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I ❤️ to Build

💡 I'm a Product guy. I see software engineering as a means to an end: to ship useful, impactful, or just plain fun stuff to the World. Feel free to explore some of my projects.

Active Projects 🛠️

These are the active projects that I've built (alone or with others) that I am most proud of. Hope you like them!

Capchase

Capchase

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StartupSeries BCo-founder

I co-founded Capchase in 2020. It's a NY-based fintech that provides capital and sales acceleration tools to tech startups. Some milestones:

  • We've provided +$1B of capital through Capchase Grow. That's tens of years of combined runway!
  • We've processed +$80M in SaaS deals through Capchase Pay.
  • We employ +80 people in 10 countries.
Exponential Fellowship

Exponential Fellowship

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Non-profitCo-founderSF & NYC

The Exponential Fellowship is a passion project launched in 2024 to help bright young spaniards work in excellent teams in the US:

  • It's based on the thesis that a few excellent people can change the trajectory of a country.
  • We have 8 Fellows in NY and SF, working for some of the most exciting YC and a16z companies out there.
Carlo

Carlo

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Non-profitCreator

Carlo is a Whatsapp bot that sends the daily Gospel and Saints to its users. It was born as a personal exploration of building with AI, and the concept of Faith.

  • It's built on Supabase Edge Functions.
  • Its brain is powered by Google Gemini.

Inspired by Saint Carlo Acutis, patron Saint of the internet.

Other Projects 📦

A collection of side projects and experiments I've worked on over the years.

Comgo

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Blockchain traceability for social impact management. I helped code their firsts websites and went to Brussels in 2019 to present to the European Commission.

Volunteer

Hello Leia

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A portfolio of explorations of digital humanism. It was a place to showcase some of my early work in software engineering.

PortfolioNuxtJS

Flatten the Curve

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A streamlit notebook to explore virus spread. 🥉 3rd place in Producthunt's Product of the Day. Now inactive (link is to Producthunt).

StreamlitInactive

Blocks for Change

Deprecated

A Chrome extension similar to Momentum that would mine XMR in the background for charity. Deprecated when XMR dropped.

CryptoChrome extention

Travel Against Hunger

Deprecated

Pro-bono work for Action Against Hunger. This extension would take over booking.com links and inject Action Against Hunger's affiliate link. Deprecated after the campaign finished.

Chrome ExtensionPro-bono

PauseHBO

Deprecated

A dumb little extension that would improve HBO's terrible player, allowing you to pause using the spacebar.

Chrome Extention

Guli's Handbook

💡 Welcome to me! This is a document for the reader to get an idea of who I am, what I like, and what you can expect of an interaction with me – personally or professionally.

The Basics

  • Everyone calls me Guli – despite my real name being Ignacio. I've never heard my mom call me by my real name, and my work email is usually guli@company.com. That's how deeply ingrained my nickname is.
  • Born March 22nd, 1994. Based in Madrid (with frequent travels to NYC, BCN). I love living in Spain 🇪🇸 – few places on the planet have this quality of life.
  • Born in the northwest of Spain in a small city called Ferrol. Being a Navy child, I got to move around a lot. As a kid I lived in Ferrol, San Fernando, Madrid, New Jersey and attended about 5–6 schools before I was 16.
  • I've wanted to be an inventor since I was 6. Though I'm technically an Aerospace Engineer by academics, I got into Software Engineering because it was the easiest way to invent in the age of Information. I really love building Products, and software lets you do that at an exciting pace.
  • I'm currently co-founder at Capchase, where I also build stuff on the Product team. We've deployed over $1.2B of capital to thousands of companies to extend thousands of years of runway. We are ~100 on the team.
  • I help young Spaniards land in US startups through the Exponential Fellowship. This is my personal passion project to secure the future of Spanish software. This is the Manifesto. We've sent 7 bright young engineers to top companies in Silicon Valley and New York City.

A Bit Deeper

Myers-Briggs says I'm an INTJ – and to some extent I would agree.

