How did you go from real estate to tech?

Reinventing oneself out of a crisis

A compass.Changing directions to reinvent yourself,how did you go from real estate to the tech world?

With the real estate bubble crisis in 2007, and going into 2008,there was a huge housing crisis that brought the country into a pretty heavy recession.

And of course, I had spent the previous six or seven years growing as a professional,within that company,moving from an individual contributor to managing several offices.

There came a point when I realized things weren't going to recover,and I decided to reinvent myself.

So I started looking for different opportunities and thought:"Why not try the tech world?" Because it was something that, at that time, was starting to boom.

But I really, really had no idea about the tech world.

One day, I found an offer.They called me and said:"Hey, we're interested, we've seen your experience.

You haven't only worked as a salesperson,but you've also led teams.

That could really help us grow a sales team for a very specific piece of software we're developing." I said: "Alright, let's do it, why not?" What did I do?

I didn't sit back and do nothing.I thought: "Wow, I really need to prepare for this." And that's something I'd like to say openly, it's super important that people prepare for their interviews and have a basic understanding of the role they're applying for, the company and its values.

What I did was research everything I could about the software I had no idea, because I also didn't really understand what problem they were trying to solve at the time,it was related to a new law, the Occupational Risk Prevention Act.

Companies with more than 500 employees were required to establish their own internal prevention service.

I said: "I need to dive into this." So I went to the interview and they asked me several questions,at one point they said:"Wow, how do you know so much about this?" I said: "I don't. I've simply tried to prepare as best I can." In the end, I got the job, they hired me,and it was great because I started learning terminology I'd never heard before.

It was about...At that time, people were starting to talk about "the cloud".

Back then, this didn't exist, no one knew what "the cloud" was.

So those companies, including the one I was working for,had to connect databases through Citrix, which at the time sounded like complete gibberish to me, in order to turn what was a client-server software into a remote one.

Reinventing myself wasn't difficult.I think it's the best thing that's happened to me in recent years.

In the end, a sale is a sale, whether you're selling a property, software,or a car because after all you're solving a problem for a person or for a company,depending on if it's B2C or B2B.

And that's how I reinvented myself.It was partly caused by the circumstances of the real estate crisis.

I began working for that company, where I remained for around five to nine years, since they had several software businesses with different business models.

And from there, I moved to another tech company,and up to today, now that I'm at Factorial,I'm still learning about this industry.