2022-08 - inflection grants application

#🌿

written in: oct 1st, 2022

i'd give myself a 6-month leeway to focus solely on learning how to code and putting out the prototypes and projects i've been developing for so long.

(more details on the next answers)

since my first glimpse into the metaverse and my purpose in life at 15 years old, i dreamed of building an AI/personal assistant that would essentially replace my cognitive/productive self, allowing my most creative self to pursue the bigger/more complex questions of life.

on my first professional experience (internship), i'd already started creating projects that automated most of my work, either via excel (workflows/macros/vba) or via process optimization in general. in 6 months, i was able to cut down my workload by 70% and with that free time, i moved to other product engineering areas to learn more about them.

in 2016, at 17 years old i was the first brazilian participant accepted into a highly competitive US-based career accelerator program for young professionals. the program had an acceptance rate of 5% and an average age of 21, resulting in a 96% hiring ratio of graduates at the end of the 12 months, with an average yearly salary of $50k.

i worked at a silicon valley AI marketing startup and in 5 months, i was promoted to advertising operations manager, managing over $4 million on advertising spend on social media channels, for about 20 companies. i also managed and trained a 4-person team that created ads, ran, optimized them and developed requirements/procedures for orienting the development of the proprietary AI. i was also responsible for setting up several automation tools and workflows for their ad campaigns (zapier, airtable, marketo/hubspot, salesforce/sugarcrm, etc).

after this, i made a big decision to quit and come back to brazil, to work with a self-development/self-knowledge organization, in search of a deeper purpose for my life and work.

i found it, but it took me over 3 years, over 30 days on meditation retreats, lots of courses, immersions, research and self-study. soon after i came back the company dismantled itself, and since then i've been prototyping things in notion, miro, figma, obsidian and living with less than $1k i had saved (i needed to spend $7k, everything i'd saved, in order to cancel my green card process and be able to come back to brazil).

for now, they are still very messy, but if you want to take a look, i started to make a big presentation diving deep into the projects (50+ slides for now) - https://view.genial.ly/61f718a81bd776001137131d/guide-cassius-life-presentation-042022 - and would be happy to talk more about them on a chat!

i did get a few odd jobs here and there, but i felt like i really needed to use this time to develop a clear understanding of the world and my role in it.

so here i am now. i'd say i'm about 90% done with this clarity, but i still have 2 major challenges: 1) to actually finalize the prototypes and share them with the world, and 2) to create/refine the communication around these projects. why/how they can be so important and useful.

i also have a few writings/reflections on my blog from these past 5 years of professional experiences, learnings and research. my website is under reconstruction, so i'll just link a few articles in case you're interested:
the powerful learnings i had in jan/22 & my vision for 2022 (this one is not very polished, i published as a kind of a draft) - https://cassiuscarvalho.substack.com/p/the-powerful-learnings-i-had-in-jan22
an introduction to meta-cognitive processes (jan 2021) - https://cassiuscarvalho.substack.com/p/an-introduction-to-meta-cognitive
a big picture view of my notion setup (dec 2019) - https://www.cassiuscarvalho.com/en/a-big-picture-view-of-my-notion-setup/
A Quick Q&A with a Crazy Ambitious Young Guy (Me!) (mar 2018) - https://www.cassiuscarvalho.com/en/a-quick-qa/
How I'm Breaking the Mold (jan 2017) [the "story of my life" until that point and how i got accepted into praxis] - (https://www.cassiuscarvalho.com/en/how-im-breaking-the-mold/

even though all of my professional career was working in technology/operations, i was never able to stop and learn how to code. i always learned things on the fly and did a "good enough for now" job. i felt like i never had the time/space and especially, the financial support/peace of mind to focus on really learning it.

in these past few months, i tried to start it a few times in order to conclude some prototypes, but found myself needing to come back to more short-term needs and worries. any time spent on learning something for the long-term perpetuates me living in an environment that doesn't support my productivity at all. since my familiar context didn't help, i kept losing my motivation many times. before, i was able to work at a startup and make a good amount of money quickly, but now that i finally found what i consider most important for me and the start of my contribution to the world, i'm in this weird "mad scientist" modus operandi, which makes it hard to contribute to other projects/startups/DAOs, while i feel very contrained and having no support to work on my projects as i'm still figuring out monetization models.

with the money, i'd be able to do simple things like going to work in different environments, meeting people that could be interested in working together, or spending some time exchanging work for accommodation at a hostel, knowing that my food/transportation costs are covered.

also, my health has really deteriorated as i neglected it in the unidimensional pursuit of my life's mission. i'd spend a bit to have access to a gym.

hopefully i made this clear by now, but if i didn't, i really believe that if i'm able to put my projects out there and communicate them clearly, in a beautiful, organized and contextualized manner, this is could be so powerful and transformative, both for myself and for the people that come in contact with it. they're the culmination of what i've been actively searching and developing for 8 years.

(especially) young people can feel supported, seen, understood. i can feel like there's a team of people who's passionate about and committed to creating more regenerative and disruptive systems, organizations and lifestyles. an experience of a reality with less disinformation, disconnection, data extraction, more support, collaboration, collective intelligence. this is what i miss the most. this community of people aligned on the same vision and operating under interoperable development frameworks.

i believe human coordination is THE biggest challenge to work on, to tacke any other problems humanity and this planet may face. if i'm able to play my part well and people join me on this mission, that's already accomplishing and changing my life so much.

thank you for these questions. it was a great exercise to answer them.