Alex Circei is the kind of founder who’s been through it all: building, scaling, failing, learning, and doing it again. Today, he’s the CEO and co-founder of Waydev, a platform that helps engineering leaders actually understand what’s happening in their teams, without relying on gut feeling or guesswork.
Before Waydev, Alex spent nearly two decades in tech. He started companies, wore every hat you can think of — sales, product, operations, and learned the hard way what it takes to build something that lasts. That journey shaped his belief: good teams don’t need to be micromanaged, they just need the right signals to do great work.
“Too many tools measure what developers do, but not how they work together.” Alex says. “I wanted to fix that.”
He didn’t take shortcuts. It took 13 applications before he was accepted into Y Combinator, making him one of the first Romanian founders to get in. That same persistence shows up in everything he does, whether it’s leading a product launch or crossing the finish line of an Ironman triathlon (he’s completed seven, including Ironman California in 2023).
Alex’s writing has been featured in places like Forbes, TechCrunch, and HackerNoon, where he was named Contributor of the Year in Agile and Engineering Management. He’s also a member of the Forbes Technology Council, where he shares real-world lessons from startup life with other founders and tech leaders.
But if you ask him, he’s not here for the spotlight. He’s here to build. To help teams do better work. And to change the way the tech world thinks about engineering performance.
