Apologies for the late birthday update, work kinda got in the way…I’m sure you were all desperately waiting for it. Thanks to Henoch for reminding me to send and for being terrible at Chess with Friends.
I’ve really enjoyed reading all of your updates. Here’s mine:
- Colombia and my brother’s wedding
- Sailing is back in my life and boy did I miss it
- I’ve been pleasantly surprised with living in Seattle
- Section C sightings
- Won’t bore you with too much work stuff

Colombia and my brother’s wedding: After graduation I was able to go back to Colombia for a few weeks. My brother got married in Cartagena and we were able to grab a group of 20 people to go down to the islands. It wasn’t as bad of a rambunctious trip as with the section but it was still up to Paul Singh standards; there was no Lynch doing push-ups at the bar with Zahara sitting on his back, but there was plenty of “icing”; there was no straight arming vodka or happy hours at the beach but there were a couple of nights where a few us unintentionally saw the sunrise.

Sailing: Before my brother’s wedding I was able to practice a little bit and had the opportunity to go down to Rhode Island for Sunfish North Americans. They usually invite a few other countries and I was lucky to be selected the Colombian representative. I was able to finish top 10 in a fleet of 100 and was able to touch base with some of the friends I had not seen in a few years. Results Once I got back to Seattle I was able to buy a Laser (14ft sailboat) and have been practicing with the local fleet which is pretty active with 15-20 people going out every week. In any case, hit me up if you’re ever in Seattle and we can take a stroll across the sound and grab some lobster mac & cheese (unless you’re Jewish, lactose intolerant or allergic to shell fish).

Seattle: Despite the high percentage of overcast days, it is a great place to live. There’s actually not that much rain (not even top 10 cities in the US for rainfall) but there are many clouds hovering around. It is the only place that I know of where I can go sailing on Saturday and snow skiing on Sunday. The seafood is great and thanks to Jay I was able to find some cool restaurants and bars. The views around here are fantastic; unfortunately the euro rail doesn’t get here. Brittany and I have been able to go to Whistler, Portland, Mt Rainier, Olympic Mountains, San Juan Islands,…anyway, plenty of stuff to do here. The Sounder games are amazing (soccer/futbol). I never thought a US stadium could actually have the atmosphere of a European or South American game (without the violence). Seattle vs. Chicago (Giant Flags)
Section C sightings:
- After graduation I stuck around Boston for a couple of weeks and was able to hang out with Doctor D, Katharine, Shu, and a few other HBSers.

- Wolf’s wedding was full of sec-c people. L’chaim to you and Chanda once again. I hope Peyton goes to South Florida.

- I’ve also had Shu, Jay, and Brandon visit. Unfortunately the weekends were too short but at least they chose the right weather.

- Due to work I travelled to DC a few months back and grabbed a couple of beers with El Presidente; unfortunately I missed Alejandra the night before.

- In December I went up to Wassau and Green Bay to hang out with Brandon. We went to the Packers game against the Raiders and it was a blast. That tailgate cluttered my memories a little bit but what a great weekend with curds, beer and Red Solo Cups.

- In September I went to Beijing for work and due to the typhoon that hovered around Japan I missed Fan as he got stuck at the Tokyo airport.

Work: it’s all good, doing some marketing and continuous improvement stuff. Very busy but learning quite a bit. I’ll be going over to Shanghai, Sao Paolo, and Chicago in the next few weeks so if you live there I look forward to hanging out.

Last but not least, I gotta give a shout out for section love. Quite a few of you have stepped up and helped me out over the last few months; whether it’s a work question, travel advice, getting stuck in an airport, etc…quite a few of you have been there and I greatly appreciate it.

I hope everyone’s doing well and I look forward to catching up at the reunion.
Carlos

Greetings from Norfolk, Virginia, home of the US Atlantic Fleet (and very big spiders)!  This past year has been fairly tumultuous. Since graduation, I’ve lived in 10 different apartments/houses,  in 4 different cities.  And I’m currently unemployed (this will change soon), so I’ll be moving yet somewhere else in the next two months.

San Francisco (June, July, August)

I joined an HBS 2012 friend, Omar Restom, to work on developing Vaiad, a tool that helps websites sell their ad space directly to advertisers. The idea won the Rock Center Minimum Viable Product contest, and I decided to spend the summer developing the product with Omar in San Francisco.

After about 3 weeks, I developed a very bad case of appendicitis, and was in the hospital for 3 days, followed by a 3 week recovery.  Fortunately, my sister came out to San Francisco for 2 weeks to help me.

