by Angela Guess
This profile of Christian Gheorghe explores how Gheorghe’s youth behind the iron curtain has spurred his drive to democratize data. It begins, “Christian Gheorghe grew up in Romania, behind the Iron Curtain. In the 80s, he would bootleg vinyl LPs smuggled from the west, and when he first heard Pink Floyd’s The Wall, he realized the west offered far more than his government led him to believe. ‘I didn’t know English, but I was trying to understand it… And I really started to wonder: What’s going on here? It really shaped my desire to seek freedom.’”
It continues, “In the early days of the Romanian revolution, he escaped to the U.S., where fate dropped him into the world of predictive analytics software — tools big businesses use to analyze their financial data so they can better understand how they’re performing and what the future might hold. As the market consolidated around behemoths such as IBM, Oracle, and HP, Gheorghe’s analytics outfit was sold to SAP, and he served as an SAP chief technology officer for three years. But after leaving the software giant in 2009, he realized that the world’s data offered far more than traditional analytics software led you to believe.”
The article goes on, “As an entrepreneur in residence at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Greylock Partners, Gheorghe set out to “democratize” analytics software — to give more people access to more information than was traditionally available from software sold by the likes of Oracle, HP, and, yes, his previous employer. It’s a mission whose roots he traces all the way back to his college days in Romania. ‘I really think it has to do with my upbringing in a communist country,’ he says, ‘and trying to come here for freedom.’”
