Recorded on 12/19 in CDMX, Mexico, at Colmena Creativa. CEO of HelloGuru Felipe Abello met up with Remoter and helped kickstart season 2 of the Remoter Podcast. HelloGuru is a no-code academy- an online university teaching people alternative solutions to build products without the need of learning how to code. Being a remote-first company has allowed HelloGuru to first, exist, and second, contribute to the conversations of accessibility and digital inclusion.
Recorded on 12/19 in CDMX, Mexico, at Colmena Creativa. CEO of HelloGuru Felipe Abello met up with Remoter and helped kickstart season 2 of the Remoter Podcast. HelloGuru is a no-code academy- an online university teaching people alternative solutions to build products without the need of learning how to code. Being a remote-first company has allowed HelloGuru to first, exist, and second, contribute to the conversations of accessibility and digital inclusion.
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Josephine Tse 0:00
It's time for season two of the Remoter Podcast. I'm your host Josephine.
Josephine Tse 0:05
As a continuation from season one with Alex and Andres, I had the opportunity to interview some remote work leaders, ranging from companies, consultants, advocates and more to add to Remoter's stash of free resources and human-centred stories, enriching our educational platform about remote work. This podcast is sponsored by Torre, a new kind of professional network that automatically connects talent with opportunity. Founded by Alexander Torrenegra, our goal is to make work fulfilling for everyone and find the job of your dreams by visiting torre.co. That's T O R R E dot C O
Josephine Tse 0:49
Hey, everyone, we're tuning into Felipe's story today. This happens to be the first episode that we recorded for season two as well. We met up in Mexico City at the co-working space Colmena Creativa that I was working out of. They had an audio recording studio, which was perfect. However, we had to deal with this janky situation, which you'll hear about shortly. So sit back and enjoy Felipe's story about how his remote first company, HelloGuru is joining the no-code movement and teaching people alternative ways to solve the technical problems.
Josephine Tse 1:21
If this part is going to be used in the podcast, just know that there is a construction site outside of Colmena Creativa, I can't do anything about it. So we're just gonna leave it be. So could you please introduce yourself?
Felipe Abello 1:37
Of course. My name is Felipe Abello. I am founder and CEO of HelloGuru. It's an online university that teaches people how to build software without the need of having to learn to code. In my background. I worked for almost five years at Rappi, being there the first employee.
Josephine Tse 1:53
Could you tell us a little bit about what Rappi is?
Felipe Abello 1:57
Of course. It's one of Latin America's first unicorns in Colombia. But basically they deliver you anything that can be delivered.
Josephine Tse 2:05
So how did you... what were some of the lessons learned and the things that you really took away from being in an environment as such, I'm sure it was a really big learning environment.
Felipe Abello 2:14
It was, it was. I told my friends that I was not going to do an MBA, that I was working in a startup. And I think that that teaches you like, a bunch of stuff for life and for work and for everything. I think that the most important thing that I take away from working at Rappi is never stopping, like having perseverance in everything you do. I believe that that was one of the reasons that grew from nothing to a billion dollar company.
Josephine Tse 2:43
I think right now Rappi does have remote positions.
Felipe Abello 2:47
Does, it does.
Josephine Tse 2:48
But when you first started, it was not.
Felipe Abello 2:51
It was not at all.
Josephine Tse 2:53
Can you tell us a little bit more about your time there when they were, cuz it, they were trying to implement right, remote work at that time, right?
Felipe Abello 3:04
Right, we started to see the need of having to hire people that weren't in any office at all, that were working from their houses. And it was kind of a struggle because we thought that the good way in which that could work was implementing the culture that we already had into these, these new employees. And it was kind of a mistake, it was difficult at the beginning. If you have a culture in which you you don't empower people to build culture outside the office or, or have a good communication with people that are not side by side with you, that starts to show up a lot of problems in there. So at the beginning was kind of clunky. We saw it like, we didn't like a lot, having people that weren't working at the office. Progressively, we started to make a shift- making the mindset on how to work with these people. It eventually happened. Like we saw the benefit of having of not sacrificing good talent just because they weren't with us like beside. And we started to find ways in which it could work.
Josephine Tse 4:14
So now of course, when you introduced yourself, you said you now work at HelloGuru. Yeah. Tell me about your path from leaving Rappi to what inspired you to start HelloGuru.
