For my entire life I have always wanted to change the world, from my early days when I fantasized about getting my parents back together to my teen years when I wondered about helping the poor to my present years when I dream about fixing what seems to be broken while building on top what seems to be right (as my friend would say: for some definition of right).

I have stood in awe looking at how companies such as Tesla, Space-X, Impossible Foods, Pfizer (and so many scientists), Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, the Linux Foundation, et al have changed the world, they have built products that have profoundly impacted or will impact our lives, think about phones, think about the internet as we know it, think about having the biggest knowledge library in the known history of human kind literally at your fingertips and virtually for free. Or maybe think about what Tesla and Space-X are aiming to build, a new bread of transportation and new home for human kind.

I guess you could take these achievements apart if you focus on the bad parts of our society which I don’t deny they exist, but I don’t think we can deny the net benefits and how humanity will look back 20 or 50 years back at these pioneers will be highly positive.

My current stage in life#

And so I am at a breaking point in my life, I feel just ripe, just able to do something big, I want to try to change the world for the better.

I have been an unofficial Tech Lead at my current company for at least two years now, and while I have seized the experience to grow technically, personally and leadership-wise there’s a lot of overworking and overthinking involved, weekends, nights dedicated to someone else’s business, and my reasoning is, I do want to do something big and I am already putting the long hours, the responsibility, the leadership, the stress, and so there’s little to argue against the possibility of aiming higher.

I have been reading about the Startup culture that involves innovation and passion and creativity, I have been reading about how the process is and there’s a lot of way already paved for anybody who wants to do something great.

I might be on the older side of the entrepreneurs but hey, I have been brought up in poor (and getting poorer) Latin American country, my grandparents moved up the ladder from poor (and I mean poor like having 10 siblings and leaving in precarious conditions), their biggest aspirations where to have a steady job at a big company and a house with regular meals, the culture around me is not of dreamers, is about survivors (among other things), and so there’s little to no entrepreneur culture and that might explain me being late, nevertheless I will play my odds.

Startups and incubators#

I have some ideas and people to do them with floating around that I wont disclose at the moment for obvious reasons and I’m using extensively the documentation that ycombinator (an incubator) has online, for example the faq, or the how to apply guide.

They have a nice program where, if you are selected, you will be able to get help from the experts to give form to your project and if everything goes correctly get funding, while also getting a lot of networking thanks to the extensive network of founders they possess. This article describes exactly what happens inside the program.

It surprises me how many misconceptions I actually had about the whole process, and so I’m pretty thankful about them writing the more common ones down.

There is so much to innovate over and they actually have a broad list of areas that they see with a good future although you need not to restrict to that list. And simply by looking at that list my head and my heart start trembling with emotion, of eagerness to tackle those problems. At this point I am non stop thinking machine.

I will be doing the Startup school free program they provide and I would probably recommend my potential co-founders to also take it.

I am also reading Zero to One by Peter Thiel which so far has been a really good book.

Closing#

It is scary as hell to be in front of this massive uncertainty wall, I still ask my self if “am I x enough”, where x might be smart, willing, capable, strong, hard-worker, and so much more.

Luckily I have strong friends that are definitively co-founder material and a partner that got my back.

If you are interested if having updates about my journey let me know.