Alexandru Olteanu is the kind of person who, together with a small and relentlessly determined team, brings tens of thousands of people to an island in Bacău for four days every year and convinces them that yes, it is possible to build something remarkable from Bacău, not just from Cluj or Bucharest. The other half of him spends every summer hoping it won’t rain on the festival weekend.

C&B: Looking back, what has been the common thread guiding your professional journey?

Alexandru: The common thread has been one simple stubborn belief: to build something here, at home, instead of somewhere else. I’m stubborn in a way that, on paper, should have driven us into bankruptcy long ago, yet on the island it somehow turned into a strategy.

Three moments made all the difference.

The first was deciding to stop organizing one-off events that people forget after a few months and instead create a festival with a strong identity, one people would return to year after year.

The second was realizing that a festival on its own is fragile and that I couldn’t carry it alone. That’s when I started building a team and an entire ecosystem around it, including media, hospitality, and our own brand.

The third comes every time someone tells me to move where the larger audience is. Every single time, I choose to stay.

C&B: What was a difficult moment or a failure that truly changed you?

Alexandru: The year the festival ended in the red.

It’s not exactly the sexiest sentence to include in an interview, but if I’m being honest, that was the most expensive lesson I’ve ever learned. When my team and I analyzed the numbers, we realized that nearly half of the entire budget was going to artists. Add to that a headliner canceling just a few weeks before the festival, after the entire communication strategy had already been built around them.

When a headliner cancels at that stage, it’s like the bride walking away from the wedding after you’ve already paid for the venue, the cake, and the band.

So what changed afterward?

We introduced much stricter cancellation clauses into our contracts, built a more balanced artist lineup so the entire festival wouldn’t depend on one single name, and developed the healthy habit of looking at margins instead of applause. We learned that using our own money and our team’s—that a festival relying on one artist isn’t really a festival. It’s a gamble.

C&B: What is one bold—or perhaps counterintuitive—decision that significantly influenced your path?

Alexandru: Choosing not to move.

Every business textbook tells you the same thing: if you want to build a major festival, go where the people and the money are. We did exactly the opposite. We stayed in Bacău and bet on a young audience across Moldova, people between the ages of 14 and 50.

The comfortable option would have been relocating everything to a bigger, more established city so we wouldn’t have to explain where Bacău is on the map anymore.

The result?

Young Island has reached its sixth edition and earned European recognition through the EFFE Label, all without losing its local identity. And the best part is that the people who come to Bacău still bring an authentic vibe. They aren’t jaded festival-goers who have already seen everything and are impossible to impress. They come with genuine enthusiasm rather than the attitude of, “Let’s see what you’ve got.” Sometimes, your greatest competitive advantage is precisely the place everyone else is trying to escape.

C&B: How have you changed over time as a leader and as a professional?

Alexandru: This is probably where I’ve changed the most.

I used to make decisions based on instinct and tried to do everything myself—from writing copy and handling logistics to negotiating with the scaffolding supplier. I was the kind of person who, if it had been possible, would have held the stage lights up with my own hands just to make sure they were set up properly.

Today, I make important decisions with spreadsheets in front of me and, more importantly, with my team around me. I compare ticket sales across different editions, analyze the average ticket price rather than just the volume sold, and only then draw conclusions—very often together with the people who notice things I might have missed. Under pressure, I’ve learned to stay quiet more often and react less.

When an artist cancels, the first hour matters and panic has never solved anything. The hardest lesson I’ve learned as a leader is that I neither have to nor can do everything myself. A festival isn’t carried by one person. It’s carried by a team. Everything else is just ego.

C&B: Beyond your public image, what do you think the people who work closely with you would say about you?

Alexandru: They’d probably say I move fast—sometimes too fast—and that I change direction the moment I realize something isn’t working. Depending on the day, that’s either my greatest strength or everyone’s worst nightmare.

I’m fairly convinced the team has a separate WhatsApp group just to keep track of how many times I’ve changed the plan. And honestly, I don’t blame them.

One thing my team consistently acknowledges is that I work alongside them. I don’t sit behind a desk giving orders with my feet up—I roll up my sleeves and get involved.

One piece of uncomfortable but fair feedback is that I sometimes assume everyone cares about the project as much as I do, and that’s simply not realistic. It’s something I’m still working on.

You can’t expect people to pour their hearts into your dream without at least telling them “thank you.” My team deserves to hear those words more often.

C&B: What truly sets you apart in the way you build and lead?

Alexandru: The fact that, as a team, we own the entire value chain.

We’re not organizers who hire an agency and wait for an email. We handle production, media, hospitality, and even our own consumer brand—all under the same umbrella.

When we launch a campaign, everything is done in-house: copywriting, filming, voiceovers, distribution—the entire process.

In practical terms, this means we can test an idea on Monday and have it live by Wednesday without involving three suppliers or exchanging five rounds of emails. We don’t hold meetings just to decide when to schedule the next meeting. When you’re a small team that has to perform like one three times its size, speed isn’t a luxury—it’s oxygen. And that speed comes from people, not processes.