Felipe Abello 4:28
Of course. So when I was working at Rappi, I was struggling firsthand on the lack of software developers. We had a bunch and a lot of backlog on the software team in the developers team. And we weren't able to catch up. I decided to start first coding myself and then finding ways in which people could solve technical problems and help the developers team to solve technical problems. So in all this process, I found a started to find out all these no coding tools that led people to believe software and solutions and fix problems without the need of having to be a developer. What I started to do was to hire non technical people that were graduated like recently, and teach them for one month, two months to use all these no coding tools. And all of a sudden, like, all these guys, were starting to build software. And that's when it struck me like, okay, we have this problem we have, a lack of software developers. And we're not going to catch up ever if we try to make everyone learn to code.
Josephine Tse 5:31
So it was people on your team at Rappi.
Felipe Abello 5:34
Yeah.
Josephine Tse 5:34
And you kind of just gave them a task of look for other ways to do it.
Felipe Abello 5:38
Exactly.
Josephine Tse 5:39
Because we need to get it done.
Felipe Abello 5:40
Exactly. And we all have, all of us, like starting to find out all these tools that let us build software without the need of going to the developers and asking for the help. So with this, we were able to solve a lot of problems, technical problems, and also leverage a lot of the backlog that the developer team had. So it was like a win win for for everyone. And that's when it struck me. I started doing that more often and starting teaching people more on these things.
Josephine Tse 6:12
So you guys have come up with the solution to tackle the lack of software, software developers. And that is in the form of HelloGuru. So I recently read an article talking about how the No, no-code movement is the new movement. And I thought it was really timely and it's probably my social media, reading all my work and whatever, they know that I they knew that I was going to do this. And I felt like I was really targeted by that. And yeah, so I would like to hear from your own words, the about the no code movement, and also, how you personally kind of relate to that and how you feel about this because this is now your passion and your business.
Felipe Abello 6:54
Yeah, of course. Okay. So throughout history, humans have always tried to find out ways in which they could talk easier to a computer. So at the beginning, when computers were invented, the only way which you could programme something was by using zeros and ones. And to do a big instruction, you had to write literally lines of zeros and ones that means something. Then people started to build languages on top of those zeros and ones, so you no longer word writing series on ones, but actually English words. And like a lot of layers on top of that were starting to be built. The no code movement is born like around six, seven years ago, something like that. Some people recall Wix or WordPress as the first and no code tools out there. And since then, this movement has brought a lot of tools to life that not only lets you build a simple landing page, but super complex apps such as Rappi or an Uber. We already have tools that lets you build an artificial intelligence software. bots, even mobile apps. So I believe that these movements, what's trying to do is basically closing that gap between people that know how to talk to a computer and those who don't. The analogy I like to use is, couple of hundred years ago, people were only being able to talk to each other at a distance using telegram, you know, and you needed people who knew how to beep beep beep and translate. Exactly. And all of a sudden, people knew that that was not scalable. And all of a sudden, people discover the telephone, and the humans invented the telephone. So you went from, like a dark age when no one was able to communicate with each other or other than going to a telegram office and translating the message and well, it was a hassle. And then it just became you just pick up the phone, dial a number and you can speak directly to the person. I believe that's what's happening with technology, with technology, with computers and with software development. And no code movement is helping that trend towards that.
Josephine Tse 9:05
So did you know about the name the no code movement?
Felipe Abello 9:08
No.
Josephine Tse 9:08
When you... no you didn't.
Felipe Abello 9:09
No I didn't.
Josephine Tse 9:10
So do you remember what you were doing when you had that, like realisation?
Felipe Abello 9:15
I do. I do. I do. I do. Actually, he was I was in bed, I was working like at 5am, at 5am, something like that. And when I was writing a Medium post, of a guy that was speaking about the no code movement. I was talking about a tool that I knew. And I was like, Okay, this tool that I know is no code. And then like, everything is no code. And it was like, Oh, my God, and then I spend all my week like research and building tools.
Josephine Tse 9:42
So it was like, boom, yeah. And that was that was the boom moment. Yeah, exciting. Did you also have kind of like a boom moment when you realised that there were no academies out there for this?
Felipe Abello 9:54
So there's, there's, there's people that are doing educational stuff on this. What's true Was that in Spanish speaking countries, there was nothing at all, or nothing that I could find of. Yes, there's people that are uploading YouTube videos and making blog posts on the on the topic. But there's no academy focused on teaching people how to build software, just as there are academies that teach people how to code.
Josephine Tse 10:18
In your very early stages, but what I read was that your original direction was towards entrepreneurs.
Felipe Abello 10:27
Mm hmm.
Josephine Tse 10:28
But then you guys switched up after a while, and you are targeting more of the doers.
