April 22, 2021 3 min read A software programmer who left Romania for a job at Microsoft in the U.S. had a "crazy idea" that saw him return home and become one of the world's richest individuals, Daniel Dines is the CEO of UiPath Inc, an automation-software maker that raised $1.3 billion in a U.S. initial public offering on Wednesday. The 49-year-old owns a $6 billion stake in the company, making him one of the top 500 billionaires in the world. The path to that success, however, wasn't easy. Dines studied math and computer science at the University of Bucharest at a time when Romania was still under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's rule. At last year's annual Montgomery Summit technology conference, he revealed that he immigrated to the U.S. in his 20s to work for Microsoft in 2001.