
In the early 2000s, Stefan asked his parents, "What should I study?" "You're old enough to figure it out yourself," he heard them say. So he found his answer in another social setting: Being part of a folk dance ensemble at the time he learned what friendship and trust is about. “A healthy support system that put a new spin on my life”, he says. “I began to follow an intention-driven way: What will suit me and make me happy in the long run? Where can I contribute best and how? As an answer I started to study Economics. Two years later - accompanying my studies - I entered the field of sales and traveled Romania selling venetian blinds. 2006 while I did my Master Thesis, I started to work in Underwriting: "My first contact with an insurance company: In claims, I dealt with policies and premiums, and when analysing all the data, it was the first time I came up with an initial idea to build a venture."
Stefan's resume follows his desires and ideas: it has always been about exploration and experimentation. At Bombardier in Cluj, he organizes employee relocations to other countries; at Heraldist, he prepares sales pitches in the area of venture building, doing plenty of research, conducting interviews and learning to understand customers. At the US tech companies, Telenav for mobile navigation software and location-based services, and 8x8 for CCaaS, he worked in product management.
Many changes, and they allowed him to mature. His self-confidence grew. Hence, suddenly in 2017, there was this thought of founding his own company - a venture building studio. "I saw so many problems and opportunities around me, where a tech startup could have been a possible solution. So there was quite some drive to design a material answer to those opportunities, which eventually enabled my team and me to build a portfolio of three ventures. One successfully exit."
«Both can only go hand in hand with the willingness of each individual to take on responsibility.»
Since March 2023, Stefan has been part of Baloise's Mobility Ecosystem. He appreciates the atmosphere in the team: the "standard trust" (Reassuring!), the "diversity of personalities and perspectives" (Inspiring!), the "many different topics and corresponding opportunities to learn" (Fulfilling!).
"In my time as a founder, pressure and stress were often with me. After five years leading my company, I lacked the required energy to develop it further. It feels good that nowadays the pressure in the Mobility Team is once again spread across more shoulders. We work in flat hierarchies and there's freedom to a certain degree: both can only go hand in hand with the willingness of each individual to take on responsibility. This may not suit everyone, but it's exactly how I want to work: I want to get involved, stay on top of my topics, join discussions, make decisions together as a team, and hence move our projects forward."