Build No-code Apps in 90 Seconds with Pineapple | David Cruz, Pineapple

Foreign. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another exciting episode of Bits and Bytes. Today we actually. I know I say this again about all of our guests, but this time this is very unique. We actually do have David from Demova who is part of our Maple program. But today we are bringing him on as a guest on Bits and Bytes because his journey to where he is now has been so incredible and we really wanted to share it with you guys. So, David, I will let you take it over. How about you introduce us a little bit about yourself, what you're working on and, you know, kind of what got you into coding. Like where you want to start. Let's go.

That's good. Well, first of all, thank you. Thank you, Yin. Thank you to launch team for inviting me here. Um, it's such an honor. Well, yeah, so, I mean, my name is David David Cruz. I'm from Latin America. I'm from Bogota, Colombia. So, yeah, I mean, I'm a software engineer. I've been coding basically, you know, all my life, since school. And I don't know really what, what got me into coding was when once the iPhone was released, I was like super excited about tech. And, you know, I was, I was just. While people were playing soccer on the field, I was just like learning how to create an app. I really had this idea to create my own company when I was in high school. Of course it didn't happen, but yeah, I mean, that's what basically got me into coding. Steve Jobs, I think Steve Jobs, the iPhone really got. Got hyped. Yeah.

And so you mentioned how, like, you were probably like one of the only few younger people back then that was, like, interested in tech and coding and stuff, like. But I think nowadays the trend has kind of change where a lot more younger people are starting to see the appeal in the tech industry. Like what in your opinion or from your experience, like, what is it that's so fascinating about the tech industry?

Well, I think at least, at least for me, what was really exciting was you could be just eating a pizza and having a computer in front of you and just if you pulled an all nighter, you could kind of like create something from. From nowhere, from food and electricity. So, like, you could build like a revolutionary thing just just by coding. And that doesn't happen in a lot of industries. Like, if you want to build like a factory, you actually need to build the machines and you need everything. It doesn't happen overnight. Whereas with software engineer, for me, it was like, I need. At that time I thought, I need no one's help to build something cool and put it out there for people. And, you know, kind of like having that superpower makes it so interesting. And even more so now that technology has advanced so much. Like, there's really no limits on when you. What you can build just with a computer in front of you. You don't even need Internet access to build something cool. That's, that's. I think that's what's super noble about tech now.

Being able to create something out of nothing and anyone is honestly, if you think about it too, like, the way I think that you're trying to get the message across too, is that, like, anyone can do this. There's no limitations. Obviously you might need to get a computer first, but aside from that, anyone is capable of doing that. And so kind of take us on your journey. So did you go to school then to officially learn how to become a software engineer? Was that like after high school? How did. Or were you kind of learning how to code before that? You know, was it through YouTube videos or. I'm not sure, you know, what was accessible for you back then.

Well, first of all, for me, I think I have this revolutionary idea that for certain, like, majors, college shouldn't be the way to go. I think before I got into, I did study at university, software engineering, mainly because of my family. They just wanted me to study. But when I got into university, I already knew how to code and I was already building apps. And even like while I was at university, I was the kind of like the student teacher of mobile development, even without going through the curse myself. So I don't know, I feel like definitely online learning was a big thing for me. I got interviewed by edX, which is a platform like Coursera, kind of like as an example of how massive online courses can help people to learn. I basically just went through Stanford Open courses. I went through a lot of YouTube tutorials, and I kind of like grabbed information from here and there. I think even Elon Musk once said that, you know, information is out there, it's free. It's pretty much free. You just need to take it. And with technology, because it moves so fast, I think universities don't move as fast. So, like, whatever you learn today, it will be old in probably two months. Like NFTs. I'm sure they don't teach that in school, at least not in my school. Even though they're like, crypto is just revolutionizing the, the Internet, so. So, yeah, online curses and just learning what's. What's out there, what's people doing what people are doing. That, that was the journey for me. I did get my title in so as a software engineer and that kind of like helped a lot just to kind of like have the title to get to the companies that I worked for after that.

