The Debrief: Inside the Room Where You Get a Shot at Silicon Valley
I'm crossing 15 countries to discover and invest in the top 1% builders U25 from CEE before anyone else. What you're reading is the internal MEMO discussed behind closed doors:
TRIP STATUS 1/15 Cities ✅
(Track live where I am: reaktorx.com/cee-friends)
We’re throwing Brainstorming Parties across 15 CEE countries to recruit next batch for ReaktorX, the only SF-based fund betting exclusively on builders U25 who show real promise and have the drive to build something global.
There are three things I’m watching:
-
How you think when you’re faced with a problem you don’t have an answer to.
-
Whether you can engage with complexity instead of avoiding it.
-
If you naturally step up and lead when the room needs direction.
📍First stop: Builders House, Bucharest.
30+ builders showed up with curiosity, and in under two hours, they went from asking themselves if they were good enough to apply, to getting into problems they’d never touched before.
The spotlight of the evening:
THE PLUMBATHON
One participant decided to answer the question:
How might we help young people get into the trades industry?
The solution he came up with:
Competitions for young tradespeople, structured like hackathons, where they show up, demonstrate their skills and rank against their peers, to show they’re ready to have independent projects.
How he got here:
-
The specific problem: To gain trust and prove their expertise, young tradespeople spend months, sometimes years, working under a senior before landing independent projects. The process of gaining legitimacy is too slow.
-
Market opportunity: demand in the trades industry is rising, so the actual problem is getting more people prepared to meet that demand, faster.
-
The reasoning: if the tech industry has hackathons to compress the time in which young people can prove their worth, create visibility and build trust, why not create something similar for the trades industry?
Now, let me tell you how an investor who bets on young people sees this way of thinking:
The tech industry and the trades industry couldn’t be further apart.
This participant took a concept native to one world and adapted it to fit into a completely opposite industry.
That showed me they have cross-industry thinking, which plays a great deal in building a global company.
But when it comes to other solutions found that evening, there’s only one thing to say:
THE RISKIEST THING YOU CAN DO IS PLAY IT SAFE
The biggest mistake I saw that evening was people playing not to lose.
They went for familiar problems, the kind they knew they could handle, thinking that was going to secure them a spot.
The goal is the opposite. I put hard questions on that table not for you to come back with a fully formed concept, but to see how you think.
So you need to shift from:
“I’m going to get into problems I know I can solve” →
“This problem requires deep expertise, I can’t fully assess it right now, but here’s where I would start, here’s what I’d validate, and here’s how long it would actually take.”
In short: the move that feels the safest can actually cost you the big win.
INSIDE THE PROGRAM: WHAT THE WEBSITE DOESN’T TELL YOU
Here’s exactly what’s going to happen between now and San Francisco.
The Call
At the end of May, we’re selecting 40 people from all applications for a 15-minute call, when we’ll ask why you should be selected, what makes you different, what your plan looks like when you land in the US.
The Follow up
From those 40, between 15 and 20 people may join a second call, longer, with me and the investment partners I work with.
The Selection
By June 20, the 15 teams joining the program will be announced.
Two Weeks in Europe
Mid July, the whole batch spends two weeks in Europe, where you find or adapt your idea and go from concept to traction through intensive workshops.
The Goal is to leave for San Francisco with a working prototype and client meetings already booked.
San Francisco
On August 1st, you fly in.
What’s actually going to happen when you land there?
That’s for the next newsletter.
In the meantime, make sure you stay in the loop, because after each stop, this is where the debrief lands:
Whether you’re a founder who wants to apply, an LP who wants early access or a potential partner