The Leap of Tech #9: Two CTOs Reveal What Really Scales Companies

At the Leap of Tech #9, we brought together Mihai Vinaga, Co-Founder & CTO at Veridion, and Florin Bombeanu, CTO at Flip.ro. Two technical leaders who built their companies beyond outsourcing. Two different personalities who discovered the same hard truth: building great tech requires stepping outside the codebase.

The meet-up featured Lucian Popovici (Founder of Bridging Gaps & Engineering Director at Cegeka), Edward Crețescu (CEO of Regista & President of ANIS Romania), and Alexandru Agatinei (CEO of How to Web) as hosts. The session drew engineers, founders, and product builders ready to hear what real technical leadership looks like when you scale from zero to millions in revenue.

There Are No Clean Pivots

How do you move from outsourcing to product? Stop waiting for a clean break. Neither Mihai nor Florin planned their transitions. They stumbled into product building by doing the work, listening to customers, and following market signals.

Flip.ro began with three founders refurbishing phones and delivering them by scooter. No tech team. No grand product vision. Florin joined after their third funding round, when eMAG had invested €1.5M. “We quickly realized that the outsourced model couldn’t scale,” Florin explained. He became their first CTO and built the tech team from scratch.

Today, Flip handles over 1,000 devices per day across four countries. They’ve expanded from phones to laptops, PlayStations, and smartwatches. Internal tech innovation drives their growth, including automation in device grading and diagnostics.

Veridion launched with a product that evaluated website risk scores. It didn’t land. “But something stuck: a deep curiosity for structured business data,” Mihai shared. Today, Veridion maps the digital footprint of companies globally, creating detailed profiles for clients with billion-euro valuations.

Veridion now delivers business data enrichment with unparalleled coverage of private companies, accurate classification, and in-depth insights based on real-time updates, for procurement, insurance, market intelligence, and more.

The CTO Title Means Nothing Without Context

Both leaders shattered the stereotype of the coding CTO.

“I no longer write code. Not because I forgot how, but because the work now demands something else,” Florin said. After years of coding, consulting, and team leadership, he discovered his real value came from managing people, not syntax. “Programming skills are perishable. As time goes by, you have to constantly learn and stay sharp. The skills of working with people and developing soft skills are easily applicable in any place and situation,” he explained.

Mihai still codes but agrees with the shift. “I consider it a wasted week if I don’t talk for an hour or two a week with every head of something,” he said, referring to his weekly one-on-one with leaders of machine learning, data pipelines, and architecture teams. “In these discussions, we talk about new technologies. They are very sharp, and the discussions focus on how we can use these technologies in Veridion to grow the business.”

Product Emerges from Context, Not Theory

Veridion didn’t become a global company intelligence platform overnight. Mihai’s team moved through multiple pivots and painful resets. They had no playbook. Their first versions failed fast. They listened, adapted, and gradually built powerful data infrastructure.

Flip’s growth followed a similar path. From GSM outsourcing to internal reconditioning labs, from one web shop to deep logistics automation. The shift to product thinking happened over years. Operational pain points drove the technology roadmap. “From buyback logistics to reconditioning workflows—operational automation has been key to scaling without burning out teams,” Florin noted.

Learn Sales or Stay Small

When asked what he would do differently, Mihai didn’t hesitate: “If I were to start again, I would begin with learning sales. For most of the time, I ignored the importance of sales,” he admitted. While Mihai focused on building, his CEO juggled fundraising, contracts, and closing deals. “At some point, the CEO of Veridion got stuck with some sales and fundraising issues, and he needed someone new with a stake in the sales team.”

The lesson hit hard: “In a small team, agility in sales is crucial. If you want to scale fast and stay relevant to your clients, start early by identifying team members with technical expertise and a natural ability to sell—then train and empower them to lead those conversations.”

Florin agreed but offered perspective: “The perfect match is to have expertise in the tech field and be a reasonably good salesperson.”

Building great tech feels satisfying. It rarely moves the needle without distribution. Both CTOs learned this the expensive way.

