About me

Who am I?

Hi. My name is Gabriel.

I do a few different things: I like to write, code, and sell things! I was one of the co-founders of Traktor, and I used to work for Curitiba's darling fintech Contabilizei.

Today, I'm co-founder and CPO of CoGrader. More than 50 thousand teachers, in over a thousand schools, have already graded more than 2 million essays with it. We went through batch 17 of Berkeley SkyDeck, won a grant from the US Department of Education to study the impact of all this, and I've even been interviewed by Edutopia about AI in education.

I studied at UDESC, studied Economics at UFPR, and spent time at UC Berkeley.

In 2015, I published my first book: Histórias de Fim do Mundo — 17 magical realism short stories, published by Editora Autografia, with illustrations by Lucas Rodrigues. It's on Amazon.

Some of the topics I'm interested in:

High Literature (Especially Latin American)
Philosophy
Entrepreneurship and Startups
Technology in general
Programming and development
Blockchain
Marketing
Nutrition
Personal development in general
Mental models, systems, and thought processes

What I'm doing Now

If you want to buy me a coffee, just click here:

My Values

After reading Principles, I knew I should write down my personal principles.

But I didn't.

You know how it is. Procrastination. Too many things to do, too little time to think.

Luckily, I got an email that got me thinking once again.

It was from Taylor Pearson. He talks about his Core Values and why you should make your own list too (take a look.).

At this exact moment, mine are the following:

Freedom: living freely; making my own decisions and choosing my own behavior, or helping others do the same

The feeling of Freedom is very important to me and makes me very happy and productive.

I'm told that when I was a kid, almost every year the family would decide to have that classic end-of-year gathering at the beach - and you know what the beaches of our dear Brazil are like in December: packed.

There's barely any room for the beach umbrella, the beach chairs, the styrofoam cooler with warm Skol beer, and the chicken with farofa.

So, as soon as everyone was seated, peacefully roasting in the sun (as if they were going to sleep that night, what with the second-degree burn they were developing), I would take off running down the beach, toward the most distant buzz of strangers, at an impressive speed for a 4-year-old, driving my mother crazy and causing a commotion among the adults who just wanted to drink their warm Skol and cultivate their little beer bellies, but who had to chase down a shameless little brat instead. I don't think I needed a reason for it. I just wanted to be free. For example, I built this project in one weekend. Just because I wanted to.

I've thought a lot about Freedom and what defines it, exploring several definitions (political, philosophical, etc.), but I had never realized to what degree it is part of who I am.

Self-development: to keep growing, advancing, or improving in knowledge, skills, character, or life experience.

It was really hard to choose the first attribute on the list.

Between Freedom and Self-development, it's a pretty ugly fight.

I asked myself "would I give up my freedom if that were necessary to become a better person?". "Yes! I would do it." "But the biggest reason for wanting to be a better person is to achieve freedom!".

Is it, though? Isn't the reason for being a better person self-evident? I want to be a better person because that is my only obligation in life, the reason I am alive (and every other human being, too) (!);

Yes, that's true. Growing and developing is intrinsic to my existence.

And I wouldn't be happy being free without developing myself, nor developing myself without being free. I don't know which one is more important.

Independence: supporting myself on my own, and choosing my own way of doing things

This one is very simple: I don't do things the way most people do. I like doing things my own way, and I take responsibility for doing them that way.

Contribution: contributing, helping, assisting, or making a positive difference for myself or other people

Few things make me more genuinely happy than seeing my friends and the people I care about succeed.

One of them is helping them succeed.

I am very grateful for the wonderful people I've been lucky enough to meet throughout my life, and I want to help them, so they can be the best they can possibly be, and reach their goals. And I will happily work on that.

Creativity: being creative or innovative

I love creating new things. I love building new things. I am happy while I'm building something new.

These are values I really appreciate, but that didn't make the Top 5 (not in order of importance)

These are part of my character, and I like to think this is how I am:

Curiosity: being curious, open-minded, interested; exploring and discovering
Authenticity: being authentic, genuine, and real
Gratitude: being grateful and appreciating all the things in my life
Honesty: being honest, truthful, and sincere with myself and with others
Assertiveness: saying what's on my mind

These things motivate me:

Courage: being brave; persisting in the face of fear, threat, or difficulty
Excitement: seeking, creating, and engaging in activities that generate excitement, and are stimulating and thrilling
Adventure: being adventurous - seeking, creating, exploring new and stimulating things

This is my flaw, and I need to get better:

Self-control: acting in accordance with my ideals

These things make me want to wake up every day:

Industriousness: being industrious, hardworking, and dedicated
Beauty: appreciating, creating, developing, or cultivating what is aesthetic in art and in the environment

I want to behave this way with everyone:

Forgiveness: forgiving myself and other people
Friendliness: being friendly and open to new people
Fun: loving fun; seeking, creating, and engaging in fun activities
Generosity: being generous and sharing
Good humor: seeing and appreciating the humor in life
Kindness: being kind, generous, considerate, and caring toward other people