So in your opinion, and obviously you talked about your journey, there's, there's three routes that I kind of see people doing right now. One is obviously going to university and getting a software engineering degree. And we're only going to specifically talk about, you know, coding and not different realms. Like we're not trying to become a doctor through.

Exactly.

Hopefully.

Yeah.

But then there's the online courses and of course there's, there's tutorials, there's, you can do it for free, there's free ones, there's paid ones, there's all sorts of courses online that you can take. And then there's the concept of boot camps, right. Which is something that we've come to kind of know in the last 10 years or so where it's non credited but you know, they're well credited instructors that are kind of walking you through in a certain period of time and you're basically getting like the crash course of a degree's worth of knowledge in say 2 months, 3 months for X dollars. What are your kind of thoughts around like if someone's, you know, in high school right now, they're, they're in that position. Like what, there's no one, one shoe fits. All right, but what's the thought process behind like what route you should take?

Well, first of all, I do think that all options, you know, are good. Like you could do whatever you, you want in your life and the three of them could get you to the same point. It depends on, you know, how much time do you want to invest on learning stuff that you will probably not use. Whereas as you mentioned, when you're in a boot camp, they kind of like guide you through, hey, I have this idea, I want to make it a reality and just teach me finance, teach me coding, teach me, you know, project management. But it's because you're learning stuff that will get you from point A to point B. Whereas when you're studying at a university it's more like, and even if you're learning online, it's more like I know nothing or I know something and I want to learn and then I'll figure out what to do. Actually I want a scholarship to go to wwdc, that's Worldwide Developers Conference of Apple. And there was this one Guy that I met that he was at a coding academy, and I kind of like got struck by the idea. I didn't understood what it was. And what he tried to explain was, you know, we have really good engineers and founders that come and teach me how to be an entrepreneur, which in the software lane, of course, which I think for me would have been a better option than, you know, just starting at university. So I think the thought process is A, money, like, how much do you want to spend on education? You can either kind of like JLO it and do it for free, or you can just pay someone to feel comfortable with the knowledge they can give you. And B, how much time do you want to invest? Big companies like Google, Tesla, they don't really require you to have a degree to work there. If you're a hacker, you're someone that really knows how to create stuff and you know it. They basically just want to know, want to have the people that know how to do things. So yeah, it depends on how much time are you willing to invest to learn something.

They have technical tests and things like that that kind of gauge your level of knowledge.

Right? Of course, yeah, yeah. I mean, you have to prove them that, you know, you're claiming, you know.

They'Re not taking the degree by, by assumptions and assuming because you have X piece of paper from UCLA that, you know, abcde.

Exactly. So they. My university was not well known in the US and I was able to get into both Facebook and Google and I think they didn't even know how to pronounce my university. And like, I was working with people that studied at like mit, Stanford, and I was like, you know, an university in Colombia, which is really good, but no one of you knows. It was more about, hey, this, this is the problem. Can you solve it? If yes, then welcome.

Yeah, yeah. And I think in past shows and probably elsewhere on the Internet, I've been on the record saying, like, I think for a lot of people, university is a, is a waste of money, not because there's no value, but because the value to dollar ratio is, is not there. That being said, like, I think in listening to your story, something that popped out is, I think very early on you were very clear about what you wanted to learn and what you wanted to do vocationally.

Right.

In terms of being a coder, in terms of learning new things. And the motivation was there, the initiative was there for you to kind of search for new languages, new tools, new APIs. Like you were always playing with stuff. And for a lot of people they are not necessarily as motivated or as driven that early on. And to me, the biggest value of university is it acts as a life buffer while you figure your stuff out. My biggest problem with it is, especially I think in the States when you're trying to get into these fancy schools, you dig yourself into six digits worth of debt to figure yourself out. And I think that, like, so I don't want to villainize universities and I know that we have lots of friends that teach at universities and do lots of stuff, but like me, like, that's the biggest problem right now is, is if you know exactly what you want to do. Like, I want to learn C, I want to learn, you know, machine learning, like going through the six years, like some of the stuff, especially in data scientists, you can't even do that with a bachelor's. You need the masters and then, et cetera, et cetera.

