JH

JH

My story in brief.

Joel as a kid

I was born in México into a family of artists.

Out of love for video-games, I started teaching myself programming at the age of 10.

Growing up I kept myself busy.

I managed a private MMORPG server, a web agency and an T-Shirts webshop. I was 13-16 years.

 
Joel projects
Books left
Books top

I also spent lots of time reading.

Software engineering, design, color theory, economics, typography, marvel comics…

Books bottom
Joel goes to NL

At 18, I moved to The Netherlands.

Got a job right away as a software engineer at Qelp while I studied computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Bitterballen

Over the weekends, I began creating products like…

Jamboss Logo

An app to democratize music playlists in shared spaces such as home parties, bars and gyms.

Jamboss

…and…

Involvmnt Prototype
Involvmnt Logo

A geo-location based social network focused on fostering local communities.

At 20, I was hired to innovate for the corporate.

I joined KPN‘s Innovation Department where I became front-end tech lead for their E-Commerce department, responsible for bringing their web-shops to the future.
KPN
Open source projects

At 21, I authored my first open-source projects…

…and started contributing to even more.

Contributed OSS

I was noticed.

T500

The Next Web recognized me as one of the TOP 500 Digital Talents in The Netherlands.

KPN CISO

At 22, I joined KPN‘s security labs.

Where I worked performing research and launching secure products such as KPN’s end-to-end encrypted file transfer alongside Phil Zimmermann.

I also dived into photography.

At 23, I created Okuna.

A friendlier, healthier and open-source social network. We raised 100,000€ on Kickstarter with 20,000 active users and 1,000+ stars on Github.

Ankida Website

I also started Ankida, a digital agency.

Specialized in helping NGO’s, charities and nonprofits leverage the power of technology to make the world a better place.

At 24, I helped define the future, by playing with it first at VanBerlo.

A multidisciplinary, award-winning & leading design agency in Europe where I worked in critical infrastructure products and connected devices.

VanBerlo
Somus app preview

At 25, I launched Somus, a philanthropic endeavor.

Working with celebrities, we monetized  their content to raise thousands of dollars for charitable organizations.

I also built Peekalink, an API to magically preview any link.

As of 2023, the service serves over 500 enterprise customers with ~20 million monthly requests.

Peekalink logo transparent
Retrato Preview

At 27, I created Retrato, an app to turn selfies into professional photos with AI.

The app was downloaded over 500,000 times, reached the top 100 on the AppStore and generated six-digits revenue.

I’m currently leading RenderAI.

A research and development lab focused on building, deploying and commercializing photorealistic artificial intelligence models. 

RenderAI

We’re here.

“The future is an unknown, but a somewhat predictable unknown. To look to the future we must first look back upon the past. That is where the seeds of the future were planted. I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”

– Albert Einsten

Thanks for reading.