"These thoughtful tacticians love perfecting the details of life, applying creativity and rationality to everything they do. Their inner world is often a private, complex one."

How I Think About The World

  • I like to think deeply about simple things → Thinking about thinking helps me understand the world better, and be more cognizant of biases. It helps connect ideas in seemingly unrelated topics, because you can always count on first principles.
  • I am a Catholic → I particularly like San Ignacio de Loyola , logician, priest, and founder of the Jesuits. He is a strong proponent of going beyond ones self and the ties of spirituality and practical service in the world. AMDG.
  • I value Consistency as a virtue → I try living through a version of the categorical imperative in Kantian ethics. I have a deep sense of justice, discipline, and respect. Because of this, I will hardly ever punish incompetency, but have zero tolerance for bad faith or dishonesty.
  • I value Kindness as a virtue → I find happiness in serving others because the world would be pretty great if everyone did the same. It's the ultimate form of consistency.
  • I value Simplicity as a virtue → I believe less is typically more across many aspects of life. Knowing how to optimize to get the most with the least is important to me. Simplicity in the self is humility, which I value immensely.
  • Curiosity is one of my qualities I treasure most → I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge and experimentation. I think I am a fast learner because of this trait. There are just too many cool things in the world not to explore all the time.
  • How you do anything is how you do everything → Pride (not in the egotistical sense) is one of my predominant traits. I care deeply about always doing my best. Not to be confused with perfectionism. I don't seek absolute perfection, but I would be violating my principle of consistency if I didn't put my best forth.

Hobbies & more

  • I like to indie hack software projects in my free time (I don't have a lot of that now, so it's been a while).
  • YouTube is a great school. The amount of world-class learning you can get there for free is mind-boggling. This didn't exist 15 years ago. Here are some of my favorite videos from a few channels:

  • I enjoy well-told stories. I'm a big film nerd, though it's one of the rare things I don't document. I wouldn't be able to pick a favorite movie – and I'm not much of an avid reader either.
  • In my love for creating stuff, music is a great outlet. I like to play the drums, guitar, cajón flamenco and a few other instruments. I sometimes play at weddings.
  • I play goalkeeper every Sunday in an amateur football-7 league. Real Madrid supporter. ⚽
  • I enjoy other sports as well. Like most Spaniards, I play padel frequently 🎾. I also surf, kitesurf, ski, and scuba dive (is that even a sport?).
  • I'm a very picky eater. I don't eat anything that comes from the sea (maybe a childhood trauma from some bad squid 😁). If I had three wishes, one would be to like everything, because I do love food!

At Work

I really enjoy what I do. Building things is my passion – it's what I do at work and in my (now rare) free time. Separating work and non-work is often challenging.

What Gets Me Pumped

  • I really care about culture. A Story on Culture is a nice primer on my take. Many points here relate to this section.
  • Working with kind and humble people makes me happy. I truly appreciate a culture of positive intent where everyone learns from each other.
  • I get pumped working with builders. I get excited when things ship and people are proud of their work. Controlled chaos that brings impact is inspiring.
  • I love working with people who are smarter than me. Learning new ways of thinking and having ideas click is amazing.
  • Seeing users interact with products I've shipped is an awesome feeling—especially when everything just works.
  • I like to have a lot of fun and foster an environment that encourages it. We even come up with silly things in the office (it's harder remotely).
  • I enjoy watching employees celebrate and uplift each other.

What Disappoints Me

  • Apathy and lack of commitment. Mistakes are okay, but not when they stem from apathy, bad faith, or lack of commitment. It lowers the bar in highly committed environments.
  • Lack of critical thinking – when people do things just because, without questioning the status quo.
  • Over-engineering or optimizing a cog in the machine rather than the entire machine. Keeping the big picture in mind is essential.
  • Dilution of ownership.
  • Office politics and big egos. We're all in the same boat—humility is key.

