December 5; ‘Tis the Season, finally ✨
Christmas trees, booster shots, and work moments.... this was my week 📑💉🎄
Happy Sunday,
It’s hard to believe it, yet here we are: it’s December already. Which traditionally means looking forward to a lot of holiday fun in the last weeks of the year, but (as of last year, at least) also crunch time for us at Vitosha to finalize a number of investment deals that we’ve been working on for the past months. This past week has been full of both celebrations and work moments, so here’s a little recap.
Capping off Birthday month 🎂
My Novembers are all about my celebrating my birthday, and this year was no exception. As I shared before, I was really grateful that my friends honored my request to donate towards the Kambarev Foundation’s Talent Trees initiative, in which we got our own branded Christmas tree in the center of Sofia, as well as donated to the Foundation’s work in helping young talented artists from Bulgaria.
This week the Talent Trees finally got installed in front of the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, and of course we went to take a look.
If you happen to find yourself in downtown Sofia, check them out. The Talent Tree alley is between the Palace of Culture and the Starbucks on the corner of Nansen and Levski, and my Friendship Tree is the first one on the left when you walk from Starbucks towards the Palace.
If you want to get to know the Kambarev Foundation and its work, combining it with an enjoyable evening, on December 28th there will be two concerts in Varna, where soloists from among the Foundation’s graduates will be performing with a symphony orchestra directed by the well-known Bulgarian-German conductor Yordan Kamdzhalov. Ellie and I will be there for the 8pm performance, join us!
Reconnecting with industry colleagues 🤝
It’s a really interesting phenomenon of the pandemic: work goes on, but you don’t meet people anymore. New people least of all, but also colleagues you know from before. I’ve been in touch with many fund managers here in Bulgaria and abroad for the past two years, but have actually only met a couple of them in person, once or twice during this period.
All of us realized it this week when the Bulgarian venture investment community came together for the inaugural DNA of Success event organized by Forbes Bulgaria. In the past two years, more things happened in the Bulgarian venture world than in the entire decade before that, with so many funding rounds, exits, and new fund launches that took place. At the same time, because of the pandemic, there wasn’t a single conference or event to celebrate this.
I was grateful to join the other fund managers on stage to talk a bit about what we’ve done so far with Vitosha and what our plans are for the next year. It’s remarkable how far our entrepreneurship and investment communities have come since I first came to Sofia for work a decade ago. Big thanks to Yordan, Mirena, Vesselin and the entire Forbes team for bringing us all together and reintroducing some sense of knowing our peers in person. May we get together often and a lot in 2022 and beyond.
Booster shot: done 🙏🏼
Without really planning for it, this week Ellie and I decided on a whim that it’s a good time to get our booster vaccine shots for Covid-19, and as it happened, we got them six months to the day after getting our second jabs on June 2.
I’m following the news on the vaccine rollouts in other countries quite closely, and it’s amazing how easy it is in Bulgaria to get any of the three shots. You simply walk in to any of the hundred or so vaccination posts in Sofia, choose which vaccine you want (if it’s your first or booster shot), and walk away in minutes with a freshly issued EU Digital Covid Certificate in hand. Ellie and I decided to add the Pfizer/BioNTech flavor to our previous AstraZeneca coverage, and although I was a tiny bit sick the next day, it was still a much lighter experience as far as symptoms go than the last two times. Partying and traveling in the upcoming holiday season now feels much safer, and I hope that as many of our friends as possible get maximum coverage as well.
One the partying note: today Ellie and I are decorating the office, and in the next weeks we’ll be hosting groups big and small, and would love to see you too. Comment or reply below so we can set a date and have some 🥂 together!
Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇
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