Raya Yunakova is a principal for LAUNCHub, a venture capital firm in Bulgaria. She started working in venture capital after creating her own startup and working for tech corporations such as Microsoft.

She feels comfortable in the tech space and one of the reasons might be the fact that this passion for tech comes from her mother, a software developer herself.

For the Work in Progress podcast we’ve discussed women in tech and venture capital, entrepreneurial challenges and resilience.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution from both outdoor and indoor sources represents the single largest environmental risk to health globally and causes 7 million deaths a year, worldwide.

In this context, Romanian born startup Airvolt brings to the market a solution that can cleanse and raise the air quality, at the same time involving businesses, public authorities and us, the average citizens.

For our newest green episode of the Work in Progress podcast, we’ve talked with Alex Fredericks, the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the Treasurer of Airvolt, and Raluca Creanga, Chief Research Officer of Airvolt.

Capitalizing on two markets - Air Purification and Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) - Airvolt harnesses the potential of advertising to go beyond communication and actively help monitor and purify the air we breathe. By integrating ads with air quality initiatives, the team behind Airvolt strives to create a healthier and more sustainable future for all.

Matei Dumitrescu is one of the well-known Romanian angel investors and mentors. He is the founder of the acceleration program Commons Accel. For our first green episode of the Work in Progress podcast we’ve discussed at length with Matei about impact investments and founders that want to make the world a better place for all of us to live in.

The Work in Progress podcast is a Green Start-Up and start-up.ro production focused on the investors and founders that change the startup ecosystem.

We've centered the Work in Progress podcast around two major themes, and were going to split the episodes into the Blue podcast – for start-up.ro – where we'll discuss with venture capital managers, angel investors, startup founders from Romania, Europe and around the world about their role in the ecosystem, business, trends, and the Green podcast – for Green Start-Up – where we will put a sustainability layer on our discussions and we'll approach topics relevant for impact founders as well as impact investors.

Matei wears many hats. He is also the Vice President of Tech Angels Romania, the largest organization that reunites the private investors in our country and he is also a part of the Investment Ready Program in Vienna, the largest acceleration programs in Central and Eastern Europe for teams that create scalable solutions to societal problems.

Matei was our guest for the first green podcast from the Work in Progress series and we asked him about impact investments and social entrepreneurs, about what sustainability means from the perspective of investors and about investing with a purpose.