Through My Eyes: The Bridge V Recap

Jun 16, 2025

The Bridge V was nothing short of extraordinary.

Here’s a summary from my point of view:

Day 1

Woke up at 8.30AM. Since we were in Varna, my hometown, my mom made me breakfast and told me my clothes were inappropriate. Felt like a teenager again.
Went to The Bridge and got recognized from afar because of my Gen-Z-emo-girl outfit. Personal branding win + showed mom I was right (or did I?)
Event started at 11AM with awesome jokes by Olya Antonova and some crazy pep talks by Nikola Likov, main guy behind The Bridge

Got goosebumps by the the coolest intro video by Strahil Jordanov. Such a cool branding!!!
Started thinkin’ about an exit, thanks to Jeko Kolev‘s tips and tricks on selling a business. Also, heard about Jeko’s extraordinary life. Trust me, I’ve heard it 1 gazilion times. It was refreshing he can do it in 3 mins.
Geri Kirilova told the truths about Series A fundraising! She knows what she is talking about!
Had lunch with Teodosy Teodosiev, early investor in Team-GPT, also my biggest critic. Spoke about electrifying old Porsches. Agreed that once Team-GPT reaches $1.4B valuation, I’ll earn his respect

Hosted an AI session, where the people had combined net worth of $1B+, e.g. Vassil Terziev (founder of Telerik, one of the biggest BG tech exits + Mayor of Sofia), Konstantin Dzhengozov (co-founder of Payhawk, and since last month, top recruiter for our team), and Dimitar Dimitrov, founder of Ardes.bg, and one of the top education benefactors I know.
Gave the guys an AI test. Don’t worry- they knew their stuff. Looks like they are above average.

Moderated a session on ‘Designing life on a new planet’, where Irina Obushtarova looked like our most likely suspect for a spiritual leader, while Kremena Dervenkova promised, she’ll take care of nutrition on the new planet, spoiler alert, we will eat only insects- forever. Konstantin Bezuhanov will lead our electronic identification + all arts and crafts. Here are the notes:

Had dinner with Alexander Karolev, Kaloyan Popov, Nedko Kolev, and Boris Pavlov -> some of my good friends outside The Bridge

Walked to the club with Alexandra Todorova - the operational backbone of The Bridge. Absolute machine! Don’t know how but she did it again!
Celebrated my 31st b-day with everyone above and some more. Didn’t pay for anything. It was people like Angel H. Angelov, CF (one of the few BG investors in OpenAI) who paid my bills.
Speaking of unicorns and payments... I’m thankful to Kosio for helping with our recruitment efforts at Team-GPT 🩶 We’ll never need an HR with support like yours!

Discussed life after marriage and kids with Bozhidar Georgiev, who has the best co-working place in Sofia - Work&Share. Yes, I’m biased cause Team-GPT is there, but rest assured that we cannot settle for anything but the best. So it is the best.
Enjoyed some drinks with the most stylish 4 chaps: Theo S. Shikov, Dimitar Mitkov, Boris Georgiev, and Zdravko Zdravkov. Discussed how their angel investment in Team-GPT is going. They gave me 1000 tips how to sell better and practically sent me to get to work.
Went to an undisclosed club, where Danail Koev, Ilian Kodzhahristov, and Botty Dimanov, PhD among others absolutely destroyed the s*it out of me.
Someone broke a glass in my head. Still hurts.

Next day I went back to the Bridge and first person who saw me ( Tony Aleksandrov ) said: ‘You’re were a frickin’ firecracker’. That’s the point at which I knew something might have gone too far.
Watched and listened to Ivet Lalova‘s incredible story. Seriously, this was probably the highlight of the whole event.
Had lunch with Victor Botev, Yavor Belakov, and Daniel Rankov. We’ve got many things in common, mainly Several Clouds doing our AWS infra. Approved a PR, where the work Dani’s company had been doing for months would be finally moved forward.

Went to my first ever Stress Management group. Thanks Galena Tsankova that’s exactly what I needed.

Picked Boris Valkov‘s brain on how to reach PMF. It was Boris who was the first to tell me how to fundraise, so I know I should listen to him!
Tried out the isleep matraces by Matrax (and promoted by Ivet). Entered a raffle to win a matrace lol
Tried to get some merch from the event. There was a white T-shirt. Turned out it was only if you enter a marathon. Had to enter the marathon.
Prepped for it with pro runners like the Founders of LAUNCHub Ventures, some of their founders, and even their LPs.

I kind of walked the marathon (2.5km only) because the doctor told me to not run... It was like a walk in the park. Interestingly, I wasn’t last. I beat a pregnant woman to the finish line 🤰
Remember Ilian Kodzhahristov? The guy who drank in the club until morning? He killed it at the marathon. By a landslide!

Bought Kalina Panayotova‘s newest book Nectar - looking forward to reading it!
Went to dinner. Had some awesome talks with Stoyan Ivanov about enterprise AI agents.
Learned there was an all-white dresscode, which I terribly, terribly missed. Turns out when you are a CEO, you really don’t read 70-90% of the comms that come your way, especially attached in PDFs or similar. Oops.
After my teenage girl outfit from Day 1, people were probably expecting of me to be great looking woman young, dressed in all-white

Discussed with Simeon Simeonov and ⚡ Orlin RadEV ⚡ how Future Unicorns Accelerator has a 100 NPS score, is the best thing ever, and more people should know about it! Also touched upon rebranding it to ‘a bootcamp’ rathern than an accelerator, as it is closer to its purpose. Soon after, things escalated and we discussed the idea to build our own club, since the music in clubs was too loud for Sim.
Went to the club, nonetheless, and had some more fun. Got told to s**k some d**k, which was refreshingly funny. At least they didn’t break another glass in my head.
Came home early (4am), just to vibe-code a little side-project (QR code generator) I’ve been meaning to for quite some time: Beautiful QR Codes

Went to bed happy with the fact that I even deployed it in Vercel. It’s also mobile friendly and 100% free. Thank me later!

Missed the 3rd day of The Bridge.
Had lunch with mom. Ate some chicken fingers. At this point, she told me I’m definitely a child (gender was not specified this time). But this is how we democrats like it- gender fluid. And prices in EUR.

Went to the airport, where I met 100 Bridgers. Debriefed with Lyuben Belov - one of my favorite people to bounce ideas off
Came home to Sofia
Went out to the park to have some beers with my lovely wife Maria Valchanova in the city center, as a proper naturalized Sofia-citizen

And that, dear reader, was The Bridge V.

If you didn’t like this article, it’s probably because you were not invited.

But don’t worry- big things are coming for The Bridge and our network will only grow stronger!

✌️