Daniel Dines: From a Dollar a Day to Romania's Richest Man| Happiness, Wealth, Risk and more | E1143

I was, uh, living on, like, $30 (cash register dings) a month. That's $1 a day, right? (cash register dings) At times, I, I didn't have money to eat properly. I knew I (cash register dings) had to make this decision to find my financial freedom, to get this (beep) money. It was almost like a prison. I behaved like a prisoner, just waiting to get out of the prison. Raising the first, uh, money was giving me such a freedom of mind. It was freedom to go big.

Ready to go? (upbeat music plays) Daniel, I am so excited for this. I've wanted to do this for a long time. Uh, I had a great chat to Brandon yesterday, who gave me so many tips. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Well, Harry, thank you so much for having me. It's always fun to see you. (laughs)

Yeah.

Especially this is a little bit unusual because-

(laughs)

... as you know, we met a lot more often in the gym of our-

(laughs)

... building.

There's, i- it's absolutely true, uh, and you put me to shame in the gym. So I'm quite pleased to be out of that, uh, but I would love to start with a little bit on you. I think great entrepreneurs are like shaped in childhood. What were you like as a child, Daniel? And when you think about like what your parents and teachers would have said about you, how would they have described you?

Maybe they will say that I was, uh, a little bit of a curious child that, uh, was argumentative, maybe at-

(laughs)

... times too argumentative for, especially for the likes of my parents. So I always like to engage, like, in debates and have my opinion and talk maybe a little bit too much. But, uh, I think I lost it (laughs) -

(laughs)

... with, with time. So now I prefer a lot more to, to listen to people. But curiosity was something that, uh, always, uh, kind of stuck with me.

Were you good in school?

Um, in, uh, primary school, I was good.

(laughs)

But after that, I discovered, uh, I don't know, other activities like-

(laughs)

... girls and going to pool and hanging out with boys. So I was pretty average except math, where I had like a natural inclination.

(laughs) Uh, th- honestly, I love to hear that 'cause I think you can sometimes hear some stories where it's like, you know, uh, super weird since from like day one and it just feels quite unrelatable. I, I did hear that I had to ask you how you learnt to code. I chatted with Luciana before and she was like, "You have to ask him how he learnt to code." So what was that story?

Well, I think it's pretty wild after today's standard. So I am not the typical hacker that started, you know, creating his first game when he was eight or something (laughs) like this. So I, uh, I went to university to math because it was quite easy for me to, to get in really. I, I haven't studied at all really to pass the exam to the university. But I went to computer science. I went to math and computer science, so I have a dual degree. And, uh, look, I went to computer science just because it was a little bit fancy at that time, but I was very disappointed in, uh, in the university. You need to picture like early 1990 Romania, just fall of communism, but all the professor, the atmosphere was still very communist, ugly people with kind of a fixed mindset, uh, so honestly, I, after the first week in, uh, at university, I decided I, I don't wanna go there. So literally, I went only to, like, exams.