Early or Wrong

I bet on crypto at 17 and failed. I bet on AI and it paid. Now I'm betting on robotics. Here's how I tell the difference between early and wrong.

In May 2021 I published an article called "Raising investment with crypto: futuristic or stupid?"

I was 17. I genuinely didn't know the answer.

Five years later, I think I finally do. And it's not the answer I wanted.

I've said this to myself more than once: "I was five years ahead of my time." It feels good to say. It makes the failure sound like a compliment.

But there's a problem with that sentence. Nobody pays you for being early. The market doesn't send a thank-you note. Being early and being wrong look exactly the same from the outside: no revenue, no users, a closed laptop.

So this post is me being honest about which one I was.

Where the ball was going

It started with teachers.

At 16, my partner Fabricio and I built Studently. An all-in-one platform for teachers: a calendar connected to students, chat between teachers, parents and students, collaborative documents with comments.

We did everything "right." Wireframes on a whiteboard. A prototype in Figma. From idea to MVP in less than three weeks.

We even validated it. I interviewed six teachers. Four out of six told me their job gave them anxiety and stress. Six out of six said they would pay.

Six out of six. At 16, that felt like winning the lottery.

Then an executive from Argentina told us something that changed the whole project:

"Don't look at where the ball is. Look at where it's going to be."

We sat with that. And we realized something uncomfortable. If we kept going, we would be competing against Google Classroom, Microsoft and ClassDojo.

Two teenagers from rural Costa Rica against Google.

So we asked a different question: where will the market be in five to ten years?

Our answer was web3.

Hoosling

That's how Hoosling was born. A crypto fundraising platform for Latin America.

I designed the MVP in Figma and put it on WordPress in less than seven days. The full product took about six months of code.

And then something happened that I still think about.

We got interest from VCs. Around $60K to $80K.

It never closed.

The project died.

For a long time, I told the story like this: we were too early. Crypto in Latin America in 2021 wasn't ready. The infrastructure wasn't there. The users weren't there.

Some of that is true.

But it's not the real reason.

The real reason

Here's what we knew how to do: validate, design, prototype and code.

Here's what we didn't know how to do: sell.

And the reason we couldn't sell wasn't the market. It was me. Too much ego, not enough humility. I thought a good product would sell itself. I thought being right about the future was enough.

It isn't.

That's the trap of being early. When you're early, you have a perfect excuse for everything. No users? Too early. No investment? Investors don't get it yet. No sales? The market isn't mature.

Every failure gets blamed on the calendar. And you never look at yourself.

First lesson: being early is not a strategy. It's a timestamp. If you can't sell what you built, it doesn't matter what year it is.

Five years later

Here's the part that hurts a little.

A few years after Hoosling died, I was building in crypto again. This time for other people.

At Holdex, I worked as a product developer on Ozean, Clearpool and Truflation. Products with more than 500K users, backed by Sequoia and other VCs.

With Stefan Rust, former CEO of bitcoin.com, I led design and development of Index Fun, web3 index funds. I built around 80% of the app. It was listed among the 10 most revolutionary web3 apps in Asia.

So the market did come. Crypto did get there.

I just wasn't the one who owned it.

That's what "five years ahead" really means. You see it first. Somebody else captures it. And you end up working for the people who arrived on time.

I also lost something else in between. I spent about two years as an employee without really learning. I was comfortable. I was stable. And I was standing still while the thing I had bet on started to happen.

If I'm honest, I wasn't only early. I was also absent.

Second lesson: being right about the future only pays if you're still in the room when it arrives.

Then AI

After crypto, I joined AI.

I built Athena, AI-powered crypto trading systems, with a former NASA employee. In one weekend hackathon, I built him a full-stack app and charged $6,000 for three days of work.

I built Ghosta AI, digital twins with AI.

And this time, something was different. I wasn't trying to convince anyone that AI was the future. Everyone already knew. The question wasn't "is this real?" The question was "can you build it fast?"

And I could.

So here's the pattern I see in my own life: I joined crypto. I joined AI.

In crypto, I was early and I couldn't sell. I failed.

In AI, I was on time and I knew how to build fast. I got paid.

The difference wasn't my intelligence. It wasn't my code. It was timing plus the ability to deliver something people were already willing to pay for.

Third lesson: the best time to join a wave is when people are already paying, but the experts are still few.

How I tell the difference now

So how do you know if you're early or wrong?

I don't have a perfect formula. But I have a few questions I ask myself now, and most of them come from my own mistakes.

Is anyone paying yet? Not "would you pay?" Six out of six teachers said they would pay for Studently. That's not money. That's politeness. Real validation is a payment, or at least someone trying to pay. My rule now: at least 10 people with real purchase intent before I call a market validated.

Am I blaming the calendar? If every problem I have is explained by "the market isn't ready," I'm probably hiding something. Usually, it's that I'm not selling.

Who is already building? If nobody is building, it might be too early. If big companies are building, it might be too late. The sweet spot is when serious people are building, but the field is still small.

Can I survive the wait? Hoosling didn't die because crypto failed. Crypto worked. Hoosling died because we couldn't stay alive long enough to see it. Being early is expensive. You need a way to pay rent while the world catches up.

Am I learning, or just waiting? The two years I lost weren't lost because I was employed. They were lost because I stopped learning. Being early only works if you use the time to get better.

Fourth lesson: "early" is only a good word if you have a plan to survive until "on time."

The next bet

So here I am again. Same question, different field.

The ball, I think, is robotics.

It's not here yet. Not the way AI is here. But it's being built. And it's going to start coming.

This time I'm trying not to repeat my own mistakes.

I'm not starting with a startup. I'm starting with a robot. Literally. A robotic arm kit on my desk. October is 150 hours of robotics. Hands and theory at the same time.

I'm not going to become a researcher. That's not my story. My story is: I find the right people and I make it happen. But to do that, I need enough technical depth to hire the people who really know, to have credibility with VCs and talent, and to smell what's real and what's smoke.

And I'm not betting my rent on it. Upwork pays the bills while I learn. That's the lesson from Hoosling: survive the wait.

The plan has sprints. First, build a robot. Second, find a thesis, a real problem. Third, a wedge that looks like a company.

I don't know the thesis yet. And I'm fine with that. I've learned that the thesis isn't found in a notebook. It's found by hitting walls.

Fifth lesson: if you think you're early, don't build a company first. Build skill first. Then build the company when the money starts to move.

So, early or wrong?

With Hoosling, I was both.

Early about crypto. Wrong about myself.

I thought the hard part was seeing the future. It wasn't. Lots of people see the future. The hard part is being there, ready, able to sell, when the future finally shows up.

That 17-year-old asked if crypto fundraising was futuristic or stupid.

The honest answer: it was futuristic. I was the one who wasn't ready.

This time, I want to be early and ready.

We'll see if I learned anything.