At the end of the Residential Panel held at CEDER 2023, moderator Alexandra Smedoiu, Partner at Deloitte Romania invited the major developers present on the panel to share some advice for smaller developers who wanted to scale up in the future.
After talking about his own company, which grew exponentially from project to project, Cosmin Savu-Cristescu, Managing Director of Redport Capital, mentioned that in his view, the recipe for growth had three major ingredients. The first would be to “always think long-term and very long-term”, creating a vision that lasts and staying true to it. The second ingredient he mentioned was having a great team: “the more you invest in your team, the more you grow your company; […] hire smarter people than you to do things that you need in your team.” And the third aspect he mentioned was to “always keep an eye on your final customer: “when you choose the land, when you design, when you make the concept. Think of what the final customer needs.”
In the end he also pointed out that, by fulfilling the expectations of clients, a company creates a community and “if you reward that community, if you give extra to that community, […] that community will reward you at a certain point in time.”
Alex Skouras, Founding Member & Managing Partner of Alesonor also advised fellow developers to keep true to one’s vision and values, also mentioning that it was important to understand the market, work hard and pay attention to timing.
Didier Balcaen, CEO of Speedwell, made a point of adding that “size doesn’t always matter. So, I don’t think there is a necessity to scale up. […] I think there is nothing wrong in doing small developments and repeating them. […] If you do something small and you do it well, keep on doing it.”