Felipe Abello 10:32
So actually, we haven't figured out yet, which is the perfect person for this, other than someone that is willing to do something to solve a problem using a computer. So if I tell you this, there's a bunch of people that fall into this category. The thing that that has moved us most is that people are very impressed that they can actually build things in such a short amount of time. So there's a guy that tells us okay, like in one week, I was able to build a whole CRM for my business all by myself, like, what? Really? Like me, and it's working?! So it's like this sense of accomplishment that people see that they can do using these tools, and that they didn't know that it was possible before. So as you say, hearing the stories of people are trying to build stuff without previously being able to do it. Because they are not coders or they're non technical themselves, moves us a lot, even if they are in very early stage because they start chatting with us. They start sending emails and start asking us questions, and I am stuck in, in how to make this login, I'm stuck on how to publish my site online and like making a bunch of questions and we're super happy to answer them and like, help them build and solve the problems.
Josephine Tse 11:52
So what other other than the guy who, like you said made a CRM in a day or in a week or whatever? What other stories stand out to you?
Felipe Abello 12:00
This one is good. There, there's a girl that I met in a in a conference that is from a very small and super far in town in Colombia. I don't remember the name, but it's so small and it's so apart from everything that they don't even have a radio station. And what they do is that they have like a group, a WhatsApp group in which all the people in the in the town is, and there's a guy that I believe is the admin or something like that, that is the guy that tells everyone the news through the WhatsApp group. So for example, the news or things... so the for example, that the news are like I don't know, Ms. Jenny is offering rice today and the dog of Mr. Jack is lost. Can you help us find them and like, is like the only way of communicating only that to tell you how small and how far apart these town is from everything.
Josephine Tse 13:03
That's insane. I didn't even... Okay. Okay,
Felipe Abello 13:06
So this girl found a way through recycling, she could offer micro finance to the town. So it's something like you give me your old clothes and let's recycle them and they give you a microcredit for something new you need. Okay, so she find out what she found a way in which this could work and it's working. And she she told me, I've earned a lot of like three or four and prices from the ONU (United Nations) and the government of Colombia has helped me and things like that. But I don't have any, any webpage. I don't have any email. I don't have any technology connection at all.
Josephine Tse 13:46
Oh, my God.
Felipe Abello 13:46
So she started using us, okay. And right now she has her web page.
Josephine Tse 13:52
She built a web page.
Felipe Abello 13:53
She built a web page. She has now her her corporate email and he she's like building a bunch of stuff to connect all the people in the town. So when you tell me, okay, what's the people you're targeting? Well, she is a business maker, but she's just a person that has a problem and wants to solve it using technology. And she's doing it.
Josephine Tse 14:17
Yeah. In a sense. I mean, she is an entrepreneur of sorts, and yeah, almost accidental. But almost yeah.
Felipe Abello 14:23
Exactly.
Josephine Tse 14:24
It's just the use cases. And as I guess, as a founder and your team hearing that people are finding your product and your your services useful is what can not like it keeps going, but it actually like keeps you going as well.
Felipe Abello 14:42
That's right.
Josephine Tse 14:43
I understand that your current team is remote first.
Felipe Abello 14:48
Yeah. It is.
Josephine Tse 14:49
Like when did you start really planning for it and doing it?
Felipe Abello 14:52
It was like, six months ago, something like that. I was doing. I was doing like an hour on a part time basis.
Josephine Tse 14:59
Six months. That's actually pretty fast.
Felipe Abello 15:03
Wow, I think it is. I think it is. That's one of the things that I've learned from Rappi, is doing it as fast as possible. Yeah, no, fail as fast as you can.
Josephine Tse 15:13
I wanted to talk about some of the lessons that you've learned from your previous job, you've taken to your current role. What were some of the lessons learned that you know, like, I will not do this and I will avoid doing this because I know that this is not a good idea.
Felipe Abello 15:32
I think the the most the most important one, there will be communication, like I will absolutely over communicate if necessary, with all the team. Even in in a physical office, if you don't communicate that well, it stands for problems. It stands for misalignment, it signs, it stands for a lot of negative stuff. And even in a physical place, it's easier to manage. But when you're talking about people that are in different times, in different cultures in different companies, in different countries, you have to compensate that. And the only way to do that is over communicating. But it's better that people say, okay, I already know this, I already heard this, other than I don't know what you guys are talking about. I believe that it's if if I just had to take one thing, it will be that communicate absolutely everything. Everything what's going, be super transparent on the on what's happening inside the company, avoid a lot of these black boxes that sometimes people like to place. Like sometimes employees don't know what's happening on the, on the founder team. People are not aware of what's really happening with money, with finance, with everything around you.