C&B: How has today’s environment—technology, AI, and the economy—changed the way you work?

Alexandru: Radically, but without unnecessary drama.

We use artificial intelligence like a teammate who never sleeps, never complains, and never asks for time off on the festival weekend. It helps us create first drafts of copy for all our brands, prepare documents, analyze financial data, and even generate voices for commercials. What used to take three people an entire day now reaches a solid first version in just a few hours, and then our team refines it.

The real impact isn’t that we’ve replaced people. It’s that a small team can now deliver the output of one three times its size. In today’s economy, where costs keep rising across the board, affordable speed is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity.

Technology isn’t taking my job or my team’s jobs. It’s taking care of the first drafts. And that’s a huge difference.

C&B: Is there a habit or routine that has significantly influenced your performance?

Alexandru: During the months leading up to the festival, I check ticket sales almost every day—not obsessively, but the way you monitor a patient’s temperature.

Some people check their horoscope every morning. I check ticket sales. It’s about the same level of anxiety, just with charts.

A spike or a drop immediately tells me whether a campaign is working and how much time we, as a team, still have to make adjustments. The second habit is exercise. It may sound like a cliché in a business interview, but in the months before the festival, your ability to handle stress is literally a resource. A tired organizer makes poor decisions, and poor decisions at a festival cost far more than an hour spent at the gym.

C&B: What principles guide your most important decisions?

Alexandru: Three simple principles.

First, if an idea doesn’t survive in a spreadsheet, it won’t survive in the real world either. Excel is the most honest friend you’ll ever have—it never flatters you.

Second, building a strong brand for the long term always beats making quick money.

Third, I never make major decisions alone. I test them against real data and discuss them with the people around me—not with opinions, not even my own.

That last principle was seriously tested when we had to decide whether to announce another big-name artist after a cancellation.

The answer came from the sales figures, not from ego. And honestly, ego would have been a much more expensive answer.

C&B: How do you see your industry evolving over the next three to five years?

Alexandru: Artist fees will continue to rise. It’s an arms race that isn’t ending anytime soon.

At this pace, in a few years we’ll probably spend more on a single artist than on the entire rest of the festival combined—including staff and electricity. I believe we’ll see significant market consolidation. Weaker festivals will disappear, while those that survive will compete through the quality of the experience, not just by booking the biggest headliners.

The real opportunity lies in regional festivals with a strong identity—festivals that don’t try to become smaller copies of those in the capital. Artificial intelligence will also become the standard in production and marketing. Those who don’t embrace it will end up paying more to deliver less. The audience may not know exactly why, but they’ll certainly notice the difference.

C&B: What role do you hope to play in that evolution?

Alexandru: I want Young Island to become living proof that meaningful culture can be built from a secondary city, and that it can be created by a local team rather than by importing talent from elsewhere.

My dream is that, ten years from now, when someone says, “I’m going to Bacău,” the first reaction won’t be, “Poor you,” but, “You’re so lucky.” Our concrete goal is to turn the festival into a national benchmark starting from Bacău—not despite its location, but precisely because of it. If we succeed, we’ll also open the door for people from smaller cities who believe they have to leave in order to matter. The greatest impact we can have is to make our own story an argument that proves otherwise.

C&B: What genuine advice would you give to someone who wants to build something meaningful today?

Alexandru: Three things, all learned the hard way.

First, don’t build your entire project around one single name. If that name falls through, everything falls with it.

Second, focus on cash flow rather than vanity metrics. Likes don’t pay suppliers.

Third, and most importantly, build a team before you build a product.

Great people are what make the difference between a one-day event and a brand that lasts for years. And here’s one bonus lesson I wish someone had told me much earlier: Start badly, but start.

If someone watched our very first edition today, they’d laugh. I would too. But without that awkward first edition, there would never have been a sixth. Your first edition will never be Tomorrowland. And that’s perfectly okay.

C&B: What is an uncomfortable truth about your industry that few people are willing to talk about?

Alexandru: The truth is that most festivals in Romania don’t make money—or they make so little that it hardly justifies the sleepless nights.

The festival that looks like it’s swimming in money on Instagram is, in reality, swimming in unpaid invoices.

Behind the scenes, you’re often negotiating with suppliers and juggling payment deadlines like a circus performer.

Artist fees have reached a point where audiences expect increasingly bigger names, without realizing that the financial reality behind the scenes is barely holding together.

Anyone who gets into this business believing it’s a money-making machine usually exits quickly—along with some very expensive lessons.

You do it because you’re passionate about it, but you also need the mindset of an accountant and a team that believes in the vision just as much as you do.

If you’re trying to do it alone, fueled only by passion, you’ll go bankrupt beautifully.

Alexandru Olteanu’s interview provides an authentic perspective on entrepreneurship, leadership and large-scale event management. From building the Young Island brand and developing a high-performing team to leveraging artificial intelligence, making data-driven decisions and navigating the challenges of the festival industry, his journey shows how perseverance, strategy and strong local identity can turn a regional project into a nationally recognized success.

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