Meet the Team: Alex Negencov
Meet Alex Negencov, our newest Entrepreneur Experience Associate.
Alex comes form a business development and revenue background, bringing a wealth of knowledge to our Open Innovation initiatives and Endeavor programs. What Alex is really known for in the team, however, is his love for optimizing processes, for the outdoors, for sports, and for pushing himself.
1. What’s your secret ingredient for staying committed and passionate about Endeavor?
What keeps me deeply engaged at Endeavor is that we live right inside the 0→1 and 1→n journey of value creation. I’m endlessly curious about how ideas become products, how products become companies, and how companies start shaping industries. Endeavor gives me a front-row seat to that process across many founders, technologies, and business models.
I also recognize a lot of myself in the founders we work with. The endurance mindset it takes to build a startup or scaleup – long cycles, uncertainty, resilience, and delayed gratification – is very similar to what I’ve learned through endurance sport. Endeavor creates a space where that kind of long-term thinking, experimentation, and persistence is not only understood, but shared.
2. Tell us about that #OneEndeavor experience that was so awesome, you go back to it often.
The #OneEndeavor experience I keep coming back to is the 10-year anniversary of Endeavor in Bulgaria – it happened right at the start of my journey here and immediately gave me a much broader sense of what I had just stepped into. In the span of a few days, I found myself surrounded by founders, investors, mentors, corporate partners, public-sector leaders, and media from different countries – all in one place, all somehow connected by the same entrepreneurial energy.
It felt less like an anniversary and more like stepping into a living, breathing entrepreneurial ecosystem. For me, it was the perfect crash course in what Endeavor really is – not just a formal organization, but a network, echoing Niall Ferguson’s The Square and the Tower, where influence and progress emerge from relationships as much as from institutions.
3. We often say that no two days are the same with us, but give us a sneak peek into your typical work week. Is there a certain routine you follow? Any moments you specifically look forward to during the week?
A typical week for me is a constant mix of deep tech, real-world business, and founders dealing with the messy reality behind good ideas. Much of that plays out through the Kumihimo Tech Camp and our collaboration with Murata Manufacturing, where founders, engineers, investors, and mentors end up in the same conversations, usually around something both ambitious and very concrete.
What makes it especially interesting is the variety of technologies in the room. In just a few days, I might jump from Nasekomo’s insect-based protein, to Neuromorphica’s neuromorphic chips, to ProsFit’s prosthetics, or Simobotics’ robots. It’s a constant exercise in helping these technologies find their path into strong products and scalable businesses.
That back-and-forth between vision and execution is what makes the work fun. Seeing a rough proof of concept slowly turn into a clearer plan, a partnership, or even a first commercial step is what gives every week its own rhythm and momentum.