You have a very unconventional career path, from studying medicine and becoming a doctor to design, entrepreneurship, and AI. How did you end up where you are now?

I was the kind of child who constantly questioned everything, and that deep curiosity shaped the way I approached the world from the beginning, and it never really went away.

Growing up in Romania during the final years of communism also had a big influence. The environment was rigid, limited, and closed off, so the natural reaction was to look for ways to explore beyond what was expected or allowed. In high school, I discovered computers, and I planned to study computer science, but the professors who made that program great left after the revolution, and I didn’t want to learn from what I felt were outdated approaches.

So, I studied to become a doctor and even got my degree, but it was highly hierarchical. Whenever I questioned something or suggested a different approach, the answer was usually “you’re too young, just do what you’re told.” That environment felt suffocating.

Throughout medical school, I was working as a cartoonist and then a designer. In 1996, I designed and coded my first website, which was incredibly early for Romania. That pushed me to start my first companies and fail several times, but the fourth finally worked. Together with two colleagues from medical school, we built a digital agency that became successful, working with clients in the US and the UK at a time when almost nobody in Eastern Europe was doing so.

That success showed me I didn’t need to follow a rigid path or fit into a predefined system. I could design my own rules, take responsibility for outcomes, and create something meaningful. That freedom was addictive.

From there, the path became even more eclectic. I studied multimedia, accidentally ended up with a Master’s diploma labeled “theatre,” built products instead of services, and eventually applied to an entrepreneurship program at MIT. That program completely changed my life. It introduced me to the Disciplined Entrepreneurship methodology, connected me with incredible people, and pulled me entirely into the startup world with all its turbulence, wins, failures, and reinventions.

Since then, I’ve founded multiple companies, worked in design, consulting, software development, fintech, and, later, AI. I’ve lived in Chile, Australia, and San Francisco, worked with accelerators, taught at MIT, and kept following whatever sparked my curiosity next.

So when people look at my CV and say it seems like I’m “all over the place,” but for me, it all connects through one thing: curiosity. I’ve never been afraid to move into something new, to fail, to start again, or to learn a completely different discipline from scratch. Being a generalist allows me to bridge worlds: I understand engineers, designers, business people, and researchers. Entrepreneurship, at its core, is about assembling pieces from many domains and creating value out of them.

Moving back in with your parents at 40 after your startup collapsed is something you’ve spoken about very openly. How did that period change you as a founder and as a person?

That period was one of the hardest and, strangely, one of the most valuable experiences of my life.

When my startup collapsed and I returned from San Francisco with almost no money left, I had to move back in with my parents at nearly 40. From the outside, that sounds like a disaster and at first, it absolutely felt like one. I remember the shame, the disappointment, the sense of having failed not just publicly, but personally. I found myself back in my childhood home, sleeping in the same room where I used to study for exams.

But something unexpected happened. I started to appreciate that time in a way I never thought I would. My parents cooked for me and helped me get through each day. My dad would quietly slip money into my pocket, and I suddenly had the chance as a grown adult to spend real time with them. Long conversations, shared meals, slow mornings. It was a gift I didn’t know I needed.

As a founder, that period taught me two big lessons.

First, it showed me how stubborn I really am. A company I deeply believed in, years of work, international recognition, and then suddenly nothing. And yet, even after hitting that low, I still found myself thinking, “Okay… what’s the next version of this? How do I start again?” It didn’t break me. It clarified what mattered.

Second, it completely changed my relationship with failure. Before that, I intellectually understood failure as a regular part of entrepreneurship, but living through a failure so big that it sent me back home with zero money and zero certainty forced me to feel it. Once you survive that, failure loses a lot of its power. It becomes something you can analyze, learn from, and move past.

As a person, the change was even deeper. I became more empathetic, more grounded, and more appreciative. I stopped seeing “success” as a straight upward line. I started valuing emotional resilience more than clever ideas. I learned to ask for help, something founders are often terrible at. Life doesn’t follow the narrative we expect. Sometimes the lowest point becomes the moment where you grow the most.

Being a founder doesn’t define your worth as a human being.

Have you been a solo founder or have you had cofounders?

I’ve almost always built companies with co-founders. For me, entrepreneurship has never been a solo sport. Even in the companies where I ended up carrying most of the responsibility, especially the AI startup that pushed me to my limits, I didn’t start alone. I began with co-founders, but for various reasons, I continued solo for a while.

In my experience, co-founders make the journey not only more productive, but more human. You can get more done, but you also grow through each other. If they’re not your close friends already, they often become some of the most important people in your life.

Startups come with moments where you feel completely lost when traction stalls, funding dries up, or everything feels impossible. If you’re alone, those moments can break you. With the right co-founder, someone can pull you up when you’re down, and you’ll do the same for them.

Of course, the world is changing. A decade ago, investors avoided solo founders because it signaled ego or fragility. Today, around 30% of startups are founded by one person, and with modern tools, you can build alone if you truly want to. But for me personally, having co-founders has always made the experience richer, more sustainable, and ultimately more meaningful.

What would you say has been the most unbelievable or defining moment in your entrepreneurial journey so far?

One moment stands out because it felt so surreal that even now I sometimes wonder how it actually happened.

