The Brief+ | Tech Innovation, Funding, Startup, Issue #1
This is the first issue of The Brief+, the Iceberg Plus newsletter - and we want it to be genuinely useful.
We're here to tackle complex topics in deeptech innovation, startup funding, trends, and the real challenges shaping the national and European innovation ecosystem.
The Brief+ comes out twice a month on Substack, with ideas from our team and partners — researchers, founders, investors, public authorities — alongside news from our project ecosystem and real opportunities in funding and mentorship. Occasionally, we'll send a spontaneous issue when there's a funding call, event, or course that's too relevant to wait for.
Alright, let's get into it.
A sharp take — or rather, an internal conversation about AI, consulting, and taxation
Ionuț Țața: For anyone interested in internal debate, I'd recommend the HBR episode with Bob Sternfels from McKinsey. He talks about how to reorganize a consulting firm in the AI era, after major controversies. The question that really challenged him came from Adi Ignatius: what remains valuable when information and processing become commodities?
Diana Ceresmis: Jim Collins offers a partial answer — still relevant today, I think — in From Good to Great: companies that survive major technological shifts are the ones that adopt technology early, but know who they are and where they're going. Technology helps them get there. The flywheel only works if you know what it's spinning around. Sternfels also talks in the podcast about the period ahead, where AI adoption is genuinely just beginning — the fear of the future is greater right now than the actual impact. For now, large companies will ask consultants what kind of AI to implement. They'll ask whether it's safer to wait, especially if things are still working fine. But after this adoption phase — however long it lasts — the underlying problem remains.
Ionuț Țața: That's exactly the consulting industry's core problem. If your model is built on information arbitrage and processing power, AI eats you alive. So either you reposition around judgment and relationship, or you become infrastructure.
Diana Ceresmis: That's why I think the next correction will come from outside the market. If more than 50% of a business's output is AI-generated — who validates quality? Who's accountable? A mandatory human auditing framework would function as an accountability standard. And a market signal.
Ionuț Țața: And we'll need a better-regulated fiscal mechanism than what we have now. If AI agents replace human labor without contributing to the social systems they're eroding, we have a structural problem. Taxing AI agents should become redistributive.
Diana Ceresmis: Gradually and proportionally: the more you automate, the more you contribute. The logic is the same as with employees — you generate value in society, you participate in its cost.
Ionuț Țața: Which would become the funding mechanism for UBI — Universal Basic Income.
Diana Ceresmis: But taxation doesn't answer the existential question for the ecosystem: how do you reinvent yourself as a relevant actor? Human auditors are a partial answer. Not fiscal oversight — but a signal that ethical judgment and moral context can't be automated. At least not credibly. And we already have precedent for what happens when you let systems operate without genuine ethical oversight.
Ionuț Țața: The debate stays open as long as we're heading into a period of change followed by a settling we can only sense the shape of right now.
Diana Ceresmis: What's certain: if we don't actively invest in what is irreducibly human — institutions, culture, moral judgment — we're left with efficiency without substance.
Three questions that remain open:
- Who audits AI in business — the market, the state, or the industry itself?
- What does a fiscal model look like that funds the transition without slowing innovation?
- And what of what we're building today will still be relevant when automation becomes the default?
The answers aren't simple. But the innovation ecosystem is exactly where this conversation needs to happen — before it becomes public policy.
You'll also find updates on regional VCs, European grants, and tech opportunities that many Romanian founders are still missing.
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Brand Strategist @ Iceberg Plus