Building a Global Champion from Cluj-Napoca: a conversation with UNTOLD's founder, Bogdan Buta

UNTOLD is not a typical crowdfunding opportunity. Rather than a young startup testing a new market, it's a decade-old, profitable festival brand, ranked #3 in the world by DJ Mag for the third consecutive year, alongside names like Tomorrowland, Coachella or Glastonbury. Since launching in Cluj-Napoca in 2015, UNTOLD has grown into a business with close to half a million attendees per edition, revenue of €28.7M in 2025, up nearly 28% year-on-year, and sponsorship partnerships with brands like Pepsi, Visa, and Banca Transilvania.

The company is led by Bogdan Buta, who founded UNTOLD alongside co-founders Edy Chereji and Bogdan Rădulescu, and has since taken the brand beyond Romania, building UNTOLD Dubai directly, signing a licensing deal for a first Latin American edition in Colombia, and exploring joint ventures across new markets.

We sat down with Bogdan to understand how a festival built in Cluj-Napoca became a global brand, what it takes to scale live entertainment across borders, and what this round on SeedBlink means for the people who've been part of UNTOLD's story so far.

1. UNTOLD launched in Cluj-Napoca in 2015, in a market where ticket prices couldn't match what festivals in wealthier economies could charge. What did it take, in those early years, to build a festival that could still compete with the biggest names in the industry?

The honest answer is that the ticket maths never worked. An artist's fee is a global price, the same headliner costs the same in Cluj as in Belgium or California, but in 2015 a Romanian ticket was a fraction of what those festivals could charge. So either we accepted being a small regional event, or we found the missing revenue. We chose to build it.

We went to the biggest brands in the country with something nobody was offering at the time: not a logo on a banner, but a real presence inside the festival: spaces, experiences, activations designed together with them, in front of hundreds of thousands of people over four days. That kind of brand partnership simply did not exist in Romanian live entertainment. We effectively had to create the sponsorship industry we needed in order to exist, and what we designed in those first years is now the standard the whole market works to.

The second part was discipline: for years, almost everything the festival made went straight back into production, stages and the experience. Between a commercial model nobody else had built yet and reinvesting instead of taking money out, a festival in Cluj could put on a show that competed with festivals charging three times our ticket price.

2. UNTOLD has now ranked #3 in DJ Mag's Top 100 Festivals for three consecutive years, a ranking decided by public vote. What does that consistency tell you about the brand you've built?

It matters to us precisely because it is a public vote, it cannot be bought, lobbied or produced. Rankings decided by juries reward budgets; a ranking decided by hundreds of thousands of people rewards how it actually felt to be there.

Doing it once can be a strong year or a good campaign. Doing it three years running, alongside Tomorrowland, Coachella and Glastonbury, means something structural: an audience that keeps coming back, keeps bringing other people, and cares enough to defend the brand publicly. That is the real asset, retention and advocacy, not the number itself.

Commercially, it also travels. When we sit down with a global sponsor, or with a potential partner in a new country, that ranking is the shorthand for demand. It says the brand is already known in markets where we have never sold a ticket, which is exactly what you need before you open a new edition.

3. UNTOLD ONE, this year's edition, brought together more than 500,000 attendees from over 130 countries, by your own account, the biggest edition yet. What made this one different from the previous ten?

Ten editions of learning arrived at once. UNTOLD ONE was conceived as bringing everything we have built over a decade into a single edition - the artistic direction, the production standard, the storytelling, and the audience felt that.

The most significant difference, though, was the make-up of the crowd. More than 500,000 people from over 130 countries: the international audience is no longer a pleasant statistic on top of a domestic festival, it is a structural part of who comes. People plan their year around it and travel to Cluj for it. That changes the business. It makes the brand far less dependent on any single market, and it turns the festival into a genuine export.

And behind the show there is an operation most people never see. Moving half a million people through a city safely over four days, with the city itself as our partner, is a logistics business as much as a music business. The fact that we did it at that scale, calmly, is the part I am proudest of.

4. Sponsorship has become a major part of UNTOLD's business model, not just ticket sales. How did you build that side of the company, and what makes UNTOLD attractive to a global sponsor?

It started out of necessity, as I said, and it became one of the company's core disciplines. We built a commercial team in-house rather than selling through intermediaries, because what we sell is not inventory, it’s access to an audience, and that has to be designed with the partner, not sold off a rate card.

What makes UNTOLD attractive to a global brand is quite rare: four days of uninterrupted, voluntary attention from a young, international, highly engaged audience, in a physical environment we control end to end, plus the digital reach around it. Very few media environments give a brand that combination of scale, emotion and safety. Partners like Pepsi, Visa and Banca Transilvania are not buying visibility; they are building something inside the festival that people queue for and photograph.

For the business, this is what turns a festival into acompany. Sponsorship revenue is contracted ahead of the event, it is far less weather- and impulse-dependent than tickets, and it renews. It is the reason our economics work at a Central European ticket price.

