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Why nachobuilds?

Why this name?

In summary: my name is Nacho (in Spain, it's a short form of the name Ignacio) and this year I want to build something. It's that simple.

Background

Although I'm not a Computer Science graduate, I have some exposure to the industry. As an student of Aerospace Engineering, I started to learn Python back in 2018, just for plotting some graphs for my final year dissertation. Since then, I've used Python for dealing with multiple datasets from different industries, and created impact in the projects I work on (mostly by time-saving or by leveraging my solutions with Machine Learning techniques). This was something which enabled me to continue using coding as a tool for my personal projects and for my day-to-day work. When working in an Aerodynamics Department, the need for treating data and postprocessing simulations is a must, and I felt Python was a tool I could use for making my work more automated and to exploit the data I was using.

What's the problem?

My 20s have been quite chaotic. I've explored the possibility to join Strategic Consulting without success, tried to hack the financial markets as a retail investor (even when knowing that's almost impossible to beat the SP500) or spent quite some time building tools for assisting Spanish people to declare their taxes from investing. However, most of these projects have stayed private without the final step to launch the MVP. Doing this for multiple years is quite frustrating, so that's why I want to build something.

Building can be seen as a verb that denotes action and collaboration. These two concepts have been identified as some of the key areas where to focus in order to create momentum for my personal projects and to grow professionally.

What do I want to build?

When working at one of the biggest industrial players in Europe (Airbus), you realise that there is still big efforts to close the digital gap. The company investments are there... The problem arises when the replacement of legacy ways of working impact downstream processes. Then, the replacement is not urgent (even sometimes not desirable as it might affect deliveries). This means that the digital transformation results are being slow.

Based on this problem, I can think of two possibilities to start building:

  • Educational product

As a result of the slow digitalisation in the industrial players, more than 90% of the workforce is still blind about its potential impact. The upskilling is slow and the managers don't have visibility on which of their workers are really capable to create more value. At some point, the exponential growth of AI will make those digital roles able to create significant more impact that those who lag behind. Will companies let the second group out, or will they urge for their upskilling? If the second is the option, then there is a clear market in upskilling industrial workforce. Also, universities have a slow adoption of digital skills (I remember learning FORTRAN in 2014... Was it the best tool? Python was already out there). Recent graduates will be willing to invest some of their money to level up their skills to match what would be needed in the industry.

  • Engineering product

When designing new industial products, simulations are everywhere. As it's very costly to test your design, there are clear advantages of performing numerical simulations. Scientific Machine Learning is still far from being adopted in the industrial players. The few startups that offer solutions to companies are too expensive, meaning that only a few critical parts of the business are being adopted. Companies will slowly transition to embeed the SciML techniques and infraestructure. Having a start-up which is able to tailor a solution that incorporates state-of-the-art ML models with the right digital eecosystem will be able to capture a lot of this market.

The industrial players tend to be big, so that they benefit from the economies of scale. But, as Charlie Munger says in his famous Almanack "the defect of scale is that as you get big you get the bureaucracy... You get big, fat, dumb unmotivated bureaucracies". What I've defined as possibilities to build, will be arbitrage opportunitues to benefit from these bureaucracies.

Inspiration and goals

  • Video of Huerta de Soto (action!)
  • Blogpost for Deep Work (focus)
  • Youtube Vlogs (withmarko)