The StartEvo Project or “You make your own luck”

Guest blog: I am Iulian Craciun and I am a disabled person. So what? I learned that in order to be successful in life you need to build your own luck. Not to wait from others. I’ve learned that you are the only person that can really make a difference in shaping your destiny.

“You make your own luck”. This is a saying that 79% of Romanians disagree with, according a recent GfK study. Only 21% of us are “fighters” and wait nothing from nobody. The rest are either expecting help from others (government, parents, school, society, etc) or they stopped waiting and hoping. These are figures that are not right at all for us as a country.

In order to help others make their own luck, me and 2 of my best friends created in March 2011 StartEvo, a project which inspires people to fight for their dreams.

Our activity is divided on 4 levels of personal implication:

1. We invite people to talk, on camera, about their success stories. These are people who demonstrate something in life. Personal stories, without too much theory, are extremely well received.
2. We organize events all over the country in high schools, faculties and for young professionals and we invite others to share their success and inspire the audience.
3. We put together the StartEvo National Mentoring System, where we have many Romanian VIPs that allocate time from their busy schedule to help teams of 2 mentorees.
4. We have a volunteering system, through which we help people to reinvent themselves and to meet WOW people, by becoming StartEvo ambassadors. So, those that join the project are supported by us to identify persons they consider inspirational and propose them to join the project; the Ambassadors video record success stories, come to our events and participate in the Mentoring program. The VIP’s acceptance rate is 95%!

Although StartEvo is a niche project, the results are excellent. We have tens of bloggers as partners, biggest Romanian websites have partnered with us, we won important awards such as 2nd place at Webstock 2011 and the 2011 Online StartUp Award, we benefit from media exposure. We are also in the process of opening 5 new branches worldwide (USA, Canada, Italy, Finland, Greece)

We hope to help as many people as possible reach for their dreams as soon as possible.:) So, I invite you all to join StartEvo and BE INSPIRED. Don’t forget to register to our cool newsletter 🙂 Check what other events we have done so far.

Iulian Craciun
Co-fondator StartEvo