Right.

Like, that's not the most direct way. Right. But if you're, you're not exactly sure and you want to test things and stuff like that, and you can afford to do so, then it might make sense for you.

Yeah. And for me, another thing that's kind of like intangible with the university experience was, you know, kind of like a fun fact. Damova, my company, first started in university as I was kind of like helping people out to code their own projects. Like we have, like, at the end of your first engineering year, you would have to present a project. Most of the people wanted an app or a website and I would kind of like code it for them, sell it to them and they would present it. And you know, I was like building a software development company. So I guess my point is, and the reason why many companies, like big tech companies, were founded in a dorm, in a dorm room, was that university gives you connections. University gives you that opportunity to kind of like go out and see what other people are thinking. Met really smart people, maybe meet people that are smart. Meet people that, you know, might kind of like push your business to the next level. So I got that at university. Like, I met the right people to get into the software development world. Before, before it was just me watching YouTube videos, trying to create an app, and then it was like me charging people into an actual project. And I, I'm not saying you only get that in university because there's meetups, there's, you know, boot camps, there's other, other places where you can find people. But university is like a safe environment to kind of like network. And it's like people are, have their walls down and you can talk to them. It's, it's, it's easier. So I guess that aspect really helped me about university. Just meeting the right people.

Yeah, no, I definitely agree. I feel like that's one very like overarching theme of like the tech industry is that like, I think the reason why companies accelerate so much faster and we're producing like so many, there's so many more like innovations that are coming out of this industry is because like founders, developers, just like the operations, like everyone kind of collaborates on these things. Like the way that technology is designed, it encourages collaboration. Everyone's so open minded. There's so many possibilities of certain directions that projects could go or there's also lots of problems that you can't singularly figure out on your own. You need another person's perspective on it. And I think having all of these different factors pushed into an industry like tech, I think that's why it's one of the fastest growing industries for sure. And it's really great that you mentioned universities. It's not just about the educational aspect of things. It is also about the community, it is also about the networking. Like I can say for sure that, you know, even though I felt that my years in university were not, you know, the most optimized when it came to the educational aspect, I still have so many great connections and experiences just from the people that you know, you go to school with and you rub shoulders with and you study with and stuff. You guys go through all the late night like all nighters and like studying and then stressing over exams. But it builds that camaraderie. So.

A lot of my co founders in previous companies and even today some people that work with us at the moba, they are from those people that I met in university. So like you kind of like bring that even, even to the, you know, even, even to this day. It's something that, that's really worth it. And another thing is I got into entrepreneurship at university because it was easy, you know, I didn't have like a job, I didn't have to, to do a lot of grown up stuff. So that's why in university, you know, I founded the Mova and I founded Vista, which are basically the two companies that I have right now. Both of them were born during these university years.

I find it interesting that you mentioned how being an entrepreneur was kind of easy because I think one of the main themes that we have from our Bits and Bytes episodes is to talk about entrepreneurship and the different journeys and the different struggles that you go through. Do you think that. I think in your particular case, I feel that entrepreneurship is like your natural, like, go to, like that's who you are as a person. But do you think like, you know, everyone is capable of being an entrepreneur, do you think, or does it. Do you think that takes like a certain mindset or a skill set or, you know, do you think anyone can find it within themselves to do, be one?

