8 years ago, I made an impulsive decision overnight.  quit my cushy job at Goldman to join Sensorflow, a 2-month-old company then, as their founding engineer. It meant a 50% pay cut, long hours, and endless chaos. Looking back, I know it was the best decision I made and Just Words wouldnt be the same without that founding experience.

6 months ago, I was on the other side of that leap, searching for someone who had the same fire I felt back then—the grit to dive headfirst into uncertainty, the passion to build something from nothing, and the drive to make it all work. Jeff and I screened hundreds of resumes, conducted over 50 interviews, and came up empty. It felt like we were hunting for a unicorn.

Then we found Rodrigo.

It didn’t happen through the usual process. Thanks to Jeff’s outbounding (which beat my sales outbounds any day) and our Tweep connections, Rodrigo popped onto our radar.

After his first call with Rodrigo - 

Jeff: “I think you’d really like him” 

Me: “Should we meet him for a coffee tonight?”

Jeff: “I am texting him right now” 

Within an hour, in true founder-mode fashion, we were sitting by the painted ladies with Rodrigo, and within a week, we made him an offer.

We had the PMF feeling with Rodrigo, and here’s why we were right. In the last few months - 

Since then, Rodrigo’s been everything we hoped for and more. He’s led late-night hackathons, consistently beats us to the office by 9 AM, helped us organize our chaos (we’re now Linear power users), and even brought board games to roast Jeff at our first happy hour.

• He has organized multiple late night hackathons (I was always the first one to call it a day)

• He beats us to the office before 9 am consistently every day

• He is so willing to dive into our chaos headfirst (and may have suggested we use linear to get our shit together in our first 1-1 - we’re now power users)

• He came prepared with 3 board games for our first happy hour & roasted Jeff in every game.

In his own words - “I am originally from Venezuela , graduated from the University of Florida and have since built a career in tech. I've had the opportunity to work on the infra graph storage team at Twitter, data platform at Stellantis, and fintech products at Silo, a startup focused on the food supply chain. My expertise lies primarily in backend development, though I’ve also dabbled in frontend work. I'm passionate about technology, collaboration, traveling and sports

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A fun fact about me: my family is from the west part of my country, right on the Andes mountains. The tropical yet cooler weather of the region makes it the perfect environment for growing coffee. Growing up I visited my grandpa's small coffee farm a lot. One of the stages of making coffee is drying the beans, where the would lay the coffee beans on these big flat patios drying under the sun. Whenever it was expected to rain, the farmers would take the beans and store them in a room temporary. I would then dive into these beans and swim as if it was a plastic ball pit (but with amazing smell)!

Excited to join Just Words and start working with you all!”

We’re ready to feel that PMF magic again—with our next few founding team members. If this story resonates with you, let’s talk!