Update on my startup

For those who know, I've been running a startup business called Nearshore Systems, with my co-founder Alex for just under a year now. Alex runs the engineering part and I handle the business. It's a labor of love and takes up a lot of our time and attention, but we're having an incredible time and love the challenge of it.

This opportunity actually started with a cold email I wrote to someone I had mutual connections to and was based in China about potentially working for him. We went from a phone call to a meeting in San Mateo, a few meetings in Shanghai, which turned to possibility of a business idea, and eventually he offered to fund us. We got the green light on funding on December 23rd 2015, an early Christmas present for me.

Our business is an IT outsourcing business with 2 interesting angles:

#1 we have our engineers based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which allows us to overcome many of the existing issues outsourcing brings, like poor communication, timezone, and culture.

#2 we focus on the FinTech space, which covers areas like peer to peer lending platforms and marketplaces, blockchain, InsureTech, and payments. This business space has received nearly $20 billion (with a B) in 2015.

This post will be an array of photos showcasing our progress.

Mid-December 2015, Alex and I at a Starbucks in San Mateo, having just clicked "send" with our pitch decks and addendum to our investor for his review.

March 2016, This is me with Catalina and Hernan in our first office space in Palermo, Buenos Aires. They were the first 2 people we hired. Catalina did business operations and Hernan did recruitment. I lived in Bs As for 2+ months helping to launch everything.

This is my last Friday happy hour in Palermo with the team, before I left for grad school in Singapore. We had hired our head of engineering (Agustin) on the left, with 2 more engineers.

Here is our logo, which was actually the 2nd draft. The idea for the compass was mine, but the rest of the logo warrants credit for many others.

Below is from June - Sept, while I was in Asia and U.S., the management team started to grow our team and hired some great people.

Below is our first 2 sales reps, Neil (center) and Max (right) at a FinTech conference in Chicago. We have a tango dancer we hired to help spread the excitement about Argentina. This was in early October.

Below is from October 2016, when we got our brand new office in Belgrano, Buenos Aires. Room to grow to 102 people! At this moment, we have 39 full-time employees spread across Argentina and USA.

The entrance to our space, looks pretty sleek!

Our own patio and rooftop area!! Great for summer time.

Catalina, Hernan, and I during a management meeting.

Here is most of the team from Buenos Aires, with about 10 more working from home in the provinces

Below is a screenshot of our website homepage. It's a work in progress, but we're excited to be on the web as we push for more sales.