Summify.com or a service that creates a periodic summary of the most relevant news stories, from all of your social networks, and delivers it by email and on the web. Summify has received some encouraging feedback, and is considered to be a promising start-up.

Why do we consider the service to be valuable as well? Because it answers a simple need which we are faced with every day: FILTERING VALUABLE CONTENT. In other words, Summify e-mails you five stories you should read based on what your friends are talking about on social networks. You no longer have to skim Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare – Summify brings the most important updates and news straight to your inbox.

Since we are heavy users of the platform ourselves, we decided to have a one-on-one talk with Mircea Pasoi, Co-Founder of Summify and a promising young international entrepreneur. Yes, international, since Mircea is living in Vancouver, Canada. And if the U.S market accepts you, then everyone will.

HTW: You now live in Vancouver, Canada, is the start-up business easier here then in Europe? How so? Where have you received more support, both financially and from the community?

There’s definitely more opportunity and a bigger market in North America than in Romania. Also, there’s lots of people that have built global scale Internet companies who are willing to help you, so it’s much easier to believe you can do it as well. All of this combined allows you to think much bigger than we could in Romania and in the end build a more successful business.
We’ve received tons of support from our investors (Bootup Labs, Boris Wertz, Accel Partners, Rob Glaser, Stewart Butterfield to name just a few), our advisors and the Vancouver community in general. Money is relatively easy to find, but the right advice and experience is hard to find, so we value that much more.

HTW: You are very young, and yet a successful entrepreneur. Did you have any shortcomings due to age and nationality?

I don’t think I’m successful yet, it’s going to take at least a few more years. Nationality is a short-coming in North America because it’s so hard to get visas (even in Canada), but other than that I think I’ve benefited a lot from it – being different, we come up with different approaches to problems, which sometimes work better. I also see my age as an advantage, because I can focus 100% on our business. There’s not many distractions when you’re young and in a new country.

HTW: You received some nice offers from bigger companies before starting your own company. Which is the “guiding force’ behind your will?

For me, it’s mostly about the freedom to do what I want to do and building a company that can makes other people’s lives better. I’m sure you can impact a lot of a people and learn a lot about building great Internet products by working for the right company, but it will never compare it terms of freedom, speed and the experiences (good and bad). Besides that, I kind of like the chaos of building a new company out of nothing, the emotional roller-coaster is quite a ride and you learn a lot about pushing your limits.

HTW: How does a normal day look like for you? Do you imagine doing something else?

I wake up around 12-13 and then go to the office where we have a short 10-15 scrum meeting – every member of the team stands up and talks about what they did in the last 24 hours, what they plan on doing in the next 24 hours and what are the problems. After that, there’s lots of diverse things that I get to work on as a founder: programming, product planning, meetings, accounting, legal stuff, hiring, and many others. Usually I try to keep my work focused i.e. I have days dedicated to programming and days dedicated to meetings or administrative stuff and I really enjoy the night-time because there’s no interruptions (mails, meetings, people in the office, etc.), so it’s great for creative work (programming, writing, etc.).

I definitely wouldn’t imagine doing anything else – there’s so many unexpected and exciting moments that happen each day that just couldn’t happen if I wasn’t running a company. It’s like being plugged in non-stop, you have to think fast, keep calm and act fast.  It’s an incredibly humbling experience and I’m learning every day!

HTW: There are many entrepreneurs that think they know it all, and most of the time it turns out that they actually don’t. Can you let us know a few tips and tricks which you got familiar with in the first stages of your business, from all standpoints: finance, legal, management etc.

I often catch myself thinking I know stuff when I actually don’t, so I’m probably in the same boat It’s hard to give operational advice because it’s so specific to the situation (what country are you in, what market, what’s your product, etc.), but I can recommend some resources.

There’s so much information available on how to setup a company, hiring, finance, legal and more, that there’s absolutely no excuse for doing these wrong. An entrepreneur should constantly educate himself, and my favorite places for startup advice are Quora, Venture Hacks, This Week in Startups, AVC, Both Sides of The Table and I’m sure there’s more that I can’t think of.

HTW: Do you have a business man which you look up to? Why?

Given my background, I like the image of the engineer turned into a business man/entrepreneur/CEO/etc. I know I’m biased, but I like to believe it’s easier to learn the business part if you’re a smart engineer, than the other way around.
Obviously, there are the tech giants that everybody looks up to (Gates, Jobs, Page & Brin, Zuckerberg, etc.) and I’m very amazed by what they’ve accomplished, but it’s hard to name one person because there are so many things to learn from each of them.

HTW: Have you heard of any Romanian projects which can make it at an international level? If not, what do you think the local market misses? As a matter of fact, we are renowned for our technical skills.

There are some Romanian projects that are fairly successful at the international level (GeCAD, uberVU, Erepublik, Brainient) and I’m sure there’s going to be more. If you look at all of them, none of them could have done it without outside help (Seedcamp, foreign investors, etc.) and I think that’s what’s missing right now.
We need help from people who have actually done this startup thing before for real, because you can’t do it by reading Techcrunch and imagining things. There’s no shame in this – experience matters, people matter, the network you have matters.. and for the moment we have to go somewhere else (Vancouver, London, Silicon Valley, etc.) to get this knowledge and experience  but let’s hope that in a few generations that experience will be available in Romania and we’ll start having a real ecosystem that can create international-level companies.

HTW: Mircea, what do you like to do in your spare time?

Don’t have a lot of spare time but I’m a big fan of movies and TV shows and I really enjoy walking outside in the sun… there’s only 3 months per year when it doesn’t rain in Vancouver, but it’s incredibly beautiful during the summer here with the sun, the beaches and the ocean.

HTW: Thank you and as always it was very nice catching up with you. A closing remark for all the readers of the How to Web blog?

I truly believe Romanian entrepreneurs can create world-class companies in the right environment and I’m sure we’ll start seeing that once the visa barriers in North America will disappear. In the meantime, do what you can to put yourself in the best environment – no matter how smart you are, your environment matters!