Nicu Straton is the founder of Stratosfera, a full-service digital agency based in Constanța that covers web development, artificial intelligence automation, photo-video production and its own suite of SaaS applications dedicated to businesses, built after more than twenty-five years spent in technology, from the first online computer store launched before eMag to proprietary software products.

C&B: How would you describe yourself in a single sentence, in a way that would capture the attention of someone who does not know you?

Nicu: My first paid job was at the age of six, when I arranged the channels on my neighbors’ televisions, and I have been doing exactly the same thing ever since, just on a different scale: I take someone’s tangled-up technology and leave it working, organized in the way they need it.

C&B: Looking back, what is the common thread that has guided your professional journey?

Nicu: The common thread is that I have almost always been slightly ahead of the market, and technology has been a means of solving a problem for the person in front of me, never an end in itself. I started working early. I had my first paid job at six, and around the age of fourteen, with my parents’ permission, I secretly checked, along the route between Constanța and Năvodari, whether tickets were being issued for all passengers. Around 1999–2000, I already had smag.ro, a custom-built online computer store, approximately two years before eMag appeared. I sold laptops and custom-built computers, went to clients’ homes by trolleybus to repair their computers, and built websites and Google AdWords campaigns. In 2005, I moved the store to Joomla. At the same time, I took part in overclocking competitions involving processors, memory and video cards, where I also won several awards, within a serious community of enthusiasts in Romania, lab501.ro. The second key moment was my time in banking, between 2007 and 2009, at Citibank and then GE Money Bank, as a direct sales agent for personal and mortgage loans. That is where I learned the skill that changed my career: how to sell. A technical person who also knows how to sell has an enormous advantage because they do not depend on someone else to reach the client. The third moment came around 2009–2010, when I entered the video industry, a new field for me, but based on the same logic: the client does not buy the camera, they buy the result. Video production for events has remained an active branch of the business to this day, with a dedicated section on the website. The constant question behind all my choices has been the same: how do I make this work without me being physically present at every step?

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

Nicu: The toughest moment was not a spectacular financial loss, but discovering a ceiling. For years, I did everything myself: I wrote code, repaired things, filmed, edited, answered clients, and sent out proposals. It worked, but I hit a wall. I could no longer take on new projects because I was already working at full capacity, and turning down a client meant lost revenue. Essentially, I had limited my own growth by building the business around my own hands. What I changed was radical: I stopped the reflex of doing everything myself and started delegating execution, while keeping sales, proposals and coordination for myself. It hurt at first because it means letting someone else handle something you are proud of, but it was the only way for the business to stop depending on my schedule.

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

Nicu: The counterintuitive decision was to invest months of work in building my own software instead of taking on more filming jobs that brought in money immediately. On paper, it seemed foolish: there was demand for video production, which paid immediately, while I was spending my time writing applications that did not generate a single leu in the first few months. I rejected the logic of quick money and bet on products that would work for me over time: quoting and invoicing applications, platforms for clients in a specific industry, and internal tools. The risk was losing time and clients in the short term. The concrete result is that today I use the same tools I built to deliver faster and more cheaply than a traditional agency, and some of them have become products that I can sell to others.

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

Nicu: I have a funny relationship with rigor. I have avoided mathematics my whole life, and yet mathematics found me anyway. The school I attended is named after Dan Barbilian, the mathematician who wrote poetry under the pseudonym Ion Barbu, and then I attended a mathematics and physics high school and the Naval Academy, where I studied six or seven types of mathematics. I realized late that this is exactly who I am: someone who needs both rigor and creativity, and that is what the agency does today—rigorous software and creative video production under the same roof. As a professional, I have gone from controlling every detail to building the framework in which others can work well. When I used to go to a client’s home to repair their computer, everything depended on me, including the fact that I could remember activation codes by heart. Now my standard instruction to collaborators is to deliver the work completely and logically from the start, without asking me about every step. I make decisions faster than I used to because I have learned that a good decision made today is better than a perfect decision made a week from now. I manage pressure by moving it into the system: if a process is repeated, I automate or document it so that it no longer depends on my state of mind at a particular moment.

C&B: What do you think people who work directly with you say about you, beyond your public image?

Nicu: I think the people who work directly with me would say that I am fast, direct and that I have a high standard, sometimes an uncomfortably high one. I expect things to be complete and thought through from the beginning, not delivered halfway so that we can finish them along the way. The real feedback I have received is that I am clear about what I want and that I do not waste time, but also that my pace can be demanding. I prefer people to whom I can tell once what I want and who then take care of it, rather than people I constantly have to push. The difficult part is that I have little patience for superficial work.

C&B: What truly differentiates you in the way you build or lead?

