Dan is an ex-Yahoo! software developer, globalization lead and knowledge manager, with a broad vision of the tech arena. He is a seasteading ambassador, connected with the open source and emergent tech circles, and is excited about making big ideas happen. Prior to Blueseed, he founded the Quantified Self Forum, worked in satellite communications in Belgium and co-authored and translated a number of IT books in Romanian. He was named #1 Romanian Entrepreneur to Watch in 2013 by Wall Street Romania and spoke at the Bitcoin 2013 conference.
Dan Dascalescu is the co-founder and CTO of Blueseed, the first startup community at sea, scheduled to launch in Q2 2014. Blueseed will convert a cruise ship into a live/work/play space designed to encourage innovation and creativity (named in the press "the Googleplex of the Sea"), and will anchor it 12 nautical miles from the coast of Silicon Valley, in international waters outside the jurisdiction of the United States. Foreign entrepreneurs will 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.
Prior to Blueseed, Dan founded the Quantified Self Forum, a community for those passionate about self-tracking and related technologies. Earlier, he led localization efforts at Yahoo! and managed Yahoo!'s internal wiki, contributed to a number of open source projects, worked in satellite communications at Newtec Belgium, and co-authored and translated several books on computer networks and software development.
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 2005. 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 byWallStreet.ro. He has spoken at MIT, Stanford, on BBC Radio, and at many startup events.
Dan's most recent talk was on Blueseed and Bitcoin, the crypto-currency that enables instant and worldwide peer-to-peer transactions, with low or zero processing fees, and without a central issuing bank.