Octavian Costache

Co-founder at Stellar Health

New York, New York, United States

About

My superpower is to make things exist in the world. I have been building software products for more than 25 years, either on my own, at Google, or as a technical co-founder of two successful startups. I believe that giving people ownership, holding them accountable for outcomes while supporting them along the way is the best way to build a high performing team.

Experience

  • Stellar Health (8 yrs 3 mos)
    • Chief Data Officer / Co-Founder
      Apr 2026 - Present · 3 mos

      Leading the transition of the Engineering team to AI development.

    • CTO / co-founder
      Apr 2018 - May 2026 · 8 yrs 2 mos

      Healthcare costs are one of the biggest problems in the United States today. We are building a platform that assists Healthcare Providers (doctors and support staff), significantly reduce the cost of care while improving quality; making patients healthier with better outcomes. We're hiring! If you are a great engineer, or know great engineers interested, let me know!

  • Spring Inc. (5 yrs 10 mos)
    • Advisor
      Jul 2017 - Nov 2018 · 1 yr 5 mos

    • CTO / co-founder
      Feb 2013 - Jul 2017 · 4 yrs 6 mos

      Built the tech side of the company from zero to 50 people, while Spring raised $100mm in three rounds of funding and grew to an overall headcount of ~120. Hired, built, managed and scaled up the Engineering, Integrations & Product Management teams. What we've delivered on the technical side - a full catalog of products with up-to-date inventory from 1500 integrated brands - was the only tech of its kind in the US (while others like Stripe, Twitter or Pinterest attempted but did not succeed).

  • Senior Software Engineer at Google
    Oct 2005 - Jul 2011 · 5 yrs 10 mos

    + Author of the Multiple Inboxes Gmail lab feature (everything from concept to implementation). + Built the Google Finance charts. + Led the team that made the necessary changes to core Google Maps infrastructure to support social search (re-ranking of search results based on your friend's ratings). + Took over and launched "Starring" on Google Maps. + Built a generalized charting component now used in Spreadsheets, Search Insights, and a few other Google properties. + Made significant contributions to Actionscript support inside Google (co-wrote the style guide, set up new automated testing infrastructure).

  • CTO / co-founder at doizece.ro
    2002 - 2005 · 3 yrs

    While in college, I built an online-multiplayer gaming site (chess, backgammon, poker and 12 other various card and board games). The site became one of the top visited Romanian websites at the time, with 250.000 registered users.

  • Software Engineer at Freelancer
    2000 - 2005 · 5 yrs

    Built and designed a resource sharing portal for high school teachers, which became one of the most popular educational websites in Romania. (http://www.didactic.ro) Built and designed Flash Games. Built and designed around 20 small and medium company websites, some of which are still online.