Bio

In my life I have learned the difference between 'difficult' and 'impossible'. It is vast. If a thing is merely difficult, that is an invitation.

​My family is from Puerto Rico. But I was born in Oakland, California. When I was young our family moved to rural Indiana, and that's where I spent my childhood. One of cornfields, cows, classic cars, and classic rock. 

As a child I enjoyed writing stories. Even as an 8 year old I knew I wanted to spend my life reading and writing books.

At 13 I got my first guitar and quickly discovered that I enjoyed writing songs even more. Music soon became the focal point of my life. I spent my high school years writing music for various ensembles.

At 15 I met a German foreign exchange student and fell in love. When she went back to Germany I followed her. I spent my junior and senior high school years in Germany, where I discovered a love for classical music.

At 18 I came back to the States with the conviction that song writing was too small and too easy. I wanted to write for the orchestra. 

The colleges I contacted impressed upon me the importance of proficiency at the piano. And so for the next two years, teaching myself the piano was my sole focus of my life.

I became good, but not great. It occurred to me that if I wanted to be a better musician, perhaps I needed to invent a better instrument. The piano seemed too big and old-fashioned. The guitar seemed too big, and limited, and exhaustively explored already. I thought I could design something better.

I spent the next few years building various prototypes, performing in various bands, and working odd jobs in Indiana and Maryland to make ends meet.

At 26 I was exhausted. The prototypes all failed. The bands didn't pay. And the jobs weren't fulfilling. I needed a change, a big one. A completely different direction. So I joined the Navy.  

I spent the next two years in Naval electronics schools learning how to fix anything broken, and the next 4 years living on a ship and sailing all over the world. 

Once I learned to curtail my rebellious instincts I learned to appreciate the routine, and the self-discipline, and the company of my shipmates. 

I was deployed to the Middle East 3 times, I won the Naval Achievement Medal twice, a few other awards as well. I advanced quickly in the Navy.

But it wasn't what I was made to do. I'm a born creative. And my thoughts kept returning to the failed instrument prototypes. 

I'd learned enough in the Navy to know that what I wanted to do was possible. 

So at 32 I got out. And I applied to college (for the first time) for Audio Engineering at the University of Rochester. 

While waiting for acceptance or rejection from college I decided to hike the Appalachian Trail. All 2,200 miles of it. I didn't have any experience hiking, or camping, or even starting a camp fire. But I had money, and time, and I wanted to walk the military out of my system. I wanted to figure out who I was without the uniform. So I bought a bunch of gear, flew to Georgia, and started walking north.

The first two weeks were the most miserable two weeks of my life. 

The weight, the mosquitos, the blisters, the heat, the cold, the humidity, the rain, aching muscles, allergies, bears, mice, loneliness, hunger, pooping in the woods, it really wasn't fun at all.

But I was determined not to quit. And after awhile I got used to it.  I started making friends. The blisters went away. The allergies went away. Muscles got stronger. I learned how to identify food plants. I started having adventures. Pretty soon I was having the time of my life. Everyday was a blessing of freedom and companionship.

In the middle of Virginia, on a phone call home, I learned that I had been accepted to college. And that I'd received a full scholarship. And that classes started in two weeks.

So I got off the trail in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. I shaved my beard, bought a plane ticket home to Indiana, loaded a few things in my car, drove to New York, and at 32 I found myself sitting in my first college classroom.

Immediately I knew I was in over my head. The professor was discussing differential equations on Day 1 like it was review.

High school was 16 years prior for me. I had never even made it out of algebra. 

I thought, mistakenly, that I'd learn everything I needed to know in college. But no, I was expected to have a very solid background in physics and mathematical already. I didn't. 

So, just like I had before, with the guitar, with the piano, with Germany, the military, the Appalachian Trail, I threw myself into learning a brand new thing. 

I hired 6 different tutors for 4 different classes. I spent every waking moment studying math and physics.

During the summers I took additional classes at a Monroe Community College in math and physics. And by my junior year, I had even made the Dean's List. 

At 3.5 my GPA wasn't perfect, but considering my obstacles, and considering where I started, I regard it as my greatest accomplishment. No one will ever understand the time and effort that modest achievement required.

In my senior year, for my senior design project, I decided to return to my long delayed musical instrument prototype. A lot of years had passed. I'd failed a lot, learned a lot, and I had some new ideas. 

I knew that this time I could build something innovative, and useful. 

So I started. And after a year and a dozen or so more failed prototypes I finally succeeded in building something functional. 

My professor encouraged me to patent it, and to start a company to manufacture more of them. And so I did.

But I didn't know anything about business. So I decided to enroll in business school. And with the same ardor that I threw myself into learning the guitar, the piano, the German language, the military, the Appalachian Trail, and engineering school, I now threw myself into business. 

I'm not a natural businessman. 

But I can tell a good story. 

And I believe in what I do. And belief can be contagious.

At the end of the day, a good story is all anyone wants to hear. 

My first year of business school was challenging, but not overwhelming. During the summer my company (Brazen House) hired our first 3 engineers. We applied to a 3 month business accelerator program and got accepted. It was an intensive workshop that taught us how to give great presentations and business pitches, and craft reasonable business plans and value propositions. We also learned a great deal about customer discovery, how to seek investment, and create financial models.

At the conclusion of this program we gave a 4 minute shark tank style demonstration and business pitch. Afterwards we won our first investment and with that money I hired 5 new engineers and we began a collaboration with the Rochester Institute of Technology.

I began entering business pitch competitions. I won a couple, placed in some, and failed in many. But I gained a great deal of presentation experience from that journey.  I found business pitch competitions to be very similar to the musical performances I gave in earlier life. That experience turned out to be valuable.

In April 2020 we were scheduled to give our first public presentation of the Martone V3, our first commercial release, at the Imagine RIT conference in New York.

It was very ambitious. We were demonstrating several original, unproven technologies, and the 8 of us had been working full time for a year in order to finish it in time.

I was responsible not only for coordinating the work, schedule, and milestones for our multi-disciplinary engineering group, and for conducting the business pitches with investors, but I also simultaneously wrote the software for the instrument (in C++). 

It was one of the most stressful times in my life, but also the most rewarding.

3 weeks prior to the conference, it was cancelled due to Covid. The senior design groups we were working with were disbanded. Classes were cancelled. Maker Spaces were shuttered. Our suppliers in China stopped shipping PCBs and microchips, etc.

In a very short time our whole business came to a grinding halt. Years of preparation and effort went up in smoke overnight. 

That is the story of Brazen House. I moved back home to Indiana to regroup and reassess. I worked a series of odd jobs to pay the bills and once I saved up enough money I embarked on a cross country road trip to clear my mind. It was cathartic.

I never understood before, what what a big beautiful country we live in. 

After many adventures I now find myself in Colorado, plotting the next steps in my career. I'm a purpose driven individual. And I've come here to settle down, start a new life, and build something substantial once again, with the same undiminished ardor that I've brought to everything else in my life.

I'm not finished with Brazen House. I need to finish what I started. 

But also, I'm ready for something new. Some fresh endeavor to throw myself into. It is in this period of transition that I find myself presently. Searching for my next opportunity, inspiration, and problem to solve.