Farewell to Alfredo

Last year was crazy busy. I spent all of my year working on a new project, Alfredo. This year is starting on a different note, as we close down operations and move to the next chapter. Its already March and I do not even know what happened to January and February.

I learned to spin up a business from scratch (still suck at it), to work on things I've not previously done, but most of all learning to interact with the venture capital market from a different perspective: being a founder. So far all my interactions with VCs were as an executive, in board meetings and so son.

I met a lot of different people and different styles. We collected our sea of nos and got also our yes. So wait a minute, why are we stopping?

I picked a thesis of an assistant by subscription, which can be scalable through the use of technology in the backoffice: you automate the work of the assistants, and give them powerful tools so the business can scale. Sounds great, doesn't it?

What I learned in practice though is that there's more process than technology to be built in that space. The operations with people would grow substantially and raise many issues: from handling/storage of sensistive information at scale, to creation of procedures for everything. A lot of the procedures I could not see how to automate in the short and mid-term, and the ones that could be automated were then removing the edge such a business would have in comparison to purely tech/AI based assistants.

I do believe that this can be a sucessful lifestyle business. Being realistic about it though I do not think I am the person to build that business. I am an engineer and I like building technology. Which started to lead me towards productivity more and more, and less and less towards assistance which is where we started.

For me, productivity made a lot of sense: you help people to organize and sort the information they need to handle in their day to day, and build the freaking task list that is in everyone's head but nobody has the time to write it down. Computers can probably resolve that problem a lot faster, and add real value to people who need to juggle WhatsApp, e-email, Calendaring, Slack and other tools everyday. Condensing all the information that comes from all these sources in a way that makes people more empowered sound like a great problem to resolve.

The issue though for me is that this isn't the business I set out to do. Growing the operations to have the business progress at venture capital speed was going to grow to be a distraction and a huge pain because it was not the problem we were trying to resolve to begin with. Not growing the existing business meant our runway would be short to start with because the money we would sucessfully manage to raise wouldn't be enough to build technology fast enough. We didn't even have the right team to build technology fast enough (our tech team was two people only, fantastic people, but only two).

The decision was hard, but it was crystal clear to me. I think there's potential for businesses doing assistance to succeed. But I know some of them are already struggling to scale as they need to be venture scale, and honestly I didn't want to get into that treadmill. Big people operations don't play to my strengths or interests.

At the start of the year we talked to our investors, our team and then our clients to inform everyone of our decision. Now it is just cleanup.

When I tell people this they all ask me what is next. I am not sure yet. I am thinking about the productivity question that unfolded while learning and working on the assistant thesis. I am taking some time off. I promised myself I would do that back in 2019 and never did it, so I think I am in debt with Fernanda. I am also thinking about what other experiences Fernanda as a child wanted and expected to have, and working to nurture the dreams of that little me. In that process I am sure the next chapter will become clearer and clearer.

The only solid plan I have at the moment is to run the Zürich Half Marathon! I am having a lot of fun with the training. You've always cheered for me, please do it again on this one.