As a young girl growing up in a small southern Romanian town in the 1980s, real life offered Irina Arsene very little. So, she lived an explorer’s life through the books she devoured, imagining fantastical worlds and dreaming of becoming an astronaut.
Today, Arsene, Founder and CEO at mindit.io, is an explorer in the real world – and the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ 2025 Romania winner. She even has her ticket to space booked on Virgin Galactic – a trip she wants to take only after she visits every continent. She’ll be cleared for takeoff after Christmas 2025, when she and her family enjoy “Christmas with the penguins,” checking off her final continent – Antarctica.
Her early passion for learning opened the door to real-world opportunities. Excelling in math and physics, with 1st prize at Romania’s National Olympiad in Physics, after the country’s 1989 revolution, she won a Red Cross-sponsored contest and traveled to Corsica, France, for a month-long exchange.
“That was the moment when, at 12 years old, I discovered that the real world can be even more beautiful than the world I imagined through books,” she says of the experience. “That trip changed my life because, from that moment, I knew I wanted to see more.”
Exploring her strengths
Arsene has supported herself since she was 14, when cancer took her father’s life. Scholarships helped finance her college education, but needing money for her living expenses, she worked as a programmer for a software developer.
“I loved it because I’m not a theoretical person, and even though I was getting good academic results, I didn’t feel satisfied. At work, I could put my mind to good use and see the impact,” she says, explaining how she got into IT and computer science.
Upon graduation, entrepreneurship was not an option. “I had to support myself,” she explains. “It was about getting a job to have money for food and practical things.”
Her technical career soon got a boost when management recognized Arsene’s people and leadership skills. She landed at a UK company, where she grew from a software developer to a director, sitting on the company’s board. Having gotten more comfortable with risk-taking, Arsene became a shareholder in the company, taking out a loan to buy her shares. Soon after, the company was sold, and Arsene accepted a buyout.
After some soul-searching, in 2013 Irina founded an employment screening company. And after her yearlong noncompete clause expired, in 2015 she founded mindit.io, an AI-driven software engineering company. Specializing in custom software development, product engineering, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and enterprise application solutions, mindit.io’s services span the entire development lifecycle — from business research and consulting to architecture, implementation and post-launch support. Based in Zurich with delivery centers in Romania, it serves clients across Europe and the United States.
— Irina Arsene, Founder and CEO, mindit.io share
The company focuses on services, rather than products, because, as she puts it, services is the intersection of her strengths – people and technology.
AI – the cherry on top of the data sundae
Arsene is thankful for signing enterprise clients from the very beginning, giving her company the change to handle huge volumes of data.
“Ten years later, we are in a very sweet spot,” she says. At 270 employees, mindit.io is not a big company, she says, “But the beauty of a technology company is that you do not need a big team to have a worldwide impact. We have customers and projects where we impact millions of people every day.”
Arsene explains that data is the foundation of AI, and AI is really the cherry on top. “You have to have the right data, and then you have to have the knowledge and the experience to tailor AI for your needs; that’s what we do for our customers.”
Crediting hard work, and a bit of luck
Arsene does not discount the efforts she has poured into her career and her company, but she also says she feels incredibly lucky.
“I’m lucky with the curiosity I’ve always had,” she explains. “I’m super lucky with the people I’m surrounded by. On the team, we each do our part, but there’s also some luck involved with the customers we have, the resources I have access to, and it was luck that I was introduced to YPO at the Harvard OPM (Owners/Presidents Management) program. It changed my life.”
Arsene joined YPO in 2022 after learning about the world’s largest leadership community of chief executives from peers at the Harvard OPM. When she moved to Switzerland from Romania, she reached out to YPO. “It was the first thing that came to mind – a group of business people who would be local but still very international, like myself.”
Arsene admits to having a bit of an identity crisis when she separated from the company where she served as a director but is also thankful for the experience, as it led her to her role as an entrepreneur, building mindit.io. It also led her to identify first as a lifelong learner and explorer.
“I decided then I would never again identify myself with a role,” she explains. “When someone asks, I will never answer, ‘I’m an entrepreneur.’ Or, ‘I am the mother of Alexandru and Tudor.’ I will say ‘I am a lifelong learner and explorer’ – and I instantiate these in all the roles that I have in my life.”
Now, the little girl who once escaped into imaginary worlds through books is receiving accolades and awards for her work. And her real life? “It’s more beautiful than I allowed myself to dream,” she says.
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