Dan Dascalescu
Dan Dascalescu is a serial entrepreneur and software engineer based in Silicon Valley. He co-founded Blueseed (the startup community on a ship in international waters), iDoRecall, StockBase (the financial news aggregator built with Meteor.JS), the Quantified Self Forum (a community for self trackers), and has worked at Google, Yahoo! and other companies. He is a supporter of Bitcoin (decentralized currencies), seasteading (exploring the possibilities of ocean-based micro-nations), transhumanism (enhancing the human condition with the use of technology) and open source software.
A software developer by training, Dan is now building iDoRecall, an innovative learning app, using the Meteor JavaScript platform. Earlier, he built StockBase, a financial news aggregator for value investors, worked in front-end engineering at Google, led localization efforts at Yahoo! and managed Yahoo!’s internal wiki, contributed to a number of open source projects, worked in satellite communications in Belgium, and co-authored and translated several books on computer networks and software development.
In 2011, Dan co-founded Blueseed, the first attempt at a startup community at sea. Blueseed would convert a cruise ship into a live/work/play space designed to encourage innovation and creativity (nicknamed by the press “the Googleplex of the Sea”), and would station it 12 nautical miles from the coast of Silicon Valley, in international waters outside the jurisdiction of the United States. Foreign entrepreneurs would be able to legally work on the ship without the need for a US work visa, and to travel to the mainland via ferry using easy-to-obtain business/tourist visas. Dan is also an ambassador for seasteading, the movement working to enable ocean communities – floating cities – which will allow the next generation of pioneers to peacefully test new ideas for government. The most successful can then inspire change in governments around the world. Another seasteading venture Dan is advising is Oceanus, an initiative to recycle the plastic form the Pacific gyre into floating platforms that can be assembled into habitable seasteads.
Prior to Blueseed, Dan founded the Quantified Self Forum, a community for those passionate about self-tracking and related technologies, and spoke at the QS2011 and QS2013 conferences.
Dan studied Computer Science in Romania and scored 2nd place nationwide at the Olympiad in Informatics. He has also taken classes in nanotechnology and molecular biology in Silicon Valley, where he has been living since fall 2004. He is passionate about emergent technologies, critical thinking, transhumanism, psychology, and business development.
Dan was featured in numerous articles in the Romanian, American and international press and was named #1 Romanian entrepreneur to watch in 2013 by WallStreet.ro. He has spoken at MIT, Stanford, on BBC Radio, at the Bitcoin 2013 and Quantified Self conferences, and at many startup events.