Welcome to the Nucoro spotlight, a monthly Q&A with one of our team.
This month we sat down with our CTO, Antonio to discuss his background in coding, why he loves start-ups and why the “where” should always come before the “how” when building technology.
Thanks for sitting down with us, Antonio. So, what were you up to before joining Nucoro as CTO?
I have always been interested in and involved with technology since I was very young. I started coding C and Delphi when I was 15 and still in school. I founded my first tech solutions company in 2009 right out of University, and have been involved with start-ups and innovators ever since! I’ve worked as CTO for a variety of different startups and I have built digital solutions for large-scale international technology companies as well. I also wrote the Django by Example - one of the core technologies we use at Nucoro.
Wow, you’ve done a lot of work with start-ups. What is it that drew you to start working with them?
I got interested in start-ups competing in different industries, sharing the common idea of using technology to automate hard tasks and make people’s everyday lives easier. While working with large corporations might be the most lucrative, I have always been keen on working with startups who know they can make a difference and want to disrupt spaces.
Designing technology solutions for multiple verticals has helped me to develop a broader vision, understand how businesses are interconnected and how people work in different environments. There are many things you learn somewhere that you can apply to something else. These experiences have been very useful when facing new challenges.
Speaking of what motivates you, what is it about technology that you’re most passionate about?
I understand technology as an enabler of change and growth for society. I’ve always been passionate about improving people’s lives through technology. That’s certainly a part of Nucoro’s culture: We build technology that allows banks, insurance companies and other institutions to provide better, smarter and cheaper digital wealth management products to their clients. We provide the technology and leverage on the large distribution channels of these institutions to produce a larger impact.
Nice. Do you still code?
Yes, of course! I think it’s important that I’m still involved in the coding aspects so that when we run into obstacles as a team, I can really engage and help out to solve it. You also have a much better grasp when managing a larger project, because you’ve got that insight into the time and resources it might take and where the difficulty lies.
And so finally, in 10 years time, where do you see personal finance?
I think people’s awareness of technology is growing substantially - and we’re beginning to appreciate it a lot more. I see financial services leveraging technology to provide a smoother and refined experience to the client combined with a more transparent service, all offered at a lower cost. I think we need to make financial services easier and more transparent for people. Over the next few years we will see a lot of disruption in this space, with clients embracing financial services using simple tech-heavy services without the need of understanding the underlying complexity.
In a couple of years, you will be paying for services with your mobile phone without taking care of the currency used, or getting your investment portfolio risk managed carefully by Machine Learning algorithms that perform hundreds of thousands of calculations to take smarter decisions.
