SOFTWARE ENGINEER | UI UX DESIGNER

I was born and raised in Southern California till I had a dream to build a hotel in Costa Rica. After raising $700,000 I packed up moved to Latin America at age 19. As project Manager, I oversaw the entire design and construction till finish . Once finished I managed the property along with hosting surf tours for California Entrepreneurs.

The longer time went on the bigger technology was growing and I found myself spending more and more time on my computer learning about this tech revolution that was about to happen.

 

I met my wife and we had our first son after 6 years in Costa Rica, this is when I knew I had a bigger purpose . We sold the hotel , packed up our stuff and moved straight back to California. We rented a home in the heart of Silicon Valley , Palo Alto , and I enrolled in every tech course available at Stanford Universities summer continuing studies along with going to every startup event and interning anywhere that would take me. My new dream was to build the next big social network .

 

My first internship was at AOL - Palo Alto with a company called Startup Grind. They interviewed CEO's of successful tech companies from the area to educate and inspire entrepreneurs, engineers, designers and investors from the area. After a year of working with the CEO of Startup Grind , I had a vision these great events could be in every big city worldwide . I told Derek that I am moving back to Southern California and I would run the second event at AOL in Beverly Hills. Startup Grind is now in over 300 cities worlwide!

 

Working as an event host , it was only natural I started my own startup . Within a few months I built a team , an MVP and raised $500,000 from an Investment group based out of Palm Beach , Florida. We finished Version 1 , launched and ran out of capital . My first failure as a entrepreneur. With the taste of success , we began working on another startup and launched into the app store . But no success . Then another startup and another .

 

After working with engineers and designers for years, I found a passion in development . I started learning how to design then to code . This was when I decided to attend UCIrvine and began taking computer science classes then enrolling into several coding bootcamps learning the latest in programming technologies.

 

Fast forward 1.5 years , I have been programming in several different languages from LAMP stack to the modern MERN stack and everything in between . I am working with one of the fastest growing tech companies in the world Fast Field Forms and finishing two social networks after I'm done working, taking care of three kids and spending time with my beautiful wife. The sky is the limit!