A few years ago, I applied to the Singularity University program in Silicon Valley, a place known for attracting brilliant people working on ambitious, futuristic ideas. I didn’t get in. But then something unexpected happened. Without telling me, a friend who had previously completed the program submitted a recommendation for me to join as a teaching assistant. So instead, I suddenly received an email inviting me to mentor the very type of founders I had tried to join.

I found myself in rooms with researchers from Google and Stanford, entrepreneurs working on the next wave of deep tech, and some of the brightest people I had ever met. And I was there not as an observer, but as someone supporting them on their journey.

That experience changed the trajectory of my life. It opened doors I didn’t even know existed, gave me a global network, and made me realize that perseverance can create opportunities in the most unexpected ways. Sometimes you don’t enter through the front door, but you still end up exactly where you were meant to be.

You’ve helped build multiple companies and advised founders around the world. What do early-stage teams tend to underestimate when scaling deep tech ventures specifically?

Two things: the importance of genuine product–market fit and the complexity of building an actual business around a scientific or technical breakthrough.

First, many teams start thinking about scaling long before they’re ready. They obsess over growth frameworks, fundraising rounds, and hiring plans when they haven’t yet proven that a paying customer truly needs what they’re building. In deep tech, this is even more dangerous because the development cycles are longer and the feedback loops are slower, which means teams often convince themselves they’re “on track” simply because the technology is advancing. You must prove two basic things: the dog will eat the dog food, and the dog owner will pay for it.

The second thing early teams underestimate is the difference between the mindset of research and commercialization. Deep tech founders often come from academia, PhD programs, and R&D labs. Their world rewards publishing, experiments, and grants. But the market rewards solving a real problem for a real customer who is willing to pay. You can have an incredible innovation and still end up with a company that goes nowhere.

And then there’s the human side. Deep tech startups often struggle with the divide between business people and scientists. The R&D team can feel like the commercial side is trying to “sell out” the science, while the business side feels the researchers don’t understand market realities. If you don’t intentionally build a shared language and goals, the company can fragment very quickly. Deep tech succeeds only when both sides respect each other’s expertise and move in sync.

Many deep tech teams come from academic backgrounds. What mindset shifts are necessary for them to commercialize their technology successfully?

The biggest mindset shift is letting go of the idea that “I’m a scientist, not a business person.” If you want to commercialize deep tech, you have to accept that business is just as important as the science itself. The truth is that science already requires sales: you sell your ideas to your university, to grant committees, to collaborators. Commercialization simply asks you to redirect that skill toward customers.

The second shift is recognizing that progress in research is not the same as progress in building a company. A company succeeds only when the innovation creates value that someone is willing to buy. That means leaving the comfort of the lab and talking to real users early.

Another important shift is embracing the idea that business is a framework, not chaos. Many academic founders see entrepreneurship as an unpredictable world. But a good commercial strategy is just a different type of experiment. Once scientists realize that, the fear tends to dissolve.

And finally, you must be willing to step into discomfort. Scientists are used to being the experts in the room. When you move into entrepreneurship, you suddenly become a beginner again. Deep tech founders who thrive are the ones who understand that commercialization isn’t lowering the scientific standard. It’s expanding the impact of their science into the real world.

Do you feel that delaying the commercial side of deep tech might sometimes be driven more by fear than by lack of knowledge?

I think this is changing, and for example, in Estonia, where we have so many success cases, I don't think many people still believe that a startup founder's career is the worst thing you can do. Because culture changes.

In the US, that's one of the reasons it's so entrepreneurial: over there, failure means nothing. It means that, good, you've tried. That's the thing to applaud. All the big people, all the success stories have failed several times. I failed a lot, five or six times more than I succeeded.

There was an interview with the actor Jamie Foxx. He has two daughters, and he taught them not to be afraid when they were confronting a situation or a hypothetical, because most of the time it's not even in front of you. Think, what's beyond fear? You do this, and the worst situation happens. And then you realize, actually, it's not that bad.

What is a good life for you?

The first and most important thing for me was that my parents raised me and educated me as an optimistic person. That's the luckiest part because otherwise, things would have been a lot more difficult.

It's four things, which are hard to balance. It's move, sleep, eating, and a great life partner.

All of this is theory. High energy moments, my relationship suffers, my sleep suffers, my eating suffers, my go-to gym routine suffers; it's a mess. It illustrates another quote from Stefan Sagmeister: “Obsessions make your life worse and your work better.” I believe in work-life balance over the long term, but when you're obsessed with building your startup, you'll suffer.

On the day-to-day level, building a startup is like jumping out of an airplane and trying to assemble the parachute before hitting the ground. In that situation, you can’t really pause and say you need perfect work–life balance — not because you shouldn’t want it, but because the reality is that your competitors aren’t pausing.
I don’t believe in an abusive culture where everyone is forced to work nonstop just because someone said so. It has to be a personal choice. But as a startup founder, there will be periods when you simply have to push. You can’t build a startup as if it’s a walk in the park.

That being said, entrepreneurship is the best life choice for me. It’s the best opportunity to build something meaningful, to grow as a person, to meet and work with the most interesting people, and to have the freedom to make the most stupid mistakes that you would never have the courage to attempt in a regular job. It’s a never-ending learning journey.