Make it

It all started when I was a kid — very young — when my dad bought us a white computer. A big, heavy monitor. Windows 98. I remember software and services were installed via floppy disk.

From that moment on, my deep admiration for that machine began. I used to spend hours watching how my dad used it. He listened to music, and I stared at the player like a fire of colors that lit up my curiosity.

And so, my early childhood passed me by, exploring that machine. I could spend hours in front of the music player's psychedelic animations, or hypnotized by the screensavers — the maze, the pipes.

I tried games I never understood — like Mordor (Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, 1998), pure chaos with no logic for an eleven-year-old. Even as an adult, looking back, not a single shred of understanding reaches me.

I entertained myself with one about puzzles and crimes in an English I didn't master. I loved the world of letters. I could spend hours playing it — alongside Rafael Pombo's interactive stories on a CD my dad bought, and the Alfa y Beto videogame.

But my fascination wasn't only with videogames. My fascination was the machine itself.

With Encarta I discovered the PC wasn't just for playing — it was a window into knowledge. I spent hours reading and learning, simply for the joy of inhabiting that magical world.

Every CD that fell into my hands, I explored: antivirus software, applications, Windows Office. The internet came later. Before that, the computer was games, music, and Encarta.

And it was also a connection with my brother, with whom I played games or took turns at the keyboard. Videogames have always connected us — to this day. Our best moments have been playing together.

Over time my interaction with the computer was so intense that I remember saying often I would marry one. It wasn't any childish whim: it was the certainty that I had found, in a machine, an entire universe — a place where time bent and everything could be discovered.

"A place where time bent and everything could be discovered."

I used to visit my family in Coro. My parents would take us, and that moment was a disconnection from the computer. There we lived a very different life, like a sort of digital vacation: life was sport and street.

I used to get a little depressed, because being separated from the PC meant losing my constant circle of comfort and inquiry.

Eventually my dad bought a laptop and, like anyone, excitement struck me. I no longer depended on being in one place; it could come with me almost anywhere. I installed every game that fit.

My favorite was Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time — though one of my mom's friends swore that playing it was playing with the devil. And the cover, it must be said, didn't help much.

I learned to play poker, among other things. Every moment was a new discovery. Over time, we even learned to find bugs in videogames and exploit them.

When the internet finally arrived, everything mutated. It was entering a new world, full of information. I searched for DOS games, sure, but I also discovered entire communities — I remember one in Margarita while I was in Punto Fijo, where we talked about life every night while using Ares to download.

And the games introduced me to the possibility of hacking. My first hack was on Pet Society, a virtual pet game. With Cheat Engine I discovered you could alter the program's memory — and the server seemed to validate against the user's data, so it kept whatever points you set.

Suddenly, I had palaces without having spent hours bathing a single pet.

DarkOrbit came later, and that was a different story. I tried to hack it a thousand times, but I finally understood what server-side validation meant. It couldn't be fooled.

There, without realizing it, I was already learning how systems truly work.

Back then, computing wasn't about money for me. It was pure platonic love for a technology.

My dad — believing money was bad and that life, family and gatherings were what mattered — never instilled in us a sense of how valuable that resource was, or even how useful. I can understand that this, throughout much of my childhood, caused a disassociation from how the financial world worked, from money itself, and above all from the idea that the internet could be a place to earn.

I remember coming across Bitcoin very early. Like many, I read the whitepaper, saw its charts promising fortunes in ten years, and like almost everyone, I didn't believe in that anonymous mathematical genius.

But the real click came with Carlos Martínez. My brother told me about him: he studied computer science and was doing very well. For the first time I saw someone making money with something other than formatting computers or building simple websites — something that, for me, was already instinctive and natural.

Carlos inspired me to learn to program seriously. I joined a free-courses website and started mastering WordPress and site-building like someone discovering a new language.

My life kept moving along between videogames, my family, and a great learning of consuming content. I always had knowledge of many things — I was constantly investigating, reading, understanding. Until the crisis came and almost ripped it all apart.

My country shut down into endless power cuts, into pre-dawn lines for food, into the fierce uncertainty of not having the basics. I took advantage of every sliver of internet connection to keep learning.

We paid a fortune to a man who installed internet at homes in the most pirate, least professional way possible — internet that lasted only a few months.

The first time I earned money online was filling out captchas and similar applications. In the country's crisis, there was no money for food. We went through hard months where the best we could do was buy little and endure eating poorly, eating incomplete, or even going to bed without dinner. I always tried, whenever I could, to earn something while studying my degrees.

I enrolled to study Civil Engineering and, over time, also Communications at another university. Both campuses were hours away by public transport. Much of my time went into commuting: I would arrive home and work online.

