A recurring Bucharest gathering for the people willing to ask harder questions, name what others avoid, and think across industry boundaries — operators, strategists, investors and challengers, in a room with peers who will push back.
In a moment of accelerating change — AI rewriting the cost of doing things, geopolitics fragmenting markets, business models that worked for decades quietly ending — the most valuable thinking is the kind that stops short of the consensus answer. Unconventional is where that thinking gets done out loud, with peers who can challenge it.
Founding edition forming now. By invitation. No fee for the founding cohort. Unconventional is the launch format of Future Makers — the broader peer community I'm convening alongside my advisory practice.
Here for the advisory work, not the gathering? Book a discovery call →
Curated central venue, shared with invited guests ahead of the date. Romania is where Diana started — and one of the most under-noticed thinking grounds in Europe right now.
Recurring gathering. Date and cadence shared with the early invite list first — before public sign-up opens on Luma.
Two to three hours. Small group. Chatham House Rule. Member-led conversation around a question that's live for the room — no panel, no keynote, no pitches. Drinks and food.
Cross-sector. A mix of operators, strategists, investors and challengers — Romanian-rooted and internationally connected. Curated by Diana. The bar is how a person actually shows up in conversation.
In moments of accelerating change, the people you most need in the room are the ones least likely to be there: the contrarians who can name what others avoid, the operators who have seen this shape of problem before, the strategists thinking three moves ahead of the consensus answer.
They exist. They are usually thinking alone, because the rooms they sit in reward agreement, polish or politics over honest pushback. The edge of your industry is a lonely place — and the people thinking at the same edge sit in other sectors, other geographies, other companies. The best ideas travel across industry lines before they show up inside one.
Unconventional is the room where they meet. A small group, member-led conversation, Chatham House Rule — what is said in the room can travel; who said it, and which organisation they came from, do not. So the talking can be real.
You leave with sharper questions, earlier signal on shifts your industry has not priced in yet, and a handful of peers you can think with after the room empties out.
Operators, strategists, investors and challengers at the front edge of their fields. People rewriting how things get done — and willing to say what they actually think before the consensus answer forms.
FTSE 250+ companies — writing the next growth chapter.
Typically £10m+ revenue. The early playbook is behind them. The next one isn't written yet.
Mandate-led functions inside big companies — paid to ask the questions no one else has time for.
People who back the next thing before it's obvious.
They look further out than the next quarter — and say the thing the community is avoiding.
What the community shares: the willingness to challenge peers, and the work to back it up.
Recognise the kind of person who belongs in this room? Get on the early invite list — no commitment, no charge.
Get on the early invite list →The Bucharest gathering is the founding format of Future Makers — a peer community I'm convening alongside the advisory practice. Over time, the community grows into more formats and more rooms, each holding the same standard: cross-sector, member-led, Chatham House Rule, sharp.
The founding recurring gathering. Evening salon, 12 to 16 people, Chatham House Rule. The room where the contrarians meet. Launching now.
As the community grows, the same gathering format travels to other cities — London, plus a Western European city, run on the same standard. Member-led. By invitation.
Sector-specific sensemaking — TMT, FinTech, Insurance, CleanTech, HealthTech, public innovation. The shifts hitting each industry in the next two to five years. Half-day. By invitation.
One in-person summit a year. Deeper conversations across the whole membership, with a handful of outside voices — founders, researchers, contrarians.
Future Makers is convened by Diana Spiridon, alongside the independent advisory practice. The advisory combines senior strategic advisory with hands-on opportunity shaping, tech venture building and capability development — for senior teams shaping what to back next, building the ventures and programmes around it, and the capability to take it forward. The community is something separate: a place to think out loud with peers, not a route into client work. See the services →
Seventeen years inside Sky, Discovery, Citi Ventures, WarnerMedia, NN, Arqiva, Admiral, Shell Energy, Virgin Media O2 / Telefónica and Innovate UK — at the moments when the next direction had to be found, the next venture built, or the engine sharpened. Built and launched disruptive products, services and business lines inside corporates. Stood up and ran corporate ventures and innovation functions. Designed incubation playbooks, innovation funding, startup support and ecosystem programmes.
Early career in banking, microfinance, risk management and equity investments — the commercial lens behind everything.
Proof: £1.6bn+ new revenue line shaped · £10bn portfolio managed · £100m+ startup programmes launched · £2m innovation fund built. Romanian-born, London-shaped. Read the longer bio →
If this sounds like your kind of room, get on the early invite list. No commitment, no charge. You'll hear from Diana when the date and venue for edition 01 are confirmed.
Kept small on purpose. No fee for founding members of Unconventional, or for founding members of the wider Future Makers community as it grows.
Diana curates the room herself, drawing on seventeen years of operator and investor relationships across Sky, Discovery, Citi Ventures, WarnerMedia, NN, Arqiva, Admiral, Shell Energy, Virgin Media O2 and Innovate UK. The bar is how a person actually shows up in conversation — sharp, candid, useful to peers.
An evening, recurring. Show up when you can. No mandatory attendance. Designed to fit around a busy calendar — and to be the evening you protect, not the one you cancel.
Bring the harder version of what you actually think. Contribute as much as you take. Respect the Chatham House Rule that makes the conversation possible.
A short note. Three lines. I'm looking for operators, strategists, investors and challengers — peers willing to be honest, future-facing, and to push back.
What you get for being on the list: the date and venue for edition 01 before public sign-up opens on Luma · the chance to shape the questions the room takes on first · founding-member status that holds when the community grows beyond Bucharest.
I read every note myself and reply inside ten days.
Get on the early invite list →