Brainient

I started writing software (mostly web-related) when I was 12 and became a web development freelancer when I was 14. The first website I ever coded was for a non-profit run by my sister.

During my first year in college (I studied Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Spiru Haret University in Bucharest, Romania), I decided to start a software outsourcing company and hire a bunch of my friends. We had no clients, so we started bidding for projects on Rent A Coder, Elance and Getafreelancer.com. Our work was good and over the course of our college years we became a team of 10 engineers building software for companies in Europe and the US. While creating software for others, we were also working on our own ideas. In 2009 we had the idea to build a tool that would help advertisers create interactive, personalized video ads.

That product took off, so in 2009 I moved to London to raise money from investors and build a sales team. We ended up raising $4 million in financing from a number of amazing investors, and between 2009 and 2016 Brainient became the leading interactive video ad server in Europe, with customers in 20 countries.

In 2016 Brainient was acquired by Teads, one of our clients and the largest independent video advertising marketplace in the world.