One of our favorite tasks at Rampiva is to chat with our team members and learn about their skills, their backgrounds, and their hobbies. We have such an incredibly talented and diverse group here, and we want to spotlight that expertise.

This month, we introduce you to our CEO and Founder, Daniel Boteanu. He has built an innovative company with a team that is just a passionate about providing companies with the tools they need to access data efficiently and cost effectively.

Rampiva: Let’s start with your career path. What did it look like?

Daniel: After I got my computer science engineering degree, my first job was working for Microsoft. I was part of a small team dedicated to providing technical support and guidance to IT administrators throughout universities in France. During that time, I learned a lot about managing large network deployments and problem solving.

In parallel, I was doing freelance software development with friends mostly as a hobby and decided to dive into building software more seriously. I worked for a short period at Schlumberger, building geophysical software simulators – this was an amazing experience and taught me about the engineering implications of building software with several million lines of code.

I was always drawn to hacking, in both interpretations of the word: the old-school, the “hacking” of a tool to make it do something that its creators did not originally design it to do, as well as the current cyber security version which is exploiting a design or implementation flaw that allows hackers to break into computer systems. To satisfy my curiosity for the latter, I went back to university and pursued a master’s degree in information security.

Armed with theoretical knowledge about information security, I built and led the ethical penetration testing team at Okiok, a small, security-focused professional services company in Canada. My team ethically broke into the networks of major financial, energy, media and government institutions. After seeing what real-world security issues companies were struggling to solve and how a hacker could exploit them, I started the practice of digital forensic investigations to help corporations respond to internal and external digital threats. I then managed the investigations and eDiscovery lab at KPMG in Canada, including the design and deployment of investigations and eDiscovery platforms. I loved working on large, 100 TB+, projects and solving both the management and technical challenges that come at this scale.

Rampiva: What made you know that starting Rampiva was worth the risk? Did you expect the company to be where it is today?

Daniel: When I started Rampiva, I wasn’t looking at it from a risk perspective and trying to predict how large the company would grow. I simply knew that there was a gap in the eDiscovery and investigations solutions available because I was feeling the effects of it first-hand, and wanted to be the one to fill that.

Rampiva: Can you share more about the problem we’re solving and why you’re so passionate about it?

Daniel: Most people working in the field of data collection, processing, or investigations do so because they are problem solvers, and they provide the most value when they use their mind creatively to overcome technological or human problems.

Although it might look like an easy job to “mechanically” perform the same data processing tasks over and over, rewrite the same report, or monitor the advancement of a progress bar, people easily get bored and unmotivated in such an environment. Rampiva changes this dynamic and frees people from routine activities to designing processes, troubleshooting and improving existing ones and solving new problems. Not only is this more rewarding for individuals, it transforms them into a value multiplier inside the company. Having been in this seat myself, I remember thinking many times that “I solved this problem already” and wished there was a way to capture and re-use this solution seamlessly so I could focus on solving the next hard problem – Rampiva does this, and we’re working on making it as accessible as possible.

Rampiva: What excites you about Rampiva’s future? About the legal industry?

Daniel: Currently, we as a society produce a lot of data. With the exception of a few large companies which made it their business to capture and analyze user data, most enterprises and service providers use suboptimal processes to collect and process internal or external data, let alone analyze it and harness its value.

This becomes apparent in the legal sector. Because companies are obligated to retain, collect, process, review and produce data in certain circumstances, we see this process unfold along with all its inefficiencies. In other cases, such as knowledge management, most companies don’t even go down this path because the cost is too high, and the unknowns are too many. Rampiva is creating the building blocks reduce these costs by orders of magnitude and enable companies to extract value from data that they might already have under their management. We’re not doing this on our own – we stand on the shoulders of giants, and we know that other players will come and build on top of what we’re providing.

Rampiva: What are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned from being a business owner and CEO? From your career?

Daniel: In my early career I thought naively that having the best technology would almost always imply success. Over the years, I learned that while have great technology is a requirement, it’s of no good if people don’t know about it, don’t trust it, or don’t have a network to draw learned lessons from.

Rampiva: What are your guiding principles for running a business?

Daniel: Define the foundational values and goals of the company and surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

Rampiva: What are you listening to or reading right now?

Daniel: Some of my favorite podcasts are The Journal. – WSJ Podcasts, Planet Money : NPR and Reply All | Gimlet (gimletmedia.com). Adam Savage’s Tested – YouTube is a great resource for builders of all kinds. When designing and building software, I get pumped when listen to CyberPunk music.

Rampiva: What do you like to do in your spare time away from work?

Daniel: I take my car on a mountain pass or to a racetrack. The Nurburgring became my favorite track after my first lap there. In the past, I used to be able to say that I modify cars to increase their performance, but since moving to Switzerland, I discovered that the laws here are much stricter in terms of what you can do to a car after it left the factory – this hobby has now evolved into navigating the rules and regulations and getting the performance modifications homologated, which at times seems like self-inflicted pain.

Rampiva: How do you define success?

Daniel: Being able to look back at the last day, the last year, or your life so far, and come to the conclusion that you’ve had a meaningful positive impact. This applies both to the company as well as on a personal level.

Want to know more about the Rampiva team and what we love about working in legal technology? Visit our Careers page, get in touch, or connect with us on Twitter or LinkedIn to see our latest updates in your feed.