Who am I?

Hold on! Let me take a look at one of those motivation letters that we've all written one too many times. You know the ones – they ones that begin with a self-introduction, followed by a few flattering remarks about your life, achievements, and dreams, before finally circling back to the real reason for writing.

Let me introduce myself! I'm Cosmin, a 25-year-old master's student at the University of Vienna who's passionate about innovation, technology, and engineering—covering everything from martial arts and piloting to running marathons and building startups.

You can find me at our place in the third district, where I'm working with friends on a proptech startup that combines our real estate, business, and technology experience. Also, I'm always curious about interesting projects and people who want to change things for the better—so if you're in Vienna, let's grab a coffee (my current favorite and most overused beverage).

As for formal experiences, alongside my master's program at Uni Wien, I studied at 42 Vienna, for 7 months, an alternative computer science university based on peer-to-peer learning and C programming. I began my web development journey in early 2023 with a course from Andrei Neagoie, building upon my foundation in C and Python from school, and then decided to join 42 and deepen my knowledge in Data Structures and Algorithms. On the way, I’ve not only learnt Linux and C, but as well as several modern frameworks and libraries including React and Next.js, with some Three.js exploration for fun. I’ve decided to leave 42 due to time restraints and too many parallel activities that slowly began to require more and more of my time.

In September 2024, I landed an IT Strategy internship at OMV (Austria’s oil and gas company), where I worked with GenAI, Enterprise Architecture, and IT strategies for 6 months. Around the same time, in late 2024 I began a project with a couple of friends, developing a mobile application using Flutter and Flutter Flow while learning mobile development during the weekends.

This experiences sparked my interest in AI, which I try to combine with my existing interest for mixed reality, and Fintech, areas I continue to explore in my spare time (which is not a real thing currently). As for AI tools, I try to keep it simple and mostly use Gemini, Cursor and Claude for virtual assistants.

Beyond academics, I was part of the digital iLab 2024, an innovation and entrepreneurship program created by Uni Wien, where I’ve learnt a lot about innovation, building startups and teamwork. Together with a team of three people, we embraced the challenges of building a tech startup over the period of an academic semester. This experience added to my prior explorations in the startup world, as well as in business, tech, and digital marketing,

As for my previous academic background, that is a blend of business and technical skills. I earned a degree in International Business and Economics from FSEGA in Cluj-Napoca, and one in Civil Engineering from the University of Oradea. Since turning 18, I've immersed myself in the digital world. This entrepreneurial spirit led me to launch a few startups attempts and explore business development and digital marketing for several years. I then leveraged my technical skills by working as a SEO Engineer for a US multinational (Yardi), for one year.

Following the pandemic, I decided to take a gap year. During this time, I traveled a bit, embarked on a new journey of self-discovery and found a couple of new passions, such as playing guitar, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and piloting. Afterwards, I've decided to tackle on a new challenge and move to a new country, Vienna.

When I'm not in the office, you'll find me trying to stay active, whether it's training for my friends' latest marathon scheme (which I somehow get roped into), practicing martial arts, or simply reading and writing.

Feel free to drop me a message and maybe grab a coffee!

Fun Fact

Once, we had to squeeze a bathub through a window so that Jared Leto could take an ice bath before a concert at the Electric Castle festival

Linktree Page with useful resources

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My top 7 books to read

• The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
• Atomic Habits - James Clear
• The Lonely Century - Noreena Hertz
• Breath - James Nestor
• One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• When Breath becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
• Man's Search for Meaning (Victor Frankl)

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Things I'm proud of

• Bringing this website to life
• Writing daily for 500 days (with an average of 1200 words per day)
• Completing the "100 days of coding" challenge (can be seen on my github)
• Running the Vienna Marathon 2024 in 4:29:50 and Rome Marathon in 2025
• Surviving the 42 Piscine (one month C bootcamp)
• Winning the Nasa Space Apps Hackathon in 2023
• Joining the digital iLab
• Taking piloting classes
• Quitting social media