Well, I mean, I think it's not easy, but like, easy for me to embrace this journey because I love it so much. But I feel not, not. Not a specifically skill set, more like a mindset. I do feel like people that are entrepreneurs should just be ready to face a lot of ups and downs. Like, there's people that once they. They go down, like their whole life goes down with them. Like, they basically, they can't handle failure that well. And entrepreneurship is just a lot of failures. A lot of people saying no, a lot of things just, you know, software that is not working, people saying you that it's not possible. Your competition showing you that they're way ahead of you. Like, it's. It's kind of like a letdown every single day. But you have that mindset of, hey, I'm here. I want to be. I want to be first, I want to be the best, second to none. And, you know, I'll just give. Give it all, you know, while. While I was in university, my friends would go out and drink, you know, Friday, Saturday, and I don't know, Sunday well, as I was just staying home coding until 3:00am, 4:00am every single night. And they were always like, hey, you're not, you know, you're not living your life. You know, you're not having these awesome experience. You're just doing your thing. So like, you have to give up on a lot of things. And that requires a really strong mindset. You know, I compare it a lot to just sports and other people that I couldn't run 4am every single day. But there's people that have the mindset and, you know, the quality to. The quality to just do that. I feel like being an entrepreneur, you also need. Definitely need that. And another thing is when you're an entrepreneur, you really, really need to learn how to. I don't know how to say this in English that well, but kind of like put yourself together. Like, kind of like draw a roadmap for yourself and know where you're going. Kind of like measuring your progress and making sure you don't walk away from the path that you previously drew. So for example, when you work for a company, these are your goals. You'll get a paycheck at the end of the month. And you know, it's, it's, it's, it's easy to follow the guidelines. Whereas with, as an entrepreneur, you get so much freedom that you're not really free because you have to control yourself. You have to make smart decisions. And you know, if you fail, you fail and there's no one else to just help you bounce back. Whereas if you, if you take another path, maybe there, it's, it's easier to just not do the wrong thing. So that, that's also a little bit of a difficult thing that I find while being an entrepreneur, like handling your own money and I don't know, like everything is, you just need to be so conscious about the decisions you make.

Yeah, definitely. Like entrepreneurship is definitely a lot of, takes a lot of different experiences for sure. But I mean, it also comes down to, you know, like having resilience, being able to go through those rejections, being able to go through the failures, having the determination, the passion to keep going and the discipline too. Like you said, like, you know, the fact that you couldn't go out on the weekends, enjoying your friends and enjoy life, like you had all of those qualities to be like, you know what, this is what, these are my goals. I want to achieve that. Like, I know it's not going to be, you know, the best days of my life. On some days maybe you'll feel really down, but you know, it's awesome that you still kept going and look where you are now. Actually we're going to be talking a little bit more about, you know, how you kind of progress along here. So actually let's kind of start with an bit going back a bit because I know you mentioned, you know, working with Facebook and Google and how the kind of, you know, working alongside other coworkers that, you know, graduated from like mit, Stanford. So what was your experience like working at such a large, you know, some of the largest and well known tech giants in the like, North America? Like, what were some of the like, really positive things that you got out of that experience? Maybe even if you're okay with it, like sharing some of the more harsher realities of working for such a giant company like that?

