"Pixels Opinions are the humble bricks with which one can build cathedrals overly long blog posts about engineering principles"
A man who has spent 20+ years building technology companies but still gets existential anxiety when asked "what do you do?" at the notary. Has founded three companies, led engineering at one of Spain's most successful startups, raised $70M+ in funding... but please, call him a "builder." Not a programmer (that hurts), not an entrepreneur (too pretentious), not a manager (God forbid). Just a humble builder who happens to own a Lotus Elise and wake up at 6AM on weekends to code on microcontrollers. You know, as one does.
(or: How To Accidentally Build Companies While Trying To Stay A Programmer)
Started as a "digitalizador" - literally copying data from paper to a database. Found this so soul-crushingly boring that he automated himself out of the job. This pattern of "I'll automate it rather than do it" would define his entire career and, honestly, explains a lot.
Built GPS software for farmers. Profitable from almost month one. Kept it running for 12 years. Got featured in Bloomberg. The man literally helped Spanish farmers navigate their fields and somehow this is the project he's most emotionally humble about. Sold it and moved on. modest exit
CTO of one of Spain's best-known startups. Raised $30M+. Led the tech team. Made maps cool before everyone had a "geospatial strategy." Then left, presumably because being CTO wasn't programmer-y enough. identity crisis #1
Co-founded a real-time data analytics company. Raised ~$70M from American and European investors. Built a product that processes data at absurd speeds. Still writes blog posts about how he's "not really an entrepreneur" and just "ended up here." Sir, you founded THREE companies. ~$70M raised still in denial
Wakes up at 6AM on Saturdays to code on an ESP32 microcontroller before his family wakes up. Building his own lap timer for track days. Compares himself to a chef cooking at home. This is a man at peace. 6AM Saturday alarm
(With the conviction of someone who has thought about them for way too long)
Owns a Lotus Elise, a car designed in the 90s with one premise: be as light as possible. Takes it to the racetrack. Does his own oil changes because the nearest dealer is 800km away. Wrote a 1500-word philosophical essay connecting car maintenance to software engineering principles.
Also has "some other weekend cars" (plural) and once said: "If it were up to me I'd have a parking garage with a house attached to it."
Recently drove a 475hp car and admitted struggling with the first three corners. The man builds real-time data platforms handling millions of events per second but couldn't handle the horsepower difference.
WARNING: Will compare your startup to a Lotus Elise at some point
(A guide for people who actually build things, not LinkedIn shamans)
Uses exactly two tools: Cursor and a command-line tool called llm. Refuses to learn more. Has been coding for 20 years and his tech stack for AI is literally cat file | llm "do the thing". Peak minimalism.
Created a Slack bot with his own personality. It was "bastante cabroncete" (quite a little bastard). Had to shut it down. Also made it "passive-aggressive" and had to remove that too because "LLMs are especially good at hitting where it hurts."
Regularly asks LLMs to criticize his writing in a "harsh, passive-aggressive but humorous" way. Warns others: "If you have thin skin, don't do it. No human without social problems will be this honest."
Once generated blog posts using LLMs and passed them to colleagues as his own writing. Only one person noticed. He told this story publicly, in his own Substack, seemingly proud. Absolute menace.
His daughter figured out that eating less lunch = leaving school earlier. He recognized this as a case study in how OKRs produce unintended consequences. Most dads would just say "eat your lunch." This one wrote a data engineering lesson about it.
Wakes at 6AM on weekends. Makes a large coffee. Codes on an ESP32 trying to compress data in a few kilobytes of RAM. Building a DIY lap timer for his track car. Says "that's not important" about the project he wakes up at 6AM for.
His actual about page starts with: "This is me looking at the ceiling pretending I'm thinking to say something really smart." It's genuinely the most self-aware thing on the internet and also somehow still takes itself seriously three paragraphs later.
Refers to LinkedIn thought leaders as "the same middle managers who don't know which way is up, who have found a new way to get noticed." Then goes on to write a 3000-word Substack post. The cognitive dissonance has its own gravitational field.