Before I built companies, I wrote hit songs and hosted TV shows

In 2000, Antena 1 gave us a show of our own, “Totul va fi bine!”, named after one of our hit songs. It ran for seven seasons with exceptional ratings. Until 2014 I hosted shows on Antena 1, Prima TV, Acasă TV and TVR 2, the last of them being “În țara minunilor” (2013). Television taught me two things I still use in every keynote: the audience decides in the first thirty seconds, and the camera knows when you’re pretending.

In 2002, with Marius Moga and Mihai Sturzu, I co-founded MOF Records, a production studio and record label in Bucharest. We wrote and produced for other artists. “Ani de liceu,” which Marius and I composed for TNT, became the anthem of a generation of high-school graduates, and for a while a large share of the Romanian Top 100 came out of that one studio.

MOF Records was also the studio where O-Zone recorded some of their biggest hits, including “Dragostea din Tei,” which became a global phenomenon and one of the most successful Romanian songs internationally.
I’m a member of UCMR-ADA, the Romanian composers’ society, and my catalog is distributed by Cat Music.

When streaming and social media rewrote the music business, I moved to the other side of the desk. In 2013 I founded Hit Yourself, the first digital agency built for the Romanian music industry, working with artists such as Voltaj, Deepcentral and Alb Negru. Within two years it had become a talent agency for a new kind of artist, the content creator, years before “influencer” entered the Romanian dictionary. We represented Bianca Adam (Tequila), Radu Constantin, Vlad Grigore, Edi Brandabura and other top YouTubers. By 2018 the agency had worked with more than 150 creators.

That talent agency is where MOCAPP was born.

My first book is a guide for musicians and creators at the start of their careers: one hundred practical ideas, drawn from the stories of Romanian artists who broke through internationally, from Inna and Smiley to Morandi, Edward Maya and Akcent. Foreword by Mihai Găinușă. Dan Fințescu called it “the first guide ever in Romanian music history.” More than a decade later, it’s still the book I’d hand to anyone turning a creative passion into a career, in music or anywhere in the creator economy.

My new book dedicated to entrepreneurs and leaders: how to turn your authentic identity into the strategy that attracts clients, teams and investors. It’s the knowledge and the framework I wish I’d had at my first company.

I still think of myself as a creator. Somewhere around 2007, the stage got bigger.