Millions vanished in an instant: D. Bunkus speaks about the most costly failure

Rarely open about his personal life, businessman Danielius Bunkus this time agreed to a candid conversation about money. In the podcast “Pokalbiai apie pinigus” (“Conversations About Money”), he recalled the beginning of his journey, his biggest mistakes, and the decisions that shaped not only his business but also his outlook on life.

During the conversation with Miglė Grybinienė, marketing manager of the crowdfunding platform “Profitus,” he also touched on personal topics — family finances, values, and how his relationship with money has changed over time.

The businessman spoke about his first attempts to earn money by recalling his childhood. At that time, he says, financial motivation came from a simple desire to live differently than before.

“I grew up in not the best conditions. I told myself that I didn’t want to live like that and that I didn’t want my children to live like that either. That promise to myself wasn’t so conscious; looking back now, I think it may have been subconscious. Today it’s hard to say, because we keep rewriting our memories, but that feeling was definitely there. Essentially, there was a desire to live better than I grew up, and for my children to grow up better,” D. Bunkus admitted in the podcast.

Later followed a rapid financial rise — his first million was achieved at a very young age, just 23–24 years old. However, the businessman himself says he does not idealize his success story and emphasizes that his environment and the people he met played a significant role.

“It just happened that way. I had friends who were older than me, who had studied not only in Lithuania but also abroad. They were already trading stocks, participating in auctions, and understood economics and investing. I was in that circle and learned from them very quickly,” the businessman said.

Nevertheless, financial success was not without painful lessons. D. Bunkus does not hide the fact that one decision cost him millions and became one of the strongest shocks he experienced.

“There was the Dubai real estate crisis. It was 2008. I had invested in one project. It seemed like everything was only going up, but I was completely naive, although at the time I thought I was very smart. And, by the way, if I had sold everything, today I would be sitting like a guru on a mountain teaching everyone how to live,” he joked.

However, the outcome was much more unfortunate. The businessman admitted that he suffered a loss of 3 million on this project.

“Then I wrote off three million. And, thank God, it was my own money, not borrowed. Out of those three million, the Arabs returned maybe 43 thousand dollars, I think, that was all, because everything else disappeared in the fine print of the contract: penalties, default interest, conditions. It wasn’t a small detail — it was all my money,” D. Bunkus said.