Founder & CTO at OmbuLabs.ai, building custom AI solutions and helping companies upgrade their Ruby and Rails applications.
Today I spent some time improving this website with the help of Claude Code , Anthropic’s CLI tool for software development. All the changes described in this article were authored by Claude Code with my direction. The Starting Point My Jekyll site had been running for years with several technical debt items I never got around to fixing. I decided to see how Claude Code could help me tackle these…
This year Medium decided to implement a paywall with all their content (meaning my content, and your content, and anyone’s content published in their platform) When that happened I thought it was a good idea to leave their platform and use Jekyll instead. It took me almost 10 months to finally move away from Medium! This Thanksgiving break was a good time to spend a few hours migrating my content…
The Tech Tribune lists CloudMine as the third best start up in Philadelphia in 2019: http://thetechtribune.com/10-best-tech-startups-in-philadelphia/ Maybe someone should tell them that they filed for bankruptcy more than 3 months ago ? (Source: https://technical.ly/philly/2018/11/06/cloudmine-saas-cloud-shutdown-2018-backruptcy/ ) What’s the point of these rankings anyway? To me it’s just a great…
I have been using Highrise since June 2011, and I have been very happy with the product for a long time. It has been very helpful for both our consulting business and our own software-as-a-service solution . I’m a big fan of all things Basecamp , especially the simplicity behind all of their products. That’s why it is so hard to write this open letter criticizing one of their last decisions. I…
Juan es un emprendedor. Tiene una idea brillante. Se la cuenta a algunos amigos. A los amigos les gusta. Juan empieza a construirla. Después de 3 meses de esfuerzo finalmente se decide a lanzar una versión beta. Cuando Juan le muestra el producto a sus amigos, ninguno lo usa. A ninguno le gusta. Cuando se lo muestra a gente de su mercado objetivo, nadie lo entiende . Prefieren seguir usando lo que…
En 2012, con OmbuShop, Tu Tienda Online , participamos de la ronda 4 del programa y nos sirvió mucho para crecer en América Latina , especialmente en Chile y México. Estos son algunos consejos fundamentales para todos los emprendedores de las nuevas rondas de Startup Chile . Esta es tu guía para los seis meses en Chile . El objetivo es encontrar un modelo de negocios que funcione, que esté…
I’ve been writing every weekday for more than a month . This was a small and intense experiment . To be honest, I feel like I’ve been producing a large quantity of content with little quality. I’m not a big fan of this. I’ve always preferred to release a few quality products vs. a large quantity of mediocre products. From now on I’ll bring it down to two posts per week. Hopefully this will give me…
Becoming a father for the first time sure puts things in a different perspective . You are now responsible for another human being. This is now your most important priority. You need to make sure that they are healthy, well fed and constantly growing. There are a few metrics that become the most important metrics in their life: Weight and Size . Everything else is on a different level. Within that…
Some people will say “I don’t know” and expect you to tell them the answer. If you tell them the answer right away, they will probably keep asking you similar questions. Next time you are in this situation try to guide the person to the best solution. Explore the different alternatives and mention the pros and cons of the different solutions. Let them make decisions, let them make mistakes. If you…
Lately I’ve been evaluating and interviewing quite a lot of candidates for the Junior and Senior Developer positions at OmbuLabs.ai . Here is what I’ve learned in the process. Process In a software consulting business like mine, you must have a clear process to evaluate candidates. The people in your company have to be well aware of what you are looking for in each candidate. If you have a pool of…
I’m tired of saying that your MVP is not small enough . Here are five simple rules to build a software MVP . Rule #1 Quality is non-negotiable . Quality must remain high. You cannot build something that has poor quality. You are not building a cheap product fast . You are building a quality product with reduced scope. Rule #2 The release date is non-negotiable . Once you define the scope and set…
Taxis have been doing the same thing for years. Pick up a passenger, hear the destination, take the passenger there, get paid. It’s pretty simple and it hasn’t evolved much in decades. Taxis in Buenos Aires are transit’s public enemy number 1 Last month Uber launched in Argentina and disrupted the whole business. Taxis were obviously against the whole thing . In the long run, Uber and other…
Postponing a decision is a decision in itself. Every time you need to make a decision , there is always a default . For example: When you’re interviewing someone for a position, the default is a “ No ”. If you postpone your decision, the candidate will understand that you are not going to hire her. In that example you should tell the candidate whether you hire her or not. But if you don’t, she…
Today I broke one of my latest streaks . Today I didn’t contribute to any open source projects and I broke a 35 days straight streak. It was a bit disappointing but it was also a great run. I made at least one (sometimes very small) contribution every day for the past 35 days! To be honest, this happened because I decided to stop bringing my MacBook home. And I have no regrets . I’m much happier…
I believe that high achieving individuals have suffered this syndrome at least once in their life. I first heard of this concept in the last Rubyconf Argentina. It was one of the most interesting talks for programmers that had nothing to do with code. People who suffer this are high-achieving individuals marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being…
I’ll admit it. I’m pretty bad at product management. I’m a programmer, but I’m also a product manager at OmbuShop . I’ve been taught and I’ve learned that for something to reach production it needs to be perfect . And by perfect I mean that it needs to work as expected . And it should also consume the least amount of resources to achieve its goal. And the build needs to pass. And there should be…
Close your Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Skype, Mail, and anything else that might produce an interruption. Put your phone on do not disturb mode. Put your computer on do not disturb mode . If you can work without Internet , shut down your connection. If you don’t need it, it will just produce interruptions. Put on your headphones. Even if you don’t want to listen to music, you can use them to show…
Next time you need to tackle a big project, break it down into smaller projects. If the sub-projects are still too big, break them down into sub-sections. Then break those down into action items. You get the idea. This technique has been around for ages, though in college it was reintroduced to me as the Work Breakdown Structure . Before you start working on a huge project, you should have a list…
As an entrepreneur, I’ve heard a lot of advice from potential investors, investors, partners, clients, friends, family, acquaintances, random people at a party. You name it. I have received advice from everyone . Only a few times I have actually acted based on their advice. Most times I will hear it, nod and later ignore the advice. The hardest part is ignoring the advice from someone you really…
If you read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers you know about the 10,000 hours rule, which is based on a study by Anders Ericsson. I’ve been listening to the series of episodes for self-improvement month in the Freakonomics radio podcast , which goes deep into this topic. It’s very interesting to hear the conflicting points of view of both Malcolm Gladwell and Anders Ericsson. I believe that they both…