Our Mentors
Our Mentors
Mircea Vadan
Mircea and his team activities are related to startup scouting, acceleration programs, fundraising support and angel investing; while being active in organisations as Spherik Accelerator, Activize, Transylvania Angels Network, Cluj Startups, FreshBlood.ro, and RoStartup. He has been active in the Romanian startup ecosystem in the past 10 years, at the beginning with his own startups and later on working on innovation programs in Romania and Eastern Europe.
Sónia Magalhães
CFO & Partner at Fasttrack Action. Sónia has a degree in Management, Specialization in the Financial Area. Developing Strategic Leadership at Henley Management College (U.K.). Sónia has been the CFO of very diverse companies such as Fasttrack Ventures, a company that invests in early-stage technology companies and SSM, which was the first Portuguese company to be listed on AIM London Stock Exchange. She was also a Senior Auditor at EY. Over 25 years of experience in the financial sector.
Joana Vide Pereira
EU Programmes Coordinator at Fasttrack Action. Joana has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Porto, and has 20 years of experience in developing and managing collaborative EU projects in different technology and industrial areas. Has expertise in project building and strategic positioning, audit of innovation capacities, project early phase maturation, value chain analysis, business model definition, competitive analysis and financial engineering.
Giuseppe Mele
EU Project Manager & Business Development at Fasttrack Action. Giuseppe has more than 12 years of experience in the field of innovation management and innovation funding, covering diverse positions as consultant, manager and mentor of young professionals. Coordination and successful closure of several projects at international level in different areas, such as strategy, EU-funded projects, process & cost optimization, operations (innovation), network creation, development of new business lines.
Martina Kralova
Senior Advisor at G-Force. Martina is an experienced marketing and business development leader with extensive knowledge focused on executing business vision and goals. Martina has a proven track record in telecommunications, IT and management, NGOs and consulting services. Martina has extensive experience in team management and coaching, business development and strategic management and digital transformation while working for companies such as Orange, Sygic, T-Mobile and KPMG. Martina has a key role in G-Force’s startup acceleration programme and technology transfer projects carried out with research and academic institutions.
Our Speakers
Valentin Maior
Tech-savvy growth expert for startups & SMEs; investor & advisor for growth companies. 9 years of international experience as SaaS software developer. Mentor and Trainer in EU Acceleration programs: BlockchainHUB, Data Market Services, Spherik, Inceptus
Martina Kralova
Senior Advisor at G-Force. Martina is an experienced marketing and business development leader with extensive knowledge focused on executing business vision and goals. Martina has a proven track record in telecommunications, IT and management, NGOs and consulting services. Martina has extensive experience in team management and coaching, business development and strategic management and digital transformation while working for companies such as Orange, Sygic, T-Mobile and KPMG. Martina has a key role in G-Force’s startup acceleration programme and technology transfer projects carried out with research and academic institutions.
Louis Warner
General Partner at G-Force. Louis has a 25 year career in tech – both operating and investing. He was part of the early team of lastminute.com, one of Europe’s fastest and most oversubscribed IPOs which went on to a $1.1bn exit. Louis also served as the CEO of venture backed Contentive, a Blenheim Chalcot funded business. Over the past 6 years he has helped build Founders Factory. As the COO and Accelerator Director, he was an Investment Committee member on over 100 investments and designed and led the FF accelerator programme, helping select and lead startups such as Perlego ($50m raised), Peptone ($42m raised), Previse ($37m raised) and Monolith ($14m raised.) In 2021 Louis was a member of the G-Force Investment Committee and in 2022 he joined G-Force as a Partner.
Marian Gazdik
Founding Partner at G-Force. He worked in product, marketing and strategy roles with fast growing technology companies. He helped scale Startup Grind into the world’s largest organisation for entrepreneurs, based in 125 countries. Marian co-founded IPM Growth, a VC arm of the IPM Group that invests in high growth tech companies in Central and Eastern Europe. He is also the founder of BrainTrust, an influential think tank for entrepreneurs. He was named in New Europe 100, a list of outstanding leaders in CEE, organised by Financial Times, Google and Respublica. In 2021 Marian co-founded G-Force.
