What he took from the degree
Five years on from launching HoneyBee & Co, Dragos still uses what he learned at Greenwich Business School every day.
"More than I expected, honestly. The finance and accounting fundamentals gave me a foundation that I use every single day. Understanding margins, reading numbers, and knowing when something makes sense on paper and when it does not. The entrepreneurship modules made me think differently about risk."
A lot of it, he says, came from outside the classroom too.
"The conversations, the challenges, the exposure to people who were building things. Greenwich gave me the environment to start thinking like a founder before I actually became one."
Pitching at the Enterprise Challenge
In 2020, Dragos made it to the semi-finals of our Enterprise Challenge with an idea for dissolvable honey sachets. HoneyBee & Co launched that same year.
"Not because of what happened in the competition itself, but because of what it forced me to do. You have to articulate your idea clearly, defend it under pressure, and stand in front of people who will tell you exactly what does not work. That process sharpened everything. The timing was not a coincidence."
The dissolvable sachets idea is still in development. He believes in it more now than he did at the pitch.
"What has changed is that I understand the market better, I understand what customers actually want, and I know how to bring something to market properly. When it launches, it will be right, not just ready."
How a website got him into Vogue
HoneyBee & Co has worked with Vogue, partnered with London Pulse and supplied the NHS. The question Dragos gets most often is how those conversations even start.
"People always assume there is some secret formula. A contact, a connection, a lucky introduction. The truth is simpler and harder than that. Every one of those partnerships started with a website that told our story properly. When someone lands on HoneyBee & Co and everything feels premium, considered and authentic, the story of six generations of beekeepers, the quality of the product, the values behind the brand, it does the first conversation for you. What my degree gave me was the understanding that brand and presentation are not vanity. They are commercial strategy."
What he tells current Greenwich students
Dragos is now a guest lecturer at Greenwich Business School, alongside running HoneyBee & Co and his two other businesses, Lavender Gold and Velena Lifestyle. We asked what he would say to a current Business with Finance student thinking about starting something of their own.
"Start before you feel ready, because you never will. Every founder I respect launched something imperfect and built it into something excellent. The degree gives you tools; use them. The finance skills will stop you from making expensive mistakes. The entrepreneurship thinking will help you spot opportunities others walk past. But the most important thing is this: find something you genuinely believe in, something with a real story behind it, and tell that story better than anyone else in your space. Customers do not just buy products. They buy into people and purpose. That is true whether you are selling honey or software."
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