No, for sure. I mean, I can definitely share you the thing that I didn't like. But first working there was honestly a really good experience. My dream was to go to California, go to the Valley, work for this Tech company. These are basically the pinnacle of my career. You know, like anyone that studies software engineering, at least here in South America, and I think the world wants to work for these companies. When I got into Facebook, which was the first company I worked for, I realized that there's just a lot of smart people in this world, like really smart people. I had the pleasure to meet a lot of folks that, they just blew my mind. You know, like even, even people that were non, non technical, you know, like they were not software engineers, like designers and project, project managers. I was just, you know, they were just incredibly good. So a learning, you know, it's a huge learning experience. Facebook and Google spent millions of dollars to bring the smartest people and you kind of like have them all just walking around you. I think that's the best part for me. I'm not really into the free food perks and perks and I see them more like I did see a lot of people just working more just to stay for dinner, for example, just because they didn't want to cook home, I don't know. And then they would work extra hours even though at least I was a full time employee. So there was no, no, no deal. You know, I didn't have to stay or got any compensation for that. So like there's this whole like picture that, you know, movies portrayed about Silicon Valley startups and the free food and all of that. For me it was not that good. I didn't like it that much. I enjoyed it. But you know, it was, it was not as cool as people make it look sometimes. And the difficult part, at least for me, was I really didn't feel comfortable. I think this happens in every big company. You're just basically a number and either people or the process kind of like shut you down. And when I was an entrepreneur before joining Facebook, because I got an interview at Facebook because of one of my startups. They heard the news, there was an interview in New York. So they heard about me and they, they kind of like tried to, to bring me to Facebook. I guess what I felt was while I was an entrepreneur, I was learning every single day something new. I had to talk to lawyers, I had to learn about the IRS and the way they do things. I had to learn about law and you know, just a lot of stuff every single day. Whereas in, in my company there was like either Facebook or Google, there was a task. I would complete my task and at the end of the day I didn't really feel like I was learning. Of course at the beginning I would learn a lot specific to that company. But then it was just, you know, you sit there and just code, just code whatever they give you. And I felt that I got, I felt like that I got to that point very quickly in both companies, like within the year. I already felt like I'm just doing things over and over the same thing. And that's why I decided, you know what, I want to go back, I want to say bye to that engineering salary of Silicon Valley. And I just want to learn, I just want to be happy. I just want to build stuff that matter for people. And the other thing is when a company is so big, you don't really like your heart and your beliefs and what you wanna kind of like put into that app or that feature or that software, no one, no one cares. So there's not really a part of you in that product. It's more like just coded. And whatever they wanted to do with it, that's what it is. And I feel like when there's a company like, you know, for entrepreneurs, just listening to these, if you have a company product, service or something you don't believe in or you don't feel like it's net positive to the world, honestly for me doesn't make sense. And for me it would be difficult for me to make something like that successful. So I didn't have that with my companies. I didn't feel passionate about what I was working on. I did work at Instagram for a really cool team called the anti bullying team. So we were protecting people out there and I felt like that I was like I was doing something good. But you know, it's a some answer of an application and just get lost in it with the salary and the perks. So I kind of like just jumped before I got used to it.

I think you brought up some really good points though. You know, like it goes back to the saying that like sometimes for some people work is just getting that paycheck, you know, getting that paycheck going nine to five coming back out. But you know, a lot of people are not satisfied with that. A lot of people want something more. And there's like, I think, you know, there's no wrong answer to this. And I think the, one of the key pillars of being an entrepreneur is that drive to wanting to keep learning more and getting exposed to more. And I do think that, I agree that to a certain extent when you work at such a large company like Facebook, Instagram, Google, like you are kind of just a number. It's like One little cog, I guess, in the working machinery of all sorts. Not saying that you're not important. Like, if you took that cog out, like, I'm sure that, you know, there's going to be some mechanical failures to some extent, but, like, you know, it doesn't feel as impactive, like you don't have a direct involvement as much as you'd like to do. And so actually, that's kind of why I do want to talk a little bit more about your other projects that you mentioned, because I definitely know we talk about demovo a lot because the mobile is, you know, the company that you apply to the Maple program with. But I do want to actually explore a little bit more about Vista or. Yeah, how I pronounce it. Yeah. So could you share with our listeners what is Vista? And, like, you know, how did that come about? And maybe explain, like, you know, how that process went? Because I know there's a lot of. Well, actually, you know what? I'll let you tell a story because I feel like you. Yeah. So please share with us.