Nicu: The real difference is that I run everything I build through two filters, the creative and the rational, and I do not consider it finished until it has passed through both. That is why the products come out complete, not merely technically correct or simply beautiful. And, concretely, I own the entire chain: I sell, build the software and coordinate production, instead of doing just one of those things. Most agencies either provide services or resell someone else’s tools. I use my own applications with my own clients, so I test what I sell on myself. One concrete example is that all my tools use the same visual and working system, so I can move a client from one tool to another without friction. Another example is the events side of the business, which I did not abandon when I shifted toward software, but instead strengthened with a dedicated page on stratosfera.ro and a carefully selected team. I do not work with people I find on the internet, but with operators I have known in the industry for years who deliver according to my technical standards. This makes delivery predictable rather than a lottery, regardless of whether I am personally at the event that day or not.

C&B: How has the current context—technology, AI, the economy—changed the way you work?

Nicu: Artificial intelligence has effectively changed my business model, not just my speed. I use AI every day to write code for my applications, generate personalized proposals, and automatically process documents and data. Concretely, things that previously required a team and weeks of work I can now do on my own in a few days. This has allowed me to manage an entire ecosystem of applications without hiring a department of programmers. I have also changed my cost structure: instead of paying people for repetitive work, I pay for tools that perform repetitive work, while I keep people for what truly requires human judgment, such as video production.

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

Nicu: The habit that has mattered most is that I deliver in small steps and version everything I do. Every application has clear versions; I constantly add improvements instead of waiting for the perfect launch. The second habit is the rule of reading the actual work before saying it is finished, rather than assuming it is. The third is to automate or delegate anything that is repeated more than a few times. Above all of this is sport, which I have done throughout my life. I have gone through basketball, football, boxing, karate and swimming, and I still play basketball and ride my bicycle. It is not a decorative detail. The clear mind with which I make decisions comes from a body that moves, and the old saying, “a healthy mind in a healthy body,” has proven true during every busy period of my life. Together, these habits make progress daily and visible, rather than one big leap once a year.

C&B: What principles guide you when making important decisions?

Nicu: The first principle is that I deliver completely and logically, not minimally. If I create an authentication function, I automatically include password recovery as well, because something done halfway creates more problems than it solves. The second is that I do not compete on price, but on quality and certainty of delivery. The third is that I make the final decision myself and I make it quickly. One example in which these principles have been tested is pricing. I have often been told that I am expensive and that I should lower my prices to attract more clients. I refused to enter the race toward low prices and remained at a premium level because I prefer fewer, better-fit clients to many clients who are simply looking for the cheapest option.

C&B: How do you see your field evolving over the next 3 to 5 years?

Nicu: I have a habit of looking early at things that seem niche and marginal. I experimented with cryptocurrencies in their early years, even mining them with my computer’s processor, at a time when almost nobody took them seriously. I am looking at artificial intelligence through the same lens now. I believe agencies that only perform manual work will be squeezed by artificial intelligence because that is precisely the kind of work that is becoming cheaper the fastest. Value is shifting toward those who own products, data and the client relationship, not toward those who simply press buttons. I see growth in automation, niche applications for specific industries, and high-quality video production, which AI can assist with but cannot completely replace yet. The major risk is for those who remain simple intermediaries without anything of their own. The opportunity lies with those who combine AI with their own product and trust built over time.

C&B: What role do you aim to play in this evolution?

Nicu: I aim to transform Stratosfera from an agency that delivers projects into an ecosystem of products that work without me as well. I am concretely building applications that start as internal tools and become products that I can offer to others, generating recurring revenue. I want part of the business to no longer depend on how many projects I win in a given month. And I want to show that, from a city such as Constanța, it is possible to build a serious software and services business, not only from major centers.

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

Nicu: My first piece of advice, based on my own mistake: do not become the bottleneck of your own business. If everything depends on your hands, you do not have a business, you have a more difficult job. Build systems and a team early, even if it is uncomfortable at first to let someone else do the work. Second: do not sell hours, sell results and certainty, because that is what people are truly paying for. Third: use AI aggressively to compress your workload, but do not give up your judgment or your standards, because that is precisely where the difference remains. And fourth, the most personal one: do not build only around what comes naturally to you. I was creative by nature, and I had won a drawing competition in primary school with a picture of a city where the houses were integrated into nature and fireflies lit the streets. I gave up my place at art high school to a classmate who wanted it much more than I did, and life pushed me directly toward what I did not like—mathematics, physics and chemistry. Only then did I become balanced. I use the metaphor of the two hemispheres to explain what happened: I had the creative one from the start; I had to build the other one. If you remain in only one of them, you see the world in an extreme way—either only beautifully or only logically. Deliberately train yourself in what you do not like, because that is exactly where the half you are missing lies.

C&B: What is an uncomfortable truth about your field that few people talk about?

Nicu: The uncomfortable truth is that a large part of execution work has become cheap and continues to get cheaper, especially with AI, while many people in the industry pretend that this is not the case in order to justify high prices for simple work. The real money is not in execution itself, but in sales, trust and coordination. The client is not actually paying for the hours; they are paying for the certainty that the work will be delivered and that they do not have to constantly keep an eye on you. Whoever understands this builds sustainably. Whoever hides behind technical complexity to appear expensive will have a problem in the coming years.

The interview with Nicu Straton offers a practical perspective on how entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, automation and software product development can transform a business into a scalable ecosystem.

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