Over time, my way of earning online improved, until I found a company called Atexto. My job was to transcribe Spanish-language audio (different Spanish accents) into text. It gave me better stability and let me earn more, which we spent on household food. It wasn't much, but in moments of austerity, everything adds up.

As my knowledge improved, my uncle — a great man dedicated to welding — helped us in one of the most difficult moments. He came to work in Punto Fijo for a client.

His client was a very particular person: Ramphy Rojas, a church pastor with exceptional computing skills. The person who most introduced me to the world of technology and its capacity to generate value for people, businesses, and companies. Long before it was a boom, long before everyone wanted to be a programmer or live off technology.

I don't know how it happened, nor how it occurred. My uncle spoke a lot about him, and that lit my curiosity even more.

One day — as if by God's design — I remember I prayed. I prayed a lot for an opportunity. I prayed not just to meet him, but for the chance that he would share his knowledge so I could understand how to earn money the way he did. My family needed it, my dreams needed it, and something told me he was the person who could guide me.

And as if by magic of destiny, it happened. The next day I woke up and went to university in the morning. After noon, I had to head to my other campus. By coincidence — by God's work — the person who gave me the ride I usually took every day so I wouldn't have to walk thirty minutes out of my neighborhood was him, with his wife Luiginna.

He asked me what I was studying, hosting, and whether I had time to support him with his work — could I stop by that night? Of course, I said yes.

"As if by magic of destiny, it happened."

From that moment, my journey into a fairly complete learning of computer systems began. I remember starting with access to the hosting management system — my job was tech support.

The opportunity itself was given to me by Ramphy Rojas, the owner of the company. To him and his family I owe more than a first job: the warmth, the patience, and the trust with which they welcomed me opened the door to everything that came after in this world of computing. I learned so much from him — and to this day, with time on my side, I still find myself grateful.

I was thrilled to be learning and discovering how the company worked, seeing the common errors, the support tickets. Day to day, the people who taught me the most were Manuel Zerpa and a guy named Luis.

Every morning the tickets had my full attention. As someone not yet contaminated by social media, with focus at its peak, the task of answering as many tickets as possible — and learning to do it quickly and completely — was something that motivated me deeply.

I learned how pricing worked, discounts, domains, TLDs, domain types, DNS, certificates, websites, different products, VPS, Proxmox, and more. I used to answer, I remember, between 20 and 50 tickets a day, plus chat support — given to me later — and finally phone support.

Over time I became very familiar with detecting errors, from the most common to the most complex: cache errors, domain errors (DNS, expirations), library errors, PHP version mismatches, errors in installations and configurations of VPS virtualizations. At that time VPS were heavily used, as were PHP-based websites.

There were also many billing errors and others stemming from configuration. Replying with kindness, simplicity, and effectiveness to complex problems — that users didn't always understand — was a fascinating way to learn how to deal with people.

"The mental satisfaction of learning new things lets us feel fulfilled with our reality."

Months passed, until the country's situation worsened. Internet cables were stolen from the neighborhood, leaving us disconnected again. This caused a series of problems with my work: without a good connection, it was hard to maintain excellent service.

To work around it, I would go to a friend's house — they offered me their porch as my office. The Martínez family. To this day, they're more than family to me. Eventually they too were victims of cable theft and ended up without internet.

In that period, I walked an hour to a shopping mall, worked all day, and walked home. I did it almost daily. Because even when everything around me was crumbling, there was a phrase I repeated to myself relentlessly: make it worth it.

"Every step home was proof that every challenge overcome raises the bar of what you're capable of enduring."

Ramphy's company, HostingSSI, and his family were very good to me. Eventually they offered me the chance to move to Valencia to work with them, and I accepted.

The day I left for the bus terminal, inside my bag was a note from my mom. I don't remember exactly what it said, but I remember crying as I read it. She believed in me deeply, and it was the first time we were separated for who-knows-how-long.

My welcome in Valencia was very good. Between good flavors and bad, I had to learn a lot: dealing with different kinds of people, being away from my family, and above all understanding how others think. I managed, and my personality grew a lot. Ramphy's family — especially his mother — treated me like a son. She's an extraordinary woman. To this day, I wish her the best.

Time pushed me to begin our small venture. With an old friend from university — one of the most incredible and intelligent people I've ever known, Juan Hernández — we started what would become Codembody, a small company building technology for clients.

We started with HostingSSI, which needed technological improvements to avoid long manual processes, especially around currency. It let us learn Proxmox, project management, configurations, and workflows.

Juan wasn't a programmer back then, and neither was I. So we essentially had to learn the fundamentals of development from scratch. Without a doubt, Juan picked it up incredibly fast, and within months he was very, very good at his job. That allowed us to land other projects, like THT, among others.

So I went back to Punto Fijo, with just enough money to buy food and to take on debt to have internet at home. A very bad internet, but better than nothing — and the only thing I needed to push forward.

