August 8; Sea Capital appreciation 🌊

Come summer heat or winter cold, Varna is the place to be... this was my week

Happy Sunday,

A lush park with shady tree-lined lanes right by the beach, groups of people slowly shuffling from seafood restaurants to cocktail bars and cafes, and the buzz of a bustling seaside city coming to life for real only when the sun goes down, with hundreds of condos and office towers gleaming with their lights in the reflection of the water at night.

A northward view of Varna over the Asparuhovo Bridge, taken from a drone courtesy of Varna municipality

In my personal order of geographies I love, a probable number one are big cities located on a sea or ocean shore. Be it Busan, Barcelona, or San Francisco, there’s always that extra sense of adventure and thrill when a city is in fact a seaside city. And as far as Bulgaria is concerned, that kind of place is Varna.

Last week Ellie and I stopped by the Quarantine Film Festival on Varna’s Asparuhovo Beach, a great summer cultural feature in Varna

After Sofia, Varna is definitely Bulgaria’s most prominent urban area. Always in a tie with Plovdiv when it comes to actual population figures - both have around 340,000 inhabitants in the city proper - Varna takes an undisputed lead when the outlying metro area is included, which in Varna’s case are the large resort towns like Golden Sands and Sts. Constantine and Helena.

But apart from the number of people living and coming here, there’s also the geography - about as far from Sofia as one can get within Bulgaria, and on the Black Sea shore, with the country’s biggest port and second biggest airport serving it.

Me waving 2020 goodbye from Varna’s Soviet Army monument on the last day of last year

Ellie and I have a long-standing habit of visiting Varna a few times each year, usually once around Christmas when we’re celebrating in her hometown of Shumen just 45 mins away, and then again a couple of times in spring and summer.

With Ellie and our friend Teo’s akita puppy earlier this year at Varna beach

This week was another such occasion for me, escaping the crazy heat in Sofia, and plunging into the vibrant entrepreneurship and culture scene of Bulgaria’s Sea Capital.

In my work with our Vitosha fund, Varna takes a prominent place when it comes to our companies’ locations: three out of the seventeen companies in our portfolio are based in Varna. This includes the makers of the wonderful EconicOne e-bikes, the Augment team building tools for e-sports champions, and the CloudTech founder and his crew who are changing the face of business banking in Bulgaria and beyond.

A part of the crowd at our Vitosha Varna event last weekend

To celebrate these investments and to reach out to the entire Varna entrepreneurship community, we decided to host an evening event this Saturday, inviting the local scene for a drink and a chat.

With my Vitosha crew, kicking off our Varna get-together

Thanks to my amazing colleague Alexandra and a few local Varna community leaders, we ended up having a fantastic time. With about 150 guests, and a beautiful open-air restaurant terrace by the beach at sunset, it was as good as a business networking event could be on a warm summer evening in August.

More good vibes with fellow venture travelers in Varna at our Vitosha event

I was excited to see so many smart people doing great things based out of Varna. For one, this event reminded me of the first entrepreneurship get-togethers I used to attend and host in Sofia nine or ten years ago, when the group of founders with ideas and early projects was already steadily growing, but there was still no sense of community in Bulgaria, with small islands of people and projects unaware of others working on theirs. After this experience this weekend, I of course hope we will have many more Varna-based entrepreneurs joining our portfolio, but more than that even I’m looking forward to coming back to this beautiful city more often and interacting with the local community more.

One of the new cool places I discovered in Varna is the Bookstore, in the old Greek neighborhood downtown. A gallery and cafe, great for working, meeting, and relaxing.

Next to venture-related topics, Varna is just a great place to hang out, which is why it attracts so many thousands of global nomads, remote workers, and retirees from all over Europe and beyond. The city is bustling with AirBnB flats and coworking spaces, and especially in these times it’s an attractive alternative, being accessible and affordable, with prices overall still a bit lower than those in Sofia.

Ellie dreaming away at Asparuhovo beach a few evenings ago

So if you live outside Bulgaria, next time you plan a city trip to a lesser-known destination, think about Varna. And if you are based in Bulgaria, don’t hesitate to visit Varna more often and stay longer when you do. You’ll meet great people and have a great time, and perhaps you’ll even see me, on a beach, in the park, or at a cafe, where we can have a coffee or something stronger.

Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇

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