Abstract Essay, now in its fifth season, features Cristian Cibilis Bernardes, Founder & CEO of Autograph, as my distinguished guest, sharing his insights and experiences that inspire creativity, leadership, and innovation.

Cristian Cibils Bernardes

Founder & CEO @ Autograph

I, Cristian, grew up in Paraguay in an incredibly entrepreneurial family. I watched my parents try and retry until they found success building SMS transport infrastructure for the telcos of Latin America and Africa. They are both Computer Scientists, 50% partners in the business, my mom is the CEO and my dad is the CTO. It is the only case of tech international expansion in Paraguay. I was fortunate to study Symbolic Systems at Stanford, adding a layer of psychology, linguistics and philosophy to my love for computer science. I was a software engineer at Google doing full-stack for Google Shopping, and deep retrieval for Socratic by Google, an AI education app for high schoolers that was #1 in the EDU category during the pandemic. Looking to broaden my skillset, I joined the family business as it transitioned from SMS infra to being a family office with a prominent venture arm, focused on empowering the next generation of Latin American entrepreneurs. After the pivot concluded, I had accrued enough cognitive dissonance from not feeling the earned founder spirit my parents exuded -- and decided to start something myself. Autograph is the only suitable expression I have found for the gratefulness I feel to those who came before us.

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