🚀 Entrepreneur | AI & Quantum Computing Expert

I was born in Mexico City in 1993. From a young age, I spent a lot of time on the computer, and with the help of a book from my dad, I took on the task of learning to create my own programs. After my parents’ divorce, I became aware of money and started developing and selling websites for small businesses. The mother of a friend from high school introduced me to my first business partner, who was twenty-five years older than me, when I was 14 years old. Together, we founded Crabapps in 2008, one of the first digital publishing houses in Spanish. We published dozens of books by Ibero-American authors in the form of iPhone applications with sales throughout Latin America, the United States, and Spain.

After that, I studied three semesters of medicine at Tec de Monterrey until, with the help of my career director, I realized that my passion was being an entrepreneur in technology and applied science. I dropped out and founded Green Light Innovation with my best friend, dedicated to creating iPhone and Android apps, especially in the areas of transportation and civil engineering.

Later, I moved to Lima for two years, where I served as the technology director of Online Studio Productions and founded, with two of my long-time friends, an iOS programming school within the San Agustín Institute and some courses at the San Ignacio Loyola University. I am confident that I was the first to teach the Swift programming language in Peru, as I conducted the course a few days after returning from San Francisco, where it was announced at Apple’s WWDC.

Influenced by my mom, I returned to Mexico to study medicine for one more semester at the age of 20. During this time, I met Victor Chapela, who invited me to be the second developer of his startup Suggestic, based in Palo Alto. I worked as the iOS app developer and, a few years later, returned to develop the augmented reality functionality. At Suggestic, I met Ricardo Corral, who introduced me to artificial intelligence. This passion led me to leave medicine again to fully dedicate myself to it. Suggestic shifted away from artificial intelligence applied to nutrition for type II diabetes prevention, which was my reason for working there. I thanked Victor for everything I learned from him and accepted Joseph Grimberg’s invitation to become the technology director of Creative Med, a Colombian company developing patient education applications with videos and 3D models. During my time there, I returned to Tec de Monterrey to study mechatronics. With another student, I founded a startup in my free time called Fika, offering point-to-point private transportation with minivans using artificial intelligence to optimize routes and facial recognition for access.

I have lived independently since I was 18, so to supplement my income, I started offering innovation consulting for corporations in Santa Fe, private AI classes, and developed an on-demand nanny application for Nauroo, a company in Sunnyvale, California.

An assassination attempt during an engagement party of friends sent me to the hospital for three weeks. Thanks to Dr. Galván, Dr. Chaires, and Dr. Cárdenas, who saved my life from a brain hemorrhage with no lasting consequences other than a few titanium plates in my face, I am here to tell this story. Fearful of another attempt, I accepted a job at SAP in California and moved to the United States. I attended technology meetings at Google, Stanford, and immersed myself in dozens of courses, books, articles, and anything I could find to learn Silicon Valley-level artificial intelligence.

Eventually, José Antonio Tena, the former product director at Suggestic, contacted me and invited me to become a partner and technology director at Piktia, a Mexican company using AI to create personalized printed photo albums. When we raised the seed round and the situation had calmed down, I decided to return to Mexico.

In my free time, I mentored the startup Dagus, founded by friends of my brother, providing guides written by high school students to help pass exams. I taught full stack and mobile programming to a group of 15 high school students from La Salle, some of whom went on to significant achievements like directing the mobile applications lab at Universidad Panamericana and studying computer science at Stanford.

One weekend, with no one available to go out, I signed up for a Startup Weekend with a fashion tech vertical, as I have always been passionate about fashion. As a teenager, I was enamored with Cher Horowitz from the movie Clueless. When it was time to present a startup idea, I thought of the virtual closet from the film, where she could see all her clothes and select outfits on the computer. Using my newly acquired deep learning knowledge, I realized it was logical to use a YOLO or SSD for clothing detection and a graph neural network to generate outfits. Two girls from Aguascalientes joined my team, and we created Oli Fashion House in one weekend, winning the competition.

Always curious and passionate about creating things, I became interested in drones during that time. The idea of high-speed inter-city deliveries fascinated me, and I wanted to build a self-driving quadcopter using SLAM techniques. In November 2016, I packed my belongings into a suitcase and went to Brussels to design it. I stayed there for the duration allowed by the Schengen visa and developed the entire Android version of Piktia while there.

Upon returning, I continued as the full-time technology director of Piktia and mentored Dagus and Oli in my spare time. I moved to Aguascalientes to work with my Oli partners on weekends when not occupied with Piktia until my computer was stolen, prompting a return to Mexico City. Diego Font joined Dagus, recognizing a significant opportunity in artificial intelligence, and the company transformed into an AI consultancy called Quarkma, leveraging the talent of the La Salle students I had trained.

Eventually, I met a Spanish journalist with whom I planned to marry, moving to Madrid together. Sadly, I had to leave Piktia, Oli, and Quarkma to join a Spanish company that could provide a work visa. After a few months living together, we separated.

I lived in Madrid for four years, during which time I cofounded Erudit, an innovative company specializing in AI for HR. At Erudit, we focused on improving the employee experience by leveraging advanced AI technologies backed by organizational psychology research. It helped organizations measure employee sentiment, engagement, and burnout risk, offering actionable data to enhance workforce productivity and well-being.

Now, I live in Riga and serve as the CTO of HostPal, a company that manages vacation rental properties. HostPal combines experience, technology, and industry-leading tools to help property owners increase reservations, simplify management, and boost income. Our solutions include multi-platform distribution, dynamic pricing, guest assistance, and a comprehensive portal and mobile app for property management.

Another passion of mine is public policy, which I discovered thanks to an invitation from the British Embassy in Mexico to travel to London with a mission of AI experts to develop the national agenda. There, I met Constanza Gómez-Mont, with whom I later co-founded IA2030MX, and together with other experts, we drafted the document. Another member, Enrique Zapata, invited me years later to participate in a larger project with the Development Bank of Latin America to write a chapter of the book Experiencia IA on data infrastructures for AI use in the public sector.

In my free time, I mentor at the MentorDay Accelerator in Tenerife, advising entrepreneurs on technology, marketing, investment, HR, sales, and any issues they face.