Welcome to the Landman Lounge

I'm a technologist, tinkerer, entrepreneur, and ex-financieur.
An extroverted and energetic bundle of ideas slowly being worked on.
Peruvian by culture, American by ideology, global by experience.
Sources of dopamine can be found in grokking new ideas, novel cultural exposures, collaborative problem solving, and very hard, grueling workouts.
I seek, and thrive, in high pressure, adrenaline inducing environments as I tend to get bored easily. Looking forward to my NASCAR driving career in the coming years!

Longer bio here.

Projects I'm working on now

I'm currently working on Stella with my wonderful partner Adi. Our previous company, Try it on, did very well! You can read more about it here. I do the coding and she does the marketing, traveling the world while at it.

Ideas I believe in

The greatest freedom lies in having the ability and flexibility to choose the problems that occupy your mind.

A sign of a logical individual is the ability to entertain ideas that run counter to one's identity.

The most important factor when getting advise is to ask oneself: "what is the advisor trying to optimize?"
• What do you vs. the advisor value most: money, power, popularity, or something else? Hopefully their interests don't conflict with yours.
• The rational actor's utility function seldom includes the "fun" factor, and it's much easier to be rational when giving advise than when acting on it.
• [Almost never] take your advise from twitter - or your family, for that matter. Their idea of what's best for you is often only tangential to what you truly want.

The developed world is too abundant for most people to not pursue their ideas intensely.
• The only thing stopping people is EQD ("el que diran" or, "what would they say").
• The corollary is that the level of intensity is dependent on the idea.

You should seek to change your mind. Once you change it, take time to digest the flaws in your thinking.
• Changing your mind often is a sign of a perfunctory thinking.
• Never changing your mind is a sign of stubbornness.
• Don't take these moments lightly - they should seldom happen.

Our brain is incredibly malleable.
• One of life's biggest unlocks is shifting your mindset so as to bask in the suffering on the way to accomplishing your objectives. Then, it is not really sufferring but enjoyment.

Only two reasons to quit:
• You realize you don't want the prize anymore, and this realization persists for an extended period of time.
• You've changed your mind on a fundamental, core assumption driving your work.

There are exceptions to all maxims, including this one.

What I like to read

I subscribe to way too many substacks, but I read primarily about economics, finance, and the technology required to build out my ideas or satisfy my curiosity.

• One of my favorite essays when traveling to new cities, on cities and ambitions.
• A read that motivated me to venture out on my own, on optionality.
• This blew my mind as a 25 year old pup, on the frailty of utility as a global maximizer.
• Forever appreciative to Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok for feeding my endless curiosity, via Marginal Revolution.
• "The ability to channel motivation into constructive effort that is key to success", via TraderFeed - What Predicts Success Among Developing Traders?.
• On the genious of John Von Neumann and truly enjoying to think, via David Hoffman.
• How to understand things, via Nabeel S. Qureshi.
• And many, many others...

Contact me

I love meeting new people and I reply to every email, so say hello!