Wind of Change
After five years working for Intel, I’m going back to a startup!
Last Friday (May 4th, 2018) was my last day working at Intel. For my next career step, I have decided to work for a startup again. This post is the short story behind my decision.
Since I think these emotions are shared by many entrepreneurs, I thought it would be nice to write about it and share it with others.
Nostalgia for Indisys
The first feeling I had to face was sadness. It was really hard to say goodbye to many great colleagues and good friends. I have been working with some of them since 2005 when we joined the recently created startup Indisys. I still can remember the day of my interview at the offices of Julietta Research Group at the University of Seville.
At Indisys, we learned how to develop production-ready software from a research-oriented codebase. That was a really interesting challenge. But even harder was to deal with customers: no one really was willing to ‘hire’ a Virtual Assistant for their websites at that time. That situation changed when Apple released Siri. Initially, we thought it was a big threat for us, but indeed it was very useful to argue the advantages of a customized Virtual Assistant.
At Indisys, I played very different roles: from developer to software design, perform some SysAdmin tasks, DevOps operations, leading people and even acting as a Project Manager. Wearing all those different hats was fun. Indeed, very fun. And I think the main reason is I could learn so many different skills and technologies and apply all of them to the same product. Those are my best memories of working for a startup: being able to control what to learn next and how to use it. And also, taking decisions faster. Much faster.
Intel meets Indisys
Back in 2012, Intel acquired a significant portion of Indisys so we started working on a joint project. I was impressed by the very talented people visiting us in our office in Seville: engineers and researchers with work experience on top companies such as Apple or Microsoft, or even from NASA. I enjoyed and learned a lot working with them on the same project.
Our contributions to that joint project were very positively evaluated, so Intel finally decided to acquire the 100% of the company shares. Indisys’ employees would become Intel employees. This decision impacted our lives forever. We all had to adapt our startup-shaped mind to a totally different culture. The culture of big corporations. Getting more benefits and salary was the easy part… everything else was hard. Personally, the hardest change I faced was to lose impact on strategic decisions. But that’s part of the game.
At Intel, my major contribution was to manage the Dialogue Team: a multi-disciplinary group of people that implemented the dialog intelligence behind the Oakley Radar Pace virtual coach using Intel® Real Speech technology (built on top of Indisys’ Locuaz technology). As of today, there is no other similar product on the market yet. Not to mention the same level of complexity and coverage in the fitness domain we deployed. And that’s the reason why I felt anger last week: we released an incredible state-of-the-art wearable to the market but unfortunately it wasn’t aligned enough with Intel’s core business.
Working in such a product was an amazing journey with countless experiences and difficulties to solve. I cannot express with words my gratitude to all the people I have worked with during these last five years. I learned from all of them. The knowledge and expertise I have acquired and accumulated give me confidence enough to try something new, more ambitious, riskier, crazier, etc.
So, what to do next?
Once I knew I won’t continue at Intel, I felt fear. I have been working in NLP (Natural Language Processing) for more than 15 years now, applying state-of-the-art technologies, creating real products and solutions, designing new CUIs (Conversational User Interfaces), etc. But nowadays, if I really wanted to exploit all those skills and experience then I should move with my family to a different place; and very likely to a different country. But finally, after self-reflection and some family conversations, I decided to pause my work in NLP and stay in Seville. Family first.
So, what to do next? Here is where the Wind of Change comes to play. I still had some savings from the Indisys’ acquisition (I was a lucky shareholder). And also I would get a nice severance package from Intel due to my seniority. This exceptional situation would allow me to invest my time in something really interesting rather than focusing on earning a regular salary. To me, that was the very first signal that the wind was changing and flowing through the window of the new opportunities.
I met with all the colleagues I could from my contact network. I shared my situation, asked them for their thoughts and listened very carefully to their feedback. Some colleagues even offered me a new job position or start a hiring process (thanks to everyone!). In fact, most of the opportunities were very interesting but none of them really got me fully engaged. I was missing something else, but what?
After a few more talks I understood what I was looking for: I needed to have fun again. The kind of fun I enjoyed at Indisys when learning and discovering new technologies. The feeling of having more impact on strategic decisions. And of course, taking decisions faster. Much faster. The only solution I could find to this equation was to go back to a startup again.
The founder’s dilemmas
Startups are risky: only a few of them survive. They are very challenging. They impact your family life (even can break your family!). But on the other hand, creating a new technology or product from the ground-up is an exciting goal. Building a team of great people combining different skills is an offer that someone like me cannot refuse. The day I accepted and assimilated I was willing to try a startup again, the fear became happiness. That day, I could feel way more Wind of Change in my life.
One important decision was missing: Should I create a new startup on my own or join somebody else? Both options have pros and cons and I felt I was lacking information and some more experience to make a good decision. So I spent some more time thinking in potential ideas, envisioning myself in both scenarios and listening to other entrepreneurs.
My colleague Daniel López suggested me to read “The Founder’s Dilemmas”, which is a book I would definitely recommend to whoever feels identified with this topic. After chapter three, it was clear to me I preferred to start this new adventure with partners rather than alone. But as you can imagine, finding the right ones is probably even harder than the idea itself.
That’s what I want
When considering to create my own startup alone, I asked several times to myself: Am I ready to become a CEO? Is that what I want? Considering my previous work experience, I was confident enough to act as CTO from day #1, but playing the CEO role was a different story.
Successful startups’ CEOs are special people with kind of “super-powers” to achieve incredible goals. They have a very well-balanced set of technical and business skills and they know how to convince others to join them. In addition, I believe the top priority of a startup CEO is to ensure the payroll for the team and look after the company values after new hirings or financing rounds.
So that wasn’t for me: neither I have the right business skills nor that seemed like too much fun to me. I was more interested in managing technical decisions, ensuring the core business is running with state-of-the-art technology and being accountable for executing the business strategy. So I finally came to a conclusion that I wanted to become the CTO of a brand new startup.
Once I reached that conclusion, I could feel the full power of the wind changing my life. I was enjoying an incredible excitement for my next role. The emotional roller coaster was over. Now I have the job I really want and it’s in the place my family wants to live. Salary can wait.
To be continued…
The future’s in the air, I can feel it everywhere blowing with the wind of change.
Scorpions — “Wind of Change”
