I’m leaving my full-time job to focus on my health, my family, and my new project: Pactto.
We all know that change is hard, any kind of change: changing jobs, moving to a new city, etc. But leaving anything that is stable and "safe" behind will always be extra challenging. The amount of what-ifs or whys that go through the mind is simply insane. It’s a feirceful battle of thoughts.
But it is time for me to change. Big time!
After more than 20 years of non-stop work in tech, first within the interactive agency madness and later within the corporate world (Blackberry, PayPal, Adobe, and more recently Intuit), I’m taking a big step forward: I’m leaving my job, for 3 reasons.
1. Health
During my last trip to Brazil in December, I did a regular checkup — very popular there and not so much in the US, where things are a lot more reactive than preventive — and to my surprise, results came back really bad. Super high cholesterol, super high triglycerides, and many other numbers totally out of balance.
I’m 42 years old, not getting any younger, and getting injured a lot more, especially in surfing, keeping me out of the water for months and months with surgeries (4 reconstruction surgeries so far on ankle, knees and big toe ligament), MRIs, and rehab.
Keeping the current pace as things are with work and kids’ duties would only make things worse.
2. Family
Being a Principal Product Manager in a big tech company requires a lot of time, focus, dedication, and hard work. Countless meetings, non-stop planning and tracking, creating multiple documents, testing hypotheses with users, researching with users, and advocating for the work. It’s a lot for one person to handle. And that means more time away from the ones I love the most: my family.
The opportunity to spend quality time with my wife, kids (4 and 8), grandpa, grandma, and everyone in the family won’t ever return. Especially with my kids!
With poor health and no time for loved ones, I’m pretty sure what the result is. And that is not what I want.
Back in my mind, I knew all of that was wrong, but the security of a good-paying job in a great company was too good to let go. The pay, the bonuses, the shares to vest; why leave it all behind? I need to provide for my family. They need me.
3. My calling in life: Pactto
Some of you heard of my project, Pactto, a platform focused on creating powerful tools for sport coaches to share precise feedback; and a marketplace for learners to connect with top global coaches and boost progress.
But not all of you know why I started it.
Two years ago, our young son Noah got a super rare disease called Kawasaki disease. It creates massive internal inflammation of veins. And for him, it resulted in two heart aneurysms. And generally, aneurysms never go away. He would have to live a very controlled life.
But miracle after miracle, he got 100% cured, the aneurysms disappeared (praise God!). Here is the full story if you’re curious, I wrote it for him to read when he's older.
That episode was the trigger to make me decide to use my knowledge and gifts to give back to the world. I have a dream: a world where any person can receive and send feedback artifacts to accelerate progress.
“If Your Dream Doesn’t Scare You, It’s Too Small”, from the book Chase the Lion.
Pactto was born as a side project, but now it's time to give everything I have to try to make it work.
If it fails, I'll learn a ton, will meet lots of new people and will go to places I never imagined.
If it succeeds, all the above will probably happen, plus: 10% of profits will go back to people in need.
Let’s do this!!! 🔥🔥 One step at a time.
Thank you for reading.
There is one more thing
I’ll announce our newest product, Pactto Replay, on Product Hunt very soon. Could I ask for a small favor? If you like it, could you please vote for us there? 🙌
And if you’re also thinking about changing something in your life, big or small, here are my two cents: “Why not?”
