I am a Software Developer and Entrepreneur. Originally from Venezuela, I have been living in New York since 2001. These days we split our time between Brooklyn and the Catskills. I prefer the pronouns he/him (and el in spanish).
I have been part of several startups, some more successful than others. The biggest hit was StreetEasy, where as a cofounder and CTO, I helped build a company that transformed the Real Estate consumer experience in NYC. Seems like a big claim, but it's true. The Guardian says so. We ended up selling the company to Zillow in 2013. Other projects included loquesea.com, a network of sites for latinamerican youth, back in the first dot-com wave, and String, a social- and chat-based system for restaurant recommendations.
Most recently, I've been Dean of Computing & Technology at Platzi, an online educational platform aiming to change the economy of Latin America. There I've been leading the team that creates all our courses and activities related to software development, data science and computing in general.
I have been an advisor for multiple companies, given dozens of talks on tech topics and contributed to multiple open source projects. I have been a full-time software developer since 1995, and I have been working with Rails since 2005.
One of my proudest achievements is being the official author of the 🫓 AREPA emoji (and co-author of the 🫒 OLIVE emoji too) as part of my involvement with Emojination.
I'm an avid urban cyclist, involved in the safe-streets movement. I'm also an active amateur radio operator a maker and woodworker, and I cook a great paella.