Dan Dăscălescu is a Romanian-American entrepreneur based in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...

, who co-founded the ship-based

seed accelerator Startup accelerators, also known as seed accelerators, are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components and culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubators are often g ...

project Blueseed in an attempt to allow entrepreneurs to start companies near Silicon Valley without US visa restrictions. He was also a software engineer at

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

and

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

and an ambassador for The Seasteading Institute, a think tank researching ocean communities.

Biography

Dascalescu was born in

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

and immigrated into

in fall 2004, after facing visa issues. He applied for a

green card A green card, known officially as a permanent resident card, is an identity document which shows that a person has permanent residency in the United States. ("The term 'lawfully admitted for permanent residence' means the status of having been ...

in 2007 and received it in April 2013. Dascalescu cited his visa difficulties as an inspiration for Blueseed, a startup accelerator that would avoid immigration restrictions by being located on a ship in

international waters The terms international waters or transboundary waters apply where any of the following types of bodies of water (or their drainage basins) transcend international boundaries: oceans, large marine ecosystems, enclosed or semi-enclosed region ...

. Before Blueseed, Dascalescu worked at Yahoo! as a software globalization developer and open-source contributor, and became an ambassador for the Seasteading Institute and founded the

Quantified Self The quantified self refers both to the cultural phenomenon of self-tracking with technology and to a community of users and makers of self-tracking tools who share an interest in "self-knowledge through numbers". Quantified self practices overlap ...

Forum, an online community for users passionate about self-tracking. While in Romania, he translated books on

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

networking and on building

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serv ...

s. Dascalescu has a degree in Computer Science, with published papers on knowledge modeling and robotics. Most recently, Dascalescu worked as a Developer Advocate for

Blueseed

Blueseed was a startup community project that Dascalescu co-founded with Seasteading Institute colleagues Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija, and served as CIO for. The project prepared to launch a ship near

to serve as a startup community and entrepreneurial

incubator An incubator is anything that performs or facilitates various forms of incubation, and may refer to: Biology and medicine * Incubator (culture), a device used to grow and maintain microbiological cultures or cell cultures * Incubator (egg), a de ...

without United States work visa requirements. The platform was set to offer living and office space, high-speed Internet connectivity, and regular ferry service to the mainland. The existence of the project is due to the lack of U.S. visas for entrepreneurs. Instead, customers will use the much easier to obtain B-1/B-2 visas to travel to the mainland, while work will be done exclusively on the ship. On July 31, 2013, Dascalescu became COO of Blueseed, after CEO Max Marty announced he was stepping back from day-to-day operations.

Personal

Dascalescu's interests include

transhumanism Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition. Transhuma ...

, life extension, physical fitness and self-quantification. He completed the

P90X The Beachbody Company is a publicly traded American fitness and media company based in El Segundo, California. It operates the brands Beachbody On Demand, Team Beachbody, MYXfitness and Openfit. The company also sells dietary supplements such ...

program and presented his findings at the 2011 Quantified Self conference, contrasting it with the Occam Protocol described by

Tim Ferriss Timothy Ferriss (born July 20, 1977) is an American entrepreneur, investor, author, podcaster, and lifestyle guru. He became well-known through his ''4-Hour'' self-help book series—including ''The 4-Hour Work Week'', ''The 4-Hour Body'', and '' ...

in Four Hour Body. He is an open-source contributor, advocates for English to be used as a global language and challenges religion.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dascalescu, Dan Living people 21st-century American businesspeople 1980s births Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area Yahoo! employees Place of birth missing (living people) Romanian emigrants to the United States Chief information officers