Tech Entrepreneur Gives 3 Tips for Resilience

Mark Bugas ’14 co-founded Flowlie Technologies in 2023 with the goal to “make fundraising suck less” for start-ups — something the entrepreneur and former venture capital investor knows a thing or two about.

In the decade since graduating with a degree in peace and conflict studies, Bugas has helped bring five different products to market, founded two companies, and earned an MBA in entrepreneurship, venture capital, and management science from the University of Virginia. In 2015 he played a key role in launching travel platform Triptease’s “Price Check” feature and helped open up markets for the company in the U.S. and Canada.

At Miami-based Flowlie, Bugas is helping founders “save hundreds of hours” by aggregating data on the venture capital market. “The fundraising process is notoriously opaque, and Flowlie’s goal is to increase transparency — and the likelihood of closing an investment round,” he says. A recent satisfied customer: Philip Odelfelt ’15, founder of Datavations, an AI-enabled data analytics platform for building materials manufacturers, relied on Flowlie’s technology to close their latest round of funding.

Despite the varied skill sets needed for each of his endeavors, Bugas says the key to success in the cutthroat world of tech entrepreneurship comes down to one trait: resilience. He shares his favorite mantras for cultivating mental toughness:

1. Maintain relentless optimism. “You get told ‘no’ by so many people so frequently in this space, and there are usually hundreds of reasons why you shouldn’t be going down a certain path. Great entrepreneurs are able to see something before everyone else can see it; they can see the future of the space they’re in, so when they have ideas, of course everyone is going to think they’re crazy. They trust in the potential. That’s the whole game.”
2. Roadblocks are opportunities. “It’s hard to maintain your vision over time as you run into problems, but you have to see those roadblocks as opportunities. If you’re hitting obstacles, it means everyone else who’s come before has hit those same roadblocks and quit, and that’s why no one has achieved what you’re trying to do. Keep going.”
3. Be (Painfully) Stubborn. “In order to innovate, you have to look at the world a little differently than most people do, which doesn’t always come naturally. It requires a lot of persistence, stubbornness, and a willingness to keep banging your head against the wall — even when it hurts.”