What spirit makes a true entrepreneur? One not only ready, but eager, to go off-piste? Is it the allure of entrepreneurial mentality, proximity to ideas as soon as they are born, camaraderie with brilliant innovators? All of the above? And what makes people get their skin in the game, staking their money, reputation and time behind an idea or a team?

Julien Coustaury is the founder and a managing partner at Fil Rouge Rouge Capital, one of the first local VCs active in the SEE region. He has over 20 years of experience in manufacturing and services, much of it at CEO level, and has worked in more than 80 countries across five continents. In his early career he travelled the world building mobile phone networks literally from the ground up, and as his career progressed, he ended up building whole mobile phone companies from scratch. During his career, he participated in over $1.7bn of purchase, sale and financing transactions. Afterwards he became an active founder of ABC Accelerator in Ljubljana. As a serial investor in early stage businesses, together with his partner invested in more than 40 early stage ventures, and he still serves on the boards of a number of them.

In this episode, we talked about his early career and beginnings, entrepreneurship, his investment style and current experiences.