We are approaching to end of year and it’s a good moment to do a retrospective of the last year. For me, 2016 have been quite a remarkable year.
It all started around 2010, at that moment I was working for the University of La Laguna, but, for some reason, I started thinking in moving out. I told my family, and they agreed at first, our plan was to move to London, one city I felt irremediably in love couple of years before doing tourism, but when the plan was getting concrete, they felt a little bit uncomfortable with the idea, so we decided to postpone it. Since then I always wanted to moved here, but we never found the perfect timing. Giving up on that idea, I decided to accept a job at Acrede, but they day before I started they were acquired by Intuit, their office in Tenerife would be closed and people will be either fired or moved to London. They decided not to bring me to London, but I decided otherwise and I started looking myself for a job here.
I decided to come to Silicon Milk Roundabout, a tech job fair where lots of companies where looking for people like me. I met Morgan Sowden the recently CTO of Octopus Labs, we talked a little bit, and we followed up after and by this time last year I already accepted the offer they made to me. So I was absolutely terrified for how would be all this movement. I relocated from Tenerife to London. I would start working in a new company, in a new language, and with a lot of technology I was not familiar with.
So I came to London, I started working on Octopus Choice. We managed to finish the work that was being done within just one month and released an MVP with just one loan available in the platform to a small selection of 7 users allowed to put up to £100 each. Everything was starting, now we have more than 2000 users, with almost £40m lent so far and currently assets under management for more than £20m. I think I have contribute, in my humble capacity, to this massive success, and I hope to be able to have a similar contribution in ongoing years.
My family followed me to London, and I’m quite impressed on how well they have settled in. 2015 was full of uncertainty and in and outs, but 2016 have been an amazing year. I have done lots of new things, know lots of interesting people, and grow personally and professionally a lot. How better will be 2017 we need to wait for just 1 year to know.
For all this reasons, it’s time to me to sing:
