My First Year as CEO
By: Antonio Mendieta
Tags: Storytelling, Comida For Familias, Entrepreneur, CEO, How To Be Ceo

My First Year as CEO

Before being CEO

Growing up I had two homes: one in Vallejo, where I had my toys, my video games, my parents, my dog, and I was basically free to do whatever I wanted, and the other was my temporary home where I lived with my grandparents, my uncles, had some clothes, had to do homework, and had to follow a lot of rules.

Photo by Gabriel Tovar on Unsplash

My siblings and I would wake up every Monday morning at 6am, have our breakfast, brush our teeth, pack up some clothes and items, and get in the van where our mom would then drive us to school. We would stay at our grandparents for the school week and then on Friday we would say bye to our family, pack our stuff, and then go back to see our dad in Vallejo. If we forgot anything, we would have to wait 2–4 days to see it again.

I never really understood why we did this until middle-school. I found out it was because our parents wanted us to go to a small, safe school like Calistoga, where we would have the support of my mom’s side of the family (most of my dad’s side of the family was still in Mexico).

After graduating high-school, I wanted to travel. My wanderlust took me to a private liberal arts college in Reading, Pennsylvania called Albright. I stayed there for four years, traveling back to California only for the holidays and the summer breaks.

Following college, I returned to California and started applying to jobs within the tech industry. I was applying for software engineer and game development positions for Sony, Playstation, Nintendo, Microsoft, Google, and many others. After a year of applying and working small jobs like a cashier at Macy’s, and brand ambassador for different companies, a friend of mine said that they were looking for someone to work at customer tech support at her job. I applied and got the job.

There was a honeymoon phase where I was really happy with being customer tech support. I got along with my boss and my co-workers, but I wasn’t really using my knowledge that I learned from my four years of school. And so I was still looking ways to improve and apply my coding skills.

I then attended this hackathon in San Francisco, Docusign’s Hack For Forests 2019 Momentum Hackathon. I woke up early to take the ferry from Vallejo to San Francisco. I went alone and I didn’t have a team, I figured I would find one once I get there.

When I arrived they were doing the kickoff and some people announced that they were looking for team members. I joined this team of entrepreneurs that were developing their apps together, and they were being led and mentored by a Rauhmel Fox.

First time meeting the team of entrepreneurs.

I asked him if he could be my mentor and if he could train me to be CEO just like the others and he said yes, but it wasn’t going to be for free. He said to give him a call after the hackathon to talk about it in more detail.

Since I didn’t know anything about him, I did my own research to learn more about him and his company. It wasn’t until August, two months after I first met him, when I decided to give him a call.