Felipe Abello 16:09
I want to talk a little bit more about your team and your day to day and your work routine and how it goes with your team of five.
Felipe Abello 16:56
Right now we're doing daily stand ups with all the team that is in the, in the same in this like in the America time zone. We do a daily standup where we just tell everyone what are the objectives for the day, what happened the day before and just get to work. And after we do this daily, we all connect to Tandem. We use Tandem as a tool to be connected all the time. It's basically a plugin that you install in your computer, and where you create virtual rooms in which people are always connected. If you need to ask a question to anyone, you just have to turn on your mic and speak and everyone will will see what's going on. And we saw that it was that this immediate communication. I know, like you could just Slack someone and tell him, hey, can can can we call? From going from that to just turning on your mic and speaking is very, very similar to what happens in the real world, where you just go and tap someone on the shoulder and turn your head, Hey, exactly, yeah, okay. And we've been three weeks now that we are trying out a beer Friday. And it's that, everyone everyone receive, like we order beers online for everyone at the same we tried to do a good timing so that everyone received them at the right time. And that helps to foster a good culture good communication. We just like hang out and drink beer. As if we were going out for for a beers in a real bar. We've learned, we've read a lot of on this topic in a lot of remote companies, what do is like a couple of times a year, they join the team in a random place around the world.
Josephine Tse 18:46
A retreat.
Felipe Abello 18:47
Yeah, like retreats that it fosters culture. We're not ready for that. But we are aiming to do that.
Josephine Tse 18:53
Maybe sooner or later in the future. Yeah. I want to also know maybe this is a question, if you can answer for your teammates as well, that's totally cool. What has remote working opened up for you?
Felipe Abello 19:07
I would say freedom. I'll go deeper into that.
Felipe Abello 19:14
Freedom and having a very good talent pool of talent. The pool of talent is super, super positive thing on on remote work, like you eliminate the barrier of being in the same territory physically. And then you can go outside and find the very good talent that you want. And regarding freedom, that's one of the things that the team like the most is that, for example, one of them has to travel to another city for a week because they want to visit their parents, I don't know, whatever, and they can still keep on working on without any hassle. So that's what I refer to freedom to being able to move without being stuck to a place just because your office is there.
Josephine Tse 20:03
I only really have one question left for you. Let's make let's make this good as the conclusion. So do you think that your story and what you're trying to do with HelloGuru and all that you're trying to offer. Do you think it'll help enable more people to build and start their own remote first teams?
Felipe Abello 20:26
That's our vision. And that's what we're trying to do. We want to close the gap between people that don't know how to speak to a computer and those who don't, and enable people to solve a lot of problems using a computer is, as I said before, like giving them superpowers. If you gave you give people this type of superpowers to solve their problems, and then they can start building their own companies. Their own products, they start finding financial freedom, making a side income. So I believe that everyone that is stable to solve their problems some way, is also solving their problem to anyone else, to someone else. No one is that no one has that unique problems, you know. So if you're solving a problem for yourself, probably someone else's is going to need you and to need that solution. So of course, all that we're doing and we're building is focusing on making more people being able to create solutions to build companies. And of course, these kinds of solutions are very remote friendly. And if people are knowledgeable in how to do it correctly, I believe we're doing a very good job. It's amazing how technology today has let us communicate so easily. Having the possibility of communicate not only simple conversations, but knowledge is something that can change a lot of things that are wrong, or that are problems right now. Being able to transfer your knowledge to someone that is on the other side of the world and it's that it has your same problem that is working towards the same solution that you. I think that that's amazing and that's something that remote culture fosters a lot. And the more people that are in this remote culture world, I believe it's going to be easier for this knowledge to be transfer or worked right. So I will be, that will be it.
Josephine Tse 22:27
Thank you so much for being our guest on this podcast.
Josephine Tse 22:35
Remoter Podcast season two is recorded, produced and edited by Josephine Tse. It is mixed and mastered by Stephen Stepanic and Vanesa Monroy. Graphics and visuals by Valentina Castillo. The music track used is Skip by OBOY from SoundStripe. Follow and subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple podcasts wherever you listen to your podcasts. Don't forget, we've recently made our Founding and Growing Remotely online course completely accessible and listed on our site. Visit us at remoter.com, that's R E M O T E R dot com for more relevant content. Follow us on social media @remoterproject to stay up to date with our latest initiatives and collaborations with other remote first companies around the world. We'd also love to hear your thoughts about each episode, so feel free to tag us on socials anytime. And remember, we're here to make work fulfilling, so what part will you play in shaping the future of work?