The journey from investor to entrepreneur offers unique insights into building successful companies. Vlad Cazacu, who transitioned from venture capital to founding Flowlie, shares key strategies that have helped him develop a platform now used by over 3,000 founders across 60 countries.
Understanding Entrepreneurship Psychology
As both a trained psychologist and former venture capitalist, Vlad brings an unusual perspective to company building. “All fears are learned,” he notes, drawing from his psychology background. “When you look at entrepreneurs, the doubts and the imposter syndormes, and all those things – all those are fears that we’ve learned at some point in our life through society. We were not born with them.”
This understanding of human psychology has shaped his approach to building Flowlie, a platform that helps founders optimize their fundraising process. The company is approaching half a billion dollars in capital raised through its platform – a success that Vlad attributes to three core principles.
First Principle: Embrace Perpetual Growth
Vlad emphasizes the importance of maintaining what he calls a “default optimistic” mindset about growth potential. “I think you just have to be default optimistic about the future,” he explains. “I think more than that is the desire for growth. It’s not just knowing that you have the ability to grow, but you also always have to constantly see that you’re at 1% of your journey and that there’s still 99% left to build.”
This perspective keeps founders pushing forward even after achieving significant milestones. Rather than becoming complacent with success, Vlad suggests viewing accomplishments as stepping stones to greater opportunities. “In a way, you’re constantly upset about the status quo,” he notes. “A few people are saying that if you were to abide by this mentality to always be at 1% and have 99% in front of you, then by default, you’re saying nothing is enough. But I think that’s also where all the progress is coming from.”
Second Principle: Build Emotional Endurance
The emotional challenges of building a company often surprise even experienced professionals. “Starting a company, I honestly don’t recommend it to everyone – you really have to want it,” Vlad warns. “It’s funny to say that having spent time with so many founders on the investor side, I had absolutely no clue what life really is on the other side. I had ideas about it. I opened the windows and a few doors, and I peaked inside, but I was never truly in the house.”
One founder captured this emotional rollercoaster perfectly, telling Vlad that “building a company feels like you’re about to open a bottle of champagne at 2 p.m., and then by 4 p.m. you’re already crying on the bathroom floor.” This volatility requires exceptional emotional resilience. As Vlad explains, “Most people don’t have the stomach to be able to be at the highest high and the lowest low in less than 24 hours and then be okay that tomorrow it could be either.”
Third Principle: Maintain Childlike Wonder
Perhaps most surprisingly, Vlad advocates for maintaining a childlike approach to possibility. “When we’re kids, we all want to be astronauts and firefighters and architects and sometimes all the things at the same time,” he reflects. “And with adulthood, we become more accustomed to “reality,” and we lose that inner trial. We lose that creativity.”
This mindset becomes particularly valuable when facing seemingly insurmountable challenges. “There’s going to be things that you have absolutely no clue where to even begin,” Vlad notes. “There’s another quote that I really like, which is ‘How do you eat an elephant? Bite by bite.’ And sometimes you have this elephant in front of you. It’s unsolvable, unthinkable. Nobody has ever done it before. We do not have the resources. We don’t have the skill set or the experience to do it. And somehow, you have to say that’s probably possible to be done.”
These principles have guided Flowlie’s evolution from a nights-and-weekends project to a platform that’s changing how founders approach fundraising. The company aims to create true efficiency in private markets – a goal Vlad acknowledges is ambitious but achievable with the right mindset.
To learn more about Vlad’s and Flowlie’s approach to optimizing fundraising for founders, visit Flowlie.com.
