Product Weekend: Bridging the gap in product management education

When Sergiu Adrian Lazar Angelescu graduated from the EIT Digital Master School in Data Science in 2018, he knew he wanted to start his own company—but assumed it was a distant future. Fast forward to today, and he's leading Product Weekend, Europe's most intimate product conference dedicated to product management education and community-building.

Angelescu’s journey began in earnest during his studies at EIT Digital, where he co-founded his first venture, SpotYet, an innovative platform to enhance networking at events. This early entrepreneurial experience became pivotal, revealing a significant gap: practical, relevant education in product management was scarce, often too generic, or absent altogether from formal education.

“I was always curious about the bigger picture—why we were building certain products, not just how,” Angelescu explains. "During my master's with EIT Digital, SpotYet was an intense learning experience, showing me firsthand how crucial and underserved product management education truly was.”

After graduation, Sergiu joined Amazon as a Product Manager, yet continued nurturing entrepreneurial side projects. These side hustles allowed him to experiment, learn, and clarify what truly mattered to him. In 2022, he founded Jungle Retreats, transformative events aimed at helping professionals align their careers with their passions. Around the same time, his friend João Moita had launched Product Weekend in Portugal.

Their visions naturally aligned, and soon, the two founders merged their initiatives under the Product Weekend brand. Angelescu describes this as a turning point: “What started as a side hustle quickly became my full-time focus. Today, Product Weekend is a platform dedicated to bridging the gap in product education and empowering product professionals.”