Boston (September, October, November, December)

Omar decided to come back to Boston for the EC year, and I followed.  Finding a sublet in Boston was nearly impossible, so I stayed on a couch in the North End for 2 weeks.  We worked out of the brand-new Harvard Innovation Lab (free office space).  I spent my time designing the UI and building the product, while Omar spent some time scouting out for business.

Virginia (January)

To escape the Boston cold, I moved back to Virginia where the temperatures were regularly 20 degrees warmer than Boston.  A nice reprieve. I also took a (first ever) week-long cruise with my father around the Caribbean, where some Australian crew-members inspired me to visit the land down under.

Omar and I decided our business model wasn’t working, and that the Vaiad software wouldn’t alone support a business.  So we decided to stop further development and look for a buyer.  That was my cue to escape to the southern hemisphere.

Sydney (February, March, April)

I decided to book a trip to Sydney, and flew down on Valentine’s Day.  Two hours after landing, I jogged around the city, and  immediately ran into Scott Fruhan (HBS 2011), whom I did not know while at HBS.  In the first six weeks in Sydney, I randomly ran into a total of 6 people I knew from the US (3 HBS, 2 UVA, 1 NYC).

Australia was a dream.  Beautiful weather, gorgeous people, an adventurous landscape.  Few jobs, unfortunately, in anything I’d want to do.  Sophie was also in Australia, but I missed her in both Sydney and in Melbourne.

We went diving in Byron Bay (about 10 hours North of Sydney), amongst the leopard sharks and dense sealife.

Virginia & NYC (May)

I made sure I was back from Sydney in time for the Foxfield Races (steeplechase horse race) in Charlottesville, Va– the event of the year in Central Virginia.  You can see the Wharton tent below, but where is HBS?
 

Future

We are working to sell our Vaiad software to another company in the internet advertising space.  I’m simultaneously looking for a new job.  While I do have my favorites, the current prospects are NYC, San Francisco, and Berlin.  Fortunately, Section C is in all of those places.

I left Boston about a week after exams were over, and flew back to Virginia for a week, enough time to visit both my family in Norfolk and UVA.

Virginian Dragonfly:

I started work in early June at PhotoRocket, which is a pre-product online photo sharing platform.  The company was founded and is managed by a very successful Seattle entrepreneur whose first company led to Microsoft’s largest acquisition, aQuantive.

While the pockets behind PhotoRocket are deep, the company was looking to save a few dollars on housing.  As such, I am living with the VP of Product, his wife, a three and five year old, and a Colombian au pair who teaches the children (and me) Spanish.  In any one day, there are about 15 people scurrying through the house, including a maid, gardener, a house organizer, the family, nanny, me, and a variety of other workers.  Slightly chaotic.

The house’s front porch:

The house’s 1000-bottle wine cellar, me, and a friend from Virginia:

The house’s back porch overlooking Lake Washington and Mount Rainier.  Me, the 5 year old, and another friend from Virginia:

Living with two small children has given me a perspective on what it’s like to be a father and raise two children.  Despite all of the (paid) assistance, it is still a lot of work, and definitely lifestyle changing.

I’ve shot the children a few times:

The company itself was 10 people when I started, and grew to 14 a week later.  It’s a lot of fun working in an agile software development environment.  Things happen very quickly, without too much documentation or unnecessary planning.  I am personally responsible for developing client personas and writing product features.  It involves interviewing persona fits with a small team, discussing underlying user needs (on a very basic level), and drafting what the software feature looks like.  But like any 14 person company, I’ve done a lot more than just that.  Some highlights from the startup world: wearing shorts, and wine Fridays.  The three execs at the company are huge wine snobs: one owns a winery, one owns a wine distributor, and the guy with whom I’m living has a 1000-bottle wine cellar.  Needless to say, the wine at wine Fridays is good.

I took a trip up to Whistler, British Columbia for the July 4th weekend with a Bostonian friend.  The drive from Vancouver to Whistler was absolutely stunning, as was the town of Whistler itself.

The drive to Whistler:

Hiking around Whistler. The bridge broke, so we had to cross a very fast moving waterfall. The water was just above freezing, and it took me a few minutes to recover feeling in my feet:

Ferns on hike:

Waterfalls on hike:

Whistler, site of the 2010 winter Olympics:

I spent the past weekend with my host family at their vacation home in Leavenworth, Washington.  It’s in the Cascades nestled in between a giant mountain-face and a quickly moving river.  Being an East Coast person, I’ve never been exposed to such large mountains in North America.  In addition to enjoying the natural beauty, swimming, and jogging, I spent the weekend creating this new website for my photography company, F8NY.

I’m leaving Seattle in two weeks for NYC, and then to an unknown destination.  I’ll be vacationing the entire month of August, and am looking forward to it.  Then back to a new dorm room in Hamilton at the end of the month.