How I Got Started
with Startups
How each person understands and creates their destiny based on their vocation is a personal journey that each individual has to discover and develop. I am of the opinon that in order to create startups your vocation has to be aligned, meaning discovered and working. I have no doubt that in order to create value it is necessary to know yourself and promote it from the depths of your personality, talent, determination and work. Why? Because is a very big challenge. In my case from the ground, starting from nothing, falling, starting again from less to move forward.
First I was able to find my vocation field is a mixture between design and technology, studying Industrial Design, supporting my studies in the IT business I discovered that via technolgoy I was able to produce with my own hands. Working from Help Desk to Network Administrator to Software Development and so on an so forth building.
Allwas giving myself enough opportunities, experimenting and letting my curiosity test stuff, take over, letting the trigger to happen. In business environments, projects and companies, my own ones, that seek to demonstrate a business model where better if it is disruptive, about a product or service that improves people’s quality of life and solves their problems. I currently work with companies but my ideal is to be able to solve the life of regular users.
Years have passed and I have always remained faithful to my principles, in the same line of work and with the same conviction and determination as from day one. I am the creator, mentor, investor and architect of my projects. I try to carry them out with my own means, with what I have with the people around me who nurture me and give me feedback in a healthy and collaborative environment.
I have learned a lot, so the purpose is to be able to tell how I got here and what I think determines success and failure in a startup as well as in life.
Clues and Signs
Entrepreneur is not born, it is made. However, on the way to becoming one, the first thing that is essential is to identify if there are signs and signals that allow you to recognize if you are made for this. Generally, they are events and events that we are not aware of, where later people around us or ourselves are capable of assessing their exact magnitude. In my case I had two signs that convinced me that I was capable, where the second showed me the way from my place in the world to Buenos Aires. The first with a physical hardware product and the second with a digital product. Clearly I could understand where I should go considering my limitations. More … Building from Buenos Aires Argentina.
Product Minded
Studying Industrial Design sets your mind in products, you become product minded. It was 1996, I was 21. I had an idea for a children’s toothbrush kit for Zooth Inc that designs and distributes children’s toothbrushes and toothpaste. The project consisted on two different holders with glasses, one was modular for multiple usage and the other one was individual where both came with character stickers to be placed on them by the users. They where fixed to the wall with an adhesive placed on their back.
I designed it, I modeled it and I made a very well presented model. I also built te plans and presentations for the company in the United States. All on my own. Manufacturing sudies took place in China. The kit was patented in Argentina, however the project did nottake over. It was very expensive to manufacture, the molds very complex, and too expensive for a toothbrush. However the idea good.
However my first real indicator about creating digital products came accidentally and almost without realizing it. As an Industrial Designer student I was convinces I would design and develop physicall producta. However my first product was digital, for the Internet and to my surprise highly demanded. It was based on dynamic charts, pies, bars and line type charts. The story goes like this.
First Digital Product
Years later, around 2002 I decided to leave the land administration work I moved towards software. I started working at a local statup comapany in Buenos Aires called Arinware Intelligent technologies S.A. as a Flash AS2 Developer. The statups produced software for call centers and communication comanies. My firts task was to develop an E-learning Tool for Avaya with very sophisticated animations of phones displays for training custommers and personnel. By that time the company was facing financial problems and I have been asked to take a look at some charts that the Technovoz callcenter system was not able to run due to unpaid chats licences. Bare in mind chats by that time where very expensive.
Dynamic Charts
So unintentionally and out of curiosity I found myself having to write some lines of ActionScript with trivial scripts that would draw lines and areas, first static then dynamic. The outcome made sense 💪. With some preliminar calculation and a series of test scripts I was able to write -in Flash- a basic like chart that drew a random line over an x and y axis. It was weird and old fashion type of scripting since object oriented came to ActionScript afterwords in AS3 Version so I had to figure out how to solve it via synchronic code, and I did.
I was nice. But nicer was after I got together with the .Net specialist Rodrigo Diaz and we started pushing dynamic data into it. It worked and was marvelous! The story is that I was able to develop all the suite charts including pie, bars and spider. I was amazed myself and helped the startup to avoid paying licences. However that was not what surprised me the most.
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@ruffle-rs/ruffle
It was that after I left that job I compiled all the charts and posted them on the internet on a page I used to show my work in interviews. I must have been two months after that when I was digging into the hosting server starts and found out the chats have been download used by southoands of people and all over the world.
Unfortunately I did not undertand the meaning of that until years later. If I would I could probably not be even writting this post and enjoing my revenue like FusionCharts who started at that time with similar technology as I accomplished with my very own hands. This experience opened my mind in the senso of showing me that I could build products and sell them over the Internet.
My First Startup
Having had some indications, clues and signs that I might be able to carry out my ideas and demonstrate business models, a series of aligned events occurred that paved the way for me and gave me enough motivation to face great challenges. By then, at the end of 2006, the Internet opened my mind and inside me I understood that I was a world citizen, which led me to create my first project Roaming Keyboards that lead to the development of my first product PadKite, the first multitouch mobile mouse.
World Citizen
Not all people understand the concept of a global citizen capable of creating products and services for anyone in the world. This thought came to me strongly when I carried out my first project Roaming Keyboards and product PadKite. Knowing that in order to develop hardware as an Industrial Designer I would need a lot of money and knowing that through software I could be able to sell digital products literally in every corner of the world, all I need is a cell phone and a wireless company. Perhaps what most led me to have this global conception was with the arrival of the mobile industry.
I began to think with great determination that to find exponential growth in technology development it would be necessary and mandatory for me to learn to develop my products alone. I became religious about this philosophy to the point that I stopped considering myself a designer and became an entrepreneur.
Projects
Previous and Projects
http://localhost:4321/previous
http://localhost:4321/projects
Future
Where I am going. Legacy and youth.
Conclusion
Conclusion : Over the yeards. The two most important things I have to be greatfull about is to continue building my experience while engaging with real people.
I do IT my way
It has been through The Capital of Experience that I have learned how to create startups. Always putting everything and living my dream to achieve happiness. For me this is a dream and being able to live it fills me with joy. It is my way of being in the world.
If there’s one thing I can be proud of in this life, it’s that I never gave up and I’m not going to. I will continue until I reach my dream, leave my legacy. It’s my way and that’s how I do things.
-> Build
I am a builder, good or bad I build and create. I am in charge and responsible for carrying out a project from end to end. I have the idea, I put together the team, the company, the networks and the technology to gain value through a disruptive product.
-> Forecast
I see the future, I am able to predict it. I vibrate in what can happen by making a forecast, I can anticipate.
● - I don’t copy anyone, I work on my ideas. I never carry out third-party ideas for technology projects, unless they are spin-offs from my community.
● - I build my model with my hands and my resources.
● - I don’t pitch to investors until I have validated my idea in the market and actually found value.
● - Above all, I do things my way, based on my experience, whatever the cost.
● - I do not compromise souls of relatives, no more. If I don’t have money to do something, I don’t do it. I rummage to generate it.
And more, much more than this, I did it my way. I do IT my way. And more, much more than this, I did it my way…
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My: Money, code hands on, network, team.