My father died one year ago. His transplanted kidney gave up. But it wasn’t the kidney that killed him, but his unwillingness to live. He waited for death like an old Indian man sitting by the Ganges bank, but he sat on his sofa instead, watching TV. Sometimes old Spanish soap operas. Sometimes American westerns without subtitles that he didn’t understand. He didn’t care.
It all started three years ago, while I was the founder and CTO of Factorial, one of the most prominent startups in Spain. A magnificent unicorn with over 1,000 employees. Things were going great, the company was growing, and I felt at my peak. I was invited to give talks, record podcasts, provide consulting advice, and the sort of thing that makes you feel good at what you are doing. That feeling is what kept me going.
Despite the superficial success, my life was tearing apart like a tug-of-war rope. On one end, my role at Factorial kept getting harder and harder. Mo’ people, Mo’ problems. On the other end, I became a father for the second time, and my own father's health was deteriorating very fast. Between work and family, there was no energy or time left for myself. Errands piled up, friendships went unattended, and exercise was absent. All I wanted was to end the day with an “I deserved it” beer, YouTube, and a smoke. A lethal dopamine trifecta that sadly became one of the best moments of the day.
Then the phones started ringing at night. Not PagerDuty this time. I was not on-call anymore.
“What time is it? Why is it so dark?”
“Dad, it’s 3 a.m., go back to sleep.”
“I can't, the house is full of insects again.”
Imaginary insects started to fill my father’s lonesome world. He would scratch his arms until bleeding and cover his bed in salt because “I saw it on Facebook.” He spent countless hours in Zuckerberg's world scrolling a feed full of AI-slop videos of people scraping insects off pus-filled feet. Who creates those and why? It is so fucking disgusting. So much for “Making the world more open and connected.”
My second son was born, and everything started to collapse quickly. I spent most nights reading books until morning while rocking his hammock with my feet. This was the only way to keep him asleep. I developed Plantar Fasciitis from this nightly routine, but hey, I became very literate during the process. During the day, I visited my dad. He started to distort time and space, causing him distress. We tried day care centers and caregivers, but he rejected care-anything. He just wanted to be left alone and die.
You are not supposed to have children that late in life (I was 38). There used to be a sequence: grandparents were young when kids were born, and by the time they declined, your children were grown. You had space for each role. That sequence is gone. Now childhood and decline overlap, and it sucks.
My parental leave was about to end, and I knew I had to decide whether to focus on family or work. It couldn't be both this time. That’s easy, isn’t it? “Family first!” I can hear you yelling. But there is something many people don’t know. When you become a Founder, there is only one rule: Founders don’t quit. You have to be both the captain guiding the vessel against the storm and the humble pianist sinking with it. Leaving means disappointing your co-founders, investors, and all the employees you convinced to join you for the ride. That’s a lot of disappointment for someone who dislikes disappointing people. Also, Factorial was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that might never show up again. The economically logical thing to do was to hide my gender equality principles and ask my wife to step back in her career. She could take care of the kids while I focused on Factorial. Or even better, use the hard-earned money to hire a full-time helper. After all, that’s what most executives do.
But wait… That’s also what my dad would have done. We were raised like this. My mum took care of us while my dad worked his ass off. I didn’t want to repeat this pattern. I wanted to be present. Very Freudian, I know, but becoming a parent does resurface some unresolved family issues.
My father had a very strong work ethic, often translating to long, uninterrupted work hours: he would leave home at 7 a.m. and come back at 7 p.m. His last words were not dedicated to us, our kids, my mother, nor his lover. His last words were "Bankinter," the name of his lifelong employer.
Once at home, he would mostly read books on the sofa while listening to jazz. He had a rich and private interior world that constantly needed feeding, devouring books like hungry kids eating peanuts, by the dozen. He knew so much that he once one-shotted us at Trivial, completing the whole game in a single turn. So much fun. But above all, he avoided conflict at all costs. He never punished or contradicted; he always resentfully agreed.
Despite his flaws, I loved and respected him. My desire not to become him didn’t come from hatred, but from knowing those traits lead to solitude, and solitude leads to a miserable life. One I didn’t want to live. One I don’t want my kids to inherit.
Let’s chart parent-child relationship dynamics on a 2x2 grid. I’m sure you can place yourself in one of the quadrants.
Loyal Heirs: These children follow their parents’ footsteps. They resemble and want to be like them. No conflict, the legacy carries on.
Aspiring Successors: Like the Loyal Heirs, these children want to be like their parent but are somehow different. This difference brings significant conflict, which is only resolved if they become a Pattern Breaker.
Pattern Breakers: Those break the legacy by not resembling their parents and not wanting to be like them. This causes the greatest conflict for the parent, who sees the legacy truncated.
Haunted Mirrors: Lastly, we have those who resemble their parents but don’t want to become like them. That’s me. For people in this quadrant, spoiler alert, there is only one way out: Acceptance. You cannot change what you are.
But be it nurture or nature, I am uncannily similar to my dad. People around me complain that I am often absentminded. I think about work, tesselations, games, things that loop, or whatever brainy stuff I can feed to my rich and private interior world. I can also work for hours without stopping. I forget to eat, drink, or go to the toilet, telling myself that “I’m so incredibly privileged that I get paid to do what I love to do.” Time flies when you have a strong work ethic. Last but not least, I sit on the opposite end of the Karen spectrum. I avoid conflicts at all costs and go to great lengths not to disappoint people. I am a people pleaser.
Trying to break the pattern, I started by disappointing many people at once. I quit Factorial and became a full-time stay-at-home dad. The breakup was clumsy: I simply disappeared. Like an ostrich, I buried my head in the sand, trying to ignore everyone affected. My older son does the same, and it drives me nuts; I wonder which quadrant he will belong to.
My co-founders, investors and former colleagues reacted more positively than I expected and despite my poor handling of the situation, I managed to keep the friendships and relationships I’ve built over the years.
I spent the next two years taking care of my newborn, my father, and myself. I started by stopping smoking. Beer followed, and YouTube didn’t stand a chance. I learned that “vices together strong”. So, it is wise to attack them one at a time. I also started training, lifting weights and other testosteronic endeavors.
I started to get intellectually restless, so I began working on projects. I wanted to learn new things. Brain hungry, brain needs food. Not to mention that working on projects was also an excellent way to avoid long conversations.
Random Person: “How are you doing? Did you find a new job?”
Meself: “Good, good… working on my things, you know?”
Random Person: “Ah… what do you mean?”
Meself: “Uh… it’s a technical thing, not very interesting.”
Each project sucked me in a little more, and slowly, I would start feeling annoyed about not being able to dedicate more time to “work.” I learned that work isn’t work unless you have meetings. I had none, so all my time was negotiable, causing constant conflict. I started programming at night. I even took the laptop to our frequent hospital visits with my dad, just in case he fell asleep and I could squeeze a feature or two. I started acting like a stealthy raccoon stealing time for work.
The only way out was acceptance: I am like my dad. No guilt in that, but I could contain it. Mornings were mine, unashamedly so, while the rest of the day belonged to my family. I could be like my dad without offering my kids the same parenting experience; I had to be Mr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Fast forward to today; my father is no longer with us, a fact that carries a strange mix of relief and guilt. Around that time, I was offered the chance to sell a small piece of my Factorial shares. Not f**k-you money, but enough to start a company aligned with the life I wanted. The company is Ramensoft, but that is a story for another day.