A note from Criss
CUE++ started not in a boardroom or an incubator, but in the living room of a jazz guitarist in Romania.
My father was a music teacher and guitarist. The house was always filled with music, instruments, and the occasional piece of equipment I'd taken apart. Much to his despair, I had a habit of disassembling anything with a circuit board.
But he never scolded me. Instead, he let me figure out how to put it back together. That patience taught me more than any textbook ever could.
Late 90s
Growing up in Romania before computers were widely available, I'd spend hours at internet cafes, not playing Quake or Red Alert like my friends wanted, but connecting an old DSP chip via serial port, surrounded by a mess of wires. My friends were not amused. But I was hooked.
2000s
Studied Computer Science at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. During the day, I was learning algorithms and data structures. At night, I was DJing drum and bass at local clubs and running small events with whatever equipment I could get my hands on. The realization hit: coding could fund my passion for sound.
2006-2018
Moved to London chasing the startup scene. Over 12 years, I was part of multiple startups, worked as a freelancer with clients like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Dyson, and helped build technology for Reprezent FM. But the pull of live events never left.
2015+
Got connected with major production houses who kept asking for help with problems they needed custom software to solve. "Can you build an MA plugin for this?" became a common request. I learned grandMA in depth and built the tools production teams asked for.
2020
The pandemic brought me back to Cluj. I discovered that hardly anyone in the local scene knew about or used grandMA. There was a gap between what professionals needed and what was accessible. CUE++ was born: I bought sound and light equipment, built a 'playground' studio, and started helping smaller events level up their production quality.
Today
I met a team who shared the same vision, and together we built what CUE++ is today. VENU.studio is our answer to a problem we know well: the hours spent on documentation, the friction of moving between tools, the work of turning a design into a programmed show. We're building the tools we wish we had.
Professional lighting design shouldn't require years of specialized training or an enterprise budget. We're making these tools easier to get to.
Lighting designers should be designing, not wrestling with documentation. We automate the tedious parts so you can focus on the show.
Design to programmed show. CAD files to console programming. Planning to production. VENU.studio connects the steps.
We build on GDTF, MVR, and open formats. Your data is yours, and it works with any console or visualizer.
We build software to solve problems we face ourselves. Every feature comes from a problem we hit on a show.
The kid taking apart amplifiers grew into a company that keeps asking how things work. Good solutions tend to start with "why not?"
From Cluj's local scene to London's production houses, we've seen how sharing what you know helps everyone work better. We're building tools that make collaboration easier.
“My father never scolded me for taking things apart. He just asked: ‘Can you put it back together?’ That question still drives everything I build.”
CUE++ is a small team of developers, designers and lighting professionals based in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, with roots across Europe’s production scene.
Today we focus on software for the events industry. We use the studio to develop, test and prepare the tools we wish we had.
Build something with us →