pablotimer

What is this?

Hi! 👋 I'm Pablo. I've been an engineer for 14 years, and after being a founding eng at a very successful startup, I've received a lot of inquiries for what comes next. Most of this from "The LinkedIn crowd" (investors or founders). This timer is two commitments. The first: when it hits 0, I will announce or launch the next project, one which I hope will define a sustained period of my life, or my entire life.

Why are you doing this?

To take the pressure off. I sometimes feel compelled to Go Make A Company and play the game again, but, as I'll explain below, I think there's more long-term value in taking some time before embarking on a new public journey. This timer gimmick helps me stay on the path. I can point people in industry to this when they ask. Saves me having to repeat explanations. Maybe they get inspired! Weed out bad fits.

Why so much time before starting?

To enjoy myself a bit before I hunker down for 20+ years of drive on something. Take advantage of my current life situation: I'd like to raise kids someday, but since I'm not currently, I'd better aprovechar (Spanish, "avail yourself of"). Maximize the chances of picking the right thing. When you spend so long playing other people's games, it takes a bit of time to learn to listen to yourself.

So you'll just be… faffing around?

Hardly! Jeff Bezos once said (in 2017): "When somebody … congratulates Amazon on a good quarter … I say thank you. But what I’m thinking to myself is … those quarterly results were actually pretty much fully baked about 3 years ago. Today I’m working on a quarter that is going to happen in 2020. Not next quarter.