5. You've already taken UNTOLD beyond Romania, building UNTOLD Dubai. What did that experience teach you about what it takes to expand a festival brand into a new market?

Dubai taught us the difference between what is exportable and what is not. The brand, the artistic direction, the production know-how, the way we build a story around an edition - that all travels. The operating model does not copy and paste. Different regulation, different calendar, different climate, different audience habits, a different relationship between ticket revenue and commercial revenue.

The second lesson was about people. You cannot run a market from a distance; you need credibility and a team on the ground, and you need local partners who genuinely want the event to exist. We learned to spend far longer on that groundwork before anything is announced.

The third is more sobering and, I think, valuable for anyone looking at this company: building an edition yourself in a new market is the most capital-intensive and slowest route there is. It is the right choice in some places, but knowing that first-hand is precisely what shaped how we are approaching the next markets.

6. The next step is a licensing deal for UNTOLD's first edition in Colombia, opening in Colombia in late 2027. Why licensing, and why Latin America as the next market?

Licensing is how you take a brand into a market without putting your balance sheet into it. Our partner brings the capital, the local infrastructure, the relationships with authorities and promoters, and carries the operating risk. We bring the brand, the artistic direction and the production standard, we control quality, and we earn from it. It lets us be present in more markets, faster, without diluting focus on the core in Cluj, and after Dubai, that is a very deliberate choice.

Latin America because the demand is already there. Electronic music culture in the region is enormous, the demographics are young, and Colombia in particular has become one of its centres, while no global top-tier festival brand has established itself there yet. That is an unusual combination: a large, proven audience and an open field.

Late 2027 is not a delay, it is the honest timeline. Building an edition properly takes eighteen to twenty-four months of preparation, and we would rather arrive well than early.

7. Beyond Colombia, you've mentioned joint venture discussions in new markets. How do you decide which route, building it yourselves, licensing, or a joint venture, makes sense for a given territory?

It comes down to three questions. How big is the market's ceiling for us; how much control do we need over the experience there; and how much capital and risk are we willing to carry ourselves.

We build it ourselves when a market is strategically central and we are confident we can operate in it. We do a joint venture when we need a local partner's infrastructure and market knowledge but still want meaningful economics and a hand on the creative side. We license when the market is genuinely attractive but far from our operating base, and there is a strong partner who knows it far better than we ever will.

The discipline is remembering that the scarce resource is not opportunity, we get approached regularly, it is our own team's attention. Every edition we build ourselves consumes people who would otherwise be making the core business better. Licensing and joint ventures let the brand travel faster than the organisation could on its own, and that is the whole point.

8. UNTOLD already has significant capital committed from institutional investors, separate from this round. Why open around to individual investors at all, and why now?

Because the people who made this brand what it is are not institutions. UNTOLD exists because hundreds of thousands of people decided, year after year, that this is their festival, they voted it into the world's top 3 three times. Opening a portion of the round to them is a way of making the ownership match the reality of who built it.

There is a strategic side too. A shareholder who is also a fan is an advocate: they bring people, they defend the brand, they stay with it. For a company whose value is a community, that is not a soft benefit.

And the timing is deliberate. We are at the point of moving from one great festival in one country to a brand operating across several markets. The people who have been part of the story so far should have the chance to take part in that step, rather than reading about it afterwards. I would add, and I think this matters, that this is a risk investment like any other, and everyone should look at the terms and the risks properly before deciding.

9. For someone who's been to UNTOLD as a fan but has never thought about the business behind it, what would you want them to understand about the company before they decide to invest?

That behind the four days there is a real company, with ten years of accounts, not an idea on a slide. €28.7 million of revenue in2025, up nearly 28% on the previous year, and profitable. That a large part of that revenue does not come from tickets at all but from long-term commercial partnerships contracted in advance. And that a big share of a given edition is sold months ahead, which means much of the risk of each year is resolved long before anyone walks through the gate.

I would also want them to understand what they are taking on. This is a business built around one flagship annual event, which brings concentration risk - weather, line-up, the people who run it. The international expansion is a plan, not a certainty. And an investment like this is illiquid: your capital is committed and it is at risk.

So: an operating business with a decade of proof and a genuinely global brand, but still an investment you should only make with money you can afford to have tied up, after reading the terms.

10. You've compared UNTOLD's early days to proving something people didn't believe was possible, then doing it again in Dubai. What's the next thing people don't yet believe UNTOLD can do?

In 2015 nobody believed a festival from Romania could stand next to Tomorrowland. In Dubai we were told the same thing again in a different accent. So I have learned to enjoy the question.

The next one is this: that a brand built in Cluj becomes a global entertainment company, several editions on several continents, a business that operates all year rather than around one week in August, and one where, at some point, the largest UNTOLD in the world might not be the one in Europe.

Underneath that there is something I care about more. Romania is used to exporting talent. I would like UNTOLD to be proof that it can export intellectual property - a brand created here, owned here, that the rest of the world pays to have. We are ten years into that and, honestly, still early.

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