Mario Stoev: LSE Summer School 2022

How did you decide to apply to the program? Where did you first find out about it?

I studied at AUBG and graduated in May 2022. During my second year of university, I heard that the Aleksander Foundation is organising an event for a scholarship competition, the winners of which will have the opportunity to attend LSE Summer School for free. This is when I learned about the Foundation and LSE Summer School. I decided to apply then, in my sophomore year, however since the scholarship is only made for third, fourth year and Master’s students I was not selected. Now in my 4th year, I applied again and fortunately was selected.

How would you put what you learned into practice - in terms of your studies/work?

The programme was directly connected to my work at LaunchHub Ventures - the biggest Venture Capital fund in Southeastern Europe. We studied Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data etc. from a more practical perspective – how to effectively apply them into organizations and not just use these buzzwords in our start-up. From one side it helped me in evaluating companies from a deeper level and deciding, for example, does it make sense to use AI here or not. It also helped me understand how a company develops its own network, what network effects it also has, and so on.

What were the subjects of study and which was most useful to you?

The course was called "Management and Economics of Digital Innovation" and through it we explored many topics. Maybe the most important to me were Network Economics and Blockchain which was especially exciting to me as I studied Business Administration with a major in Finance and minor in Computer Science during my undergraduate degree. During my third year at AUBG I started working at LaunchHub Ventures where I am currently an Analyst and take care of deal sourcing, backend programming and industry research. The knowledge I obtained from the Summer School immensely helped me in my work.

What is the most valuable thing you will take from Summer School with you?

I came to love London a lot. During the course, I tried not only to study but meet people from industry – there are many different communities here and even if you have a very niche interest, you can always find people who also have an interest in it. The culture of the city, the whole experience of living there in and of itself and the fact that the city gives many opportunities is another reason I came to love it. You have that feeling that you are no one here – which is good and bad, but you realise that at the end of the day not everything matters and you don’t have to worry about everything. You are only a small part of the big picture.