Yeah, yeah. So Vista, first of all, what is Vista? So Vista is an app that helps blind people around the world. What it does is blind people use the phone with something called Voiceover. So a lot of people first, a lot of people think that blind people can't use a phone, smartphone. Not true. There's technologies that empower them to do that. So with Voiceover, they kind of like just hear what's on the screen. So once they got going into Vista, I'm mixing my companies here. Once they go into. Into Vista, the camera shows up and immediately they can just point their phone towards whatever is in front of them. And the first immediate approximation will tell them, like, hey, there's a keyboard 60% sure. And it's using augmented reality technology. The lidar sensor on the iPhones, and even just the polygons on screen. What I do is I tell them how far away that object is. So, hey, There's a keyboard 30 centimeters away from you. I'm not with inches, so I don't know how much is that in inches, but 30 centimeters in front of you. And then once they. They want to, like, get the big picture, they can tap on their. On their. On their phone screen and they'll get kind of like a explanation of there's a man sitting in front of a tv and they get all of these feedback. They listen to it. Like there's a voice, like a Siri voice that tells them all of this. Like, hey, there's a dog. It's a. This is the. It's a. It's a dorky and it's right next to a blue car. And with Vista, the cool thing was that Vista has, has. Has gone through a lot of stuff. Like, I was. It was late December 2017, I think, and Amazon Web Services came out with a technology called AWS recognition. And. And I was like, oh, that's, that's really cool tech. But I don't really know what it would be useful for. It was a facial recognition software. And at that time I was like going through just, I don't know, like, I was feeling down by my own work. I was working at the MOBA creating apps for other people, and I was like, kind of like I was not in love with what I was coding. I was not in love with code. I felt like I needed to renew myself and do something that was worth it for people. And this tech came over and then I had this feeling in my life. And then I was just going in, like the transportation system here in Bogota. And I was thinking, you know, there's a lot of people that don't think about, you know, other people. They don't have empathy. I saw just a lot of people just driving their car without waiting, you know, for the pedestrians to walk or, you know, stuff like that. And then this blind person got into the transportation system and the blue seats, which are the seats for people with disabilities, was taken and no one really cared. And like, I felt like. And we talked about this already. I felt like, how can I use this superpower of creating something overnight to help people? You know, with tech, honestly, I think that they are not disabled. They are not disabled, but we disable them by not creating our world that it's inclusive for all of us. So I wanted to change that with tech. I wanted to basically just build some digitalized, kind of like level up the field. And that's. I just started coding Vista and it took like one month and I released Vista. It was an overnight success. It was. I got into press here in Colombia, a newspaper in Russia, a magazine in the US In New York, like live interviews, and it just exploded. So what I did was I open sourced the whole project and I let Vista be free worldwide for anyone to use it. So if you're listening to this and you want to copy me and you want to create something even cooler, then just go for it. Just Google Vista and copy my code and do something even more cool. And if you make it, that will be my success. That will be our success. And that's basically what's Vista. And it's a really cool project. I wish I had more time to work on it, but having two companies makes it difficult. That's why it's also open source. Hopefully people can help in this journey. Wow.

I think I made it process because you touched on something so incredibly. Like, I kind of want to go back to what you said earlier, how we, like, you know, there is not essentially kind of saying that there isn't really such thing as like disabled people or handicapped people, but we disable the world for them. And that, like, oh, that's just an incredible way to look at it because you're right. Like, we need to restructure the world in a sense so that it encompasses and involves everyone. And technology as a tool for that is just one step that we can do it. And it's true. I like to try to think too, that those with disabilities and stuff, they're still human, they still breathe, they're still walking on the streets just beside us. They still have jobs, they can still have families. They're just like us. But we try to box them in with all these limitations of how we view the world. But then when you have people like yourselves coming out and being like, hey, let's try to look at the world a little bit differently, let's like, make some innovations that, you know, is more inclusive and we can make the world a much more equal place. And I'm sorry.

It also that, that, that. That phrase kind of like changed the way I do everything. Even. Even Pineapple, which is my, my other company. It's basically just like the thesis on which I built upon. I just feel like, you know, when you try to show people how the other people, you know, when you try to show a company how other users are using your product and how they. They can't really use your product and how.