At first I didn't have many clients. By twist of fate, I devoted myself to writing as many people as I could on LinkedIn. And at the same time, by the same twists, one of the people who has supported me most — Eduardo Meléndez, today CEO of UffAgency and surely a great entrepreneur — left his company, and passed along the client opportunities Codembody needed to grow.

Many of them were heavyweight websites.

We learned to fully master different types of e-commerce and WordPress: installing plugins, repairing damaged WordPress sites, building custom elements, configuring stores, payment processors, and more.

Opportunities also arrived for more advanced programming: building plugins, custom configurations, custom-designed software for parcel and freight companies — software still used by multiple users today — as well as mobile applications for Apple and Google.

Each opportunity raised our knowledge. Over time I grew more passionate about programming itself, and less about the business-management side. I committed to learning to program — not just staying with the technical knowledge of DevOps or infrastructure, but being able to build technology from scratch.

To summarize some of the achievements that left the deepest mark on me:

I built software for one of the logistics platforms growing in the United States. With another company, we developed parcel-management software, this time in Spain. We deployed a cryptocurrency/NFT for an art client in the United States, raising twenty-five thousand dollars in just a few hours. And we generated value for many e-commerces around the world.

One of the most interesting projects I was part of was rebuilding Nuevo Día, the news outlet. We took a weakened website that didn't exceed four thousand monthly users, and turned it into one of the most impactful national news outlets — over four million yearly views, in just months — until the death of Oswaldo García, its dreamer.

We made it a highly profitable site, extremely optimal at the server and database level. To the point where a very cheap server could handle that recurring demand, peaking at fifteen thousand users every thirty minutes. A WordPress site with various technologies that maxed out cache use.

Oswaldo's passing was deeply sad. I knew him — despite his advanced age — as a strong man, athletic, with a beautiful energy. He gave everything for his business, his family, and Nuevo Día. We talked daily, and for some months we met weekly. He even offered me a space at Nuevo Día, though I always preferred working from home.

On the day of his wake, I remember tears welled up as I recalled his loss. And as I passed Nuevo Día's offices, I couldn't hold back. By coincidence, it also rained that day — almost impossible in Punto Fijo, with one of the lowest rainfall rates in the world. It rains by miracle. I think it was the first time someone's death had hit me so hard. For some reason, my business clients I tend to make into close friends.

"It rains by miracle."

Among the other large projects I've worked on has been the recovery and launch of Psicovital, an online psychology platform that has positively impacted hundreds of people: more than 9,000 sign-ups and over 3,000 therapy sessions delivered.

Psicovital has been a project where I poured my heart in to make it real. We built a digital infrastructure based on a mobile app for Android and iOS. We rescued a project that had problems with its previous implementers: many delays, great risk on the implementer side, and over two years of investment without going to market. We managed to rescue it.

I hope that, with time, Psicovital becomes one of the most impactful projects in the world. Psicovital also let me meet Leonard McLeod — an extraordinary leader, deeply devoted to his work and his desire to impact the world positively. A person who has learned to control himself, to assume the risk that early-stage entrepreneurship demands, and to be among those who want to add meaningful value to humanity.

7, 8, 9, 10... I've shipped more than 50 projects, not counting my own and micro-projects. Right now I've done many AI projects for different companies — some haven't yet produced results, others are barely being used. But the powerful part is the learning gained from each of them: there's no better way to learn than to commit yourself.

Today, technology has given me something I never accounted for: an invisible family. I've met extraordinary people without whom I wouldn't be who I am.

Juan Hernández. Tahel Romero — whom I've never met in person but who trusted me from the very first moment. Clients who became accomplices to good wins like TuCarritofoods, GoldStars, NextCargo. With their teams we've built software that's still alive, solving real problems every day. Eduardo Meléndez and Luis Tremont are far more than allies: we've formed a family.

I've had the honor of being part of projects that made me grow on the strength of long nights. If I could measure how many people all this work has reached, I'd say it's already more than five million. And I'm going for more.

Oscar Barajas, the best teacher I met at Platzi, gave me the experience of meeting a world-class developer — and having him tell me I'm doing well changes everything. The certainty that, without holding the formal degree, I could have solid, deep, real knowledge.

Over time I understood that technology pays, yes — but above all, it impacts. I chose the right path.

"Technology pays, yes — but above all, it impacts."

I call this my first half-time. At thirty, a chapter closes and the real round begins. I will build technology, I will impact the world positively. With your help, God, with the support of every person who has believed in me, I know I will. And at the very least, I will make it worth it.

On my longest nights, when only the code and the silence remain, Alan Walker's music has held me up like a private hymn. I hope my work always sounds like that.

Things have changed a lot. Now I do think it's very possible that within a few years, our most habitual, deep, and close interaction will be with a computer program.