Forget Superheroes. Hire for Curiosity

Mihai has conducted over 1,000 interviews. His hiring philosophy cuts through the noise: “You look for sharp and intelligent people, but the most important thing is work ethic, which is the baseline. I want people who are impressionable, enthusiastic. Their hearts should skip a beat, they should be excited when they see something new or a new technology. It’s not just passion or curiosity. How engineers look at, for example, <<How did they build this? What problems did they face?’>>”, he explained. Work ethic comes first. Curiosity amplifies everything else.

Florin shared similar values: “When it comes to software development, take super smart and sharp people to be able to go a long way.”

Both leaders hire for adaptability over pure technical skill. In high-growth environments, change stays constant. People who learn fast and stay open matter more than specialists who can’t evolve.

When You Stop Being a Developer

Florin addressed the question that haunts many technical people: When did you realize you weren’t a developer anymore?

The eureka moment came during a consulting job. “I had just been appointed team leader from code writer, and I thought I was going to be demoted”, he recalled. During a training session with a Microsoft executive, he asked about making the transition too early. “The guy explained to me that I had emotional intelligence, but had to work to develop it, because up to that point, in education and in the jobs I had, I was taught technical, hard skills. Now it was time to focus on what collaboration, human interactions, selling, communicating, and talking to people mean,” Florin said.

That conversation changed everything. Programming skills expire without constant updates. Soft skills compound across contexts.

Mihai continues coding but emphasizes the balance: “No matter how good you are, you can’t do everything on your own. You have to be as versatile as possible and know a little about everything. You have to develop your soft skills.”

“Right now, you’re limited from a technical standpoint, but in time, that may no longer be the case. But you can go further and further by forming a group of people with whom you work to learn and develop as much as possible,” he added.

Build Your Circle Before You Need It

Both CTOs stressed the importance of peer networks and mentorship.

“I started to build a circle of coaches with whom I could have long-term relationships, who would have a detailed and good understanding of me. I would do two things: get better at sales and have a group of people with whom I could have regular meetings to discuss certain things,” Mihai explained.

“Everyone wants to be important in society, companies, or different situations,” he noted. “You can’t develop in isolation. Surround yourself with people who challenge you and see through the noise.”

The Path Looks Like Migration

“It’s very important to know how to migrate, to deliver as best you can right now, to always think about what you can implement, what you can change based on the client’s wishes or discussions,” Mihai observed.

“For first-time founders and founders in general, it’s very difficult to look at the opportunity and say, yes, this is the gap, this is the problem, I’ll build a team and solve it, and the idea and the business will be validated and everything will work out. Often this comes with experience, often you migrate after each sale, conversation with clients, conversation with investors.”

You don’t transition from outsourcing to product in one move. You test, listen, build trust, automate where it hurts most, and recruit people smarter than you in every domain.

The Takeaway: Step Outside the Codebase

Lucian closed the session with an observation: “I find it fascinating that we talk about soft skills when we have two CTOs and don’t talk about anything technical, just pure good talks.”

That observation captured the thread running through the entire session. Building great tech requires technical skill. Leading great tech requires stepping back and asking: Who are we solving for? Why does it matter? How do we deliver it at scale, with care, and with clarity?

Both Mihai and Florin discovered that their most valuable contributions came not from the code they wrote, but from the teams they built, the problems they identified, and the people they developed.

You can build the cleanest architecture and deploy the fastest systems. Without leadership, sales skills, and human judgment, your great tech stays invisible.

The most successful technical leaders learn to move between worlds: deep enough in the code to maintain credibility, broad enough in business to drive decisions, and human enough to build teams that last.

Your next promotion won’t come from writing better code. It will come from writing better people.

Next Up: What Happens After You Ship

Leap of Tech continues to explore the journeys behind great products and the people who build them. Our next meetup brings Adnana Popa from Sago Finance & Velocita into the spotlight, on the 10th of September.

Whether you’re transitioning from outsourcing, planning your first product, or simply ready to think more strategically, this series is for you.

Stay close. Great products start with honest conversations.

The Leap of TECH isn’t a trend. 

It’s a movement. A manifesto. IT starts with you.

✊ Stay tuned.