Strengths

  • I tend to be quite pragmatic and work smart, focusing on the fundamentals.
  • I'm good at breaking down topics and attacking them from the basics, making me an efficient builder.
  • I can re-focus quickly, which helps me unblock others.
  • I document a lot and ensure people can catch up on topics I lead asynchronously.
  • I believe in establishing common concepts and language early to simplify communication.

Improvement Points

  • Lack of assertiveness in certain situations—I can be insecure and question whether I've truly put out something to be proud of.
  • There are few things I hate doing, but when I do, I really hate them. This sometimes leads to procrastination.
  • I may get visibly frustrated when I can't get a point across or when basic principles aren't understood. This might come off as arrogance.
  • I can develop tunnel vision when committed to an idea—that's why I welcome challenges.
  • It's hard for me to work on something I don't believe in.
  • I can be extreme about respect and honesty—I quickly lose respect if I sense dishonesty or bad faith.
  • I have a bad memory for specific examples, which is partly why I document extensively.
  • I lack experience managing people, making it challenging to distinguish between levels.

Known Behaviors

  • I use emojis and GIFs very frequently 👏
  • Sometimes I speak too fast.
  • I often bring data or well-reasoned arguments that can make it seem like I have a final opinion. I always welcome challenges to my views.
  • I might go on tangents mid-argument—feel free to remind me to get back to the point.
  • I get very easily excited about many things.
  • I can be very picky with design, alignments, and overall presentation.
  • I'm known for my advocacy of Notion and Loom.
  • I put dots in my bullet points.
  • I keep a quick-response inbox-0 policy.

On Communication

I put a lot of thought into how I communicate within an organization. In an async world and high-growth environments, comms can become a massive bottleneck if not carefully considered. I've created many documents around this.

Style and Frequency

  • I strive to be clear and transparent, getting straight to the point. (Negative feedback is not my strong suit.)
  • I try to over-communicate.
  • I'm online a lot and aim to respond quickly, especially on Slack.

Format and Channels

I advocate for:

  • Making the most of async tools → If we can avoid meetings (and make them shorter when necessary), that's best. I rely on Loom and written documentation for proposing ideas. Meetings are then reserved for alignment and discussion.
  • If it is not written down, it does not exist → I believe in constant written documentation. I like using Notion, among other tools, as a base for topics—especially in remote settings.
  • Beautifully formatted → I care about using formats well. I extensively use bold, italics, bullet points, links, and "@" commands to make messages clearer—even if it takes extra effort.

Other

  • I don't ask many personal questions, but perhaps I should more often. I tend to keep my inner world private, and I imagine others do the same.

Random Stuff

💡 Waddup! This is a bit of a random fix of stuff that doesn't really fit any category. You'll find random links I like, writings, and my investments. And who knows what else.

Interesting People 🧠

Thinkers, founders, and innovators whose writings I follow and admire.

  • Paul Graham→Y Combinator co-founder and essayist on startups, programming, and innovation
  • Naval Ravikant→AngelList founder, entrepreneur, and philosopher on wealth creation and happiness
  • Ben Thompson→Tech strategist & writer, founder of Stratechery.
  • Patrick Collison→Co-founder and CEO of Stripe, with insightful essays on technology and progress
  • Andrew Chen→Investor & growth advisor on startups.
  • Julian Shapiro→Startup advisor & writer on growth & marketing.
  • Steven Wolfram→Founder of Wolfram Research; creator of Mathematica.

Investments 💰

I don't hold a lot of cash. I angel invest in some startups, and keep a diversified portfolio.

Reveni

Reveni is Spain's leading soltion for instant refunds for ecommerce.

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Pre-seed Investment2021Currently Seed

Capably

Capably is building state of the art agentic systems for enterprise process automation.

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Pre-seed Investment2022Currently Seed

Broader Portfolio

A diversified portfolio with bonds, variable and mixed income funds. Focus in US.

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BondsVariable incomeMixed income

Startup Articles 🚀

Random reads and concepts I've found interesting for startups.