10,000 followers later, here’s where it all began

A personal reflection on my 6-year journey to 10,000 LinkedIn followers and how sharing my work publicly led to unexpected opportunities and the creation of OpenBB.

I crossed 10,000 followers on LinkedIn.

But.

It took me 6 years to get here.

It's been so long, I forgot what made me start posting on LinkedIn in the first place. So in this post I'm going down that memory lane.

...

During my university years, all I did was pretty much attend classes during the day and then study and do homework once I got home. My weekends were pretty much the same too.

My main objective was to have good grades so I could pursue anything I wanted after.

It wasn't about doing something in particular; it was about having the freedom to not have to do something in particular.

The freedom to pick a path.

After university, I landed a role as a Firmware Engineer where I was working on GNSS receivers. (I wanted to go into self-driving cars, and this role allowed me to work on chips that were used for positioning by self-driving cars—close enough, eh?)

Presenting my thesis at Imperial, where I selected the topic of "Energy savings from an Eco-Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control: a BEV platoon investigation"

During the day, I was working. But in the evenings and on weekends, I didn't have my work laptop, so there wasn't much to do.

In the first few weeks of the job, I was reading books about how GNSS receivers worked (this is the best one btw: Understanding GPS principles and applications).

Note: GPS technology is so underrated, in my opinion—maybe one of the most impactful inventions of the 20th century. To think that 50 years ago, there wasn't a single satellite in the sky is insane. I think that one of the reasons for this is that it taken for granted because it works seamlessly in the background.

Anyway... There are only so many books you can read on the topic of satellite positioning.

It felt odd to have this much time where there wasn’t a goal, per se, that I could easily use to tell whether I was doing the right thing or not—unlike university, where anything that doesn’t go toward getting good grades is a distraction.

Given I was interested in data, AI and self-driving cars - I decided to keep learning as I did in University, but this time there was no target that others defined for me.

This time, the target was my curiosity.

And I was curious about ML/AI.

But everywhere I looked online was recommending Python instead of MATLAB.

So I bought the Python Data Science Handbook, which would allow me to learn Python in a way that was practical.

After reading the first few chapters, I started side projects based on ideas I had that would let me test my skills. More importantly, they would allow me to truly learn by getting my hands dirty.

As I was reading a lot on forums and Stack Overflow (RIP 🪦), I found the community amazing. People were sharing what they were working on, solutions to the problems they had—all in the open.

I loved it.

During my university years, I experienced two very different environments:

• An open community at my Portuguese university, where everyone shared everything—but, in general, people didn’t care that much.
• A closed community at TU Delft, where no one shared anything and it was extremely competitive.

I liked the competitiveness of TU Delft, but preferred the teamwork of the Portuguese university.

Picture of me in Delft, back in 2016, where I did an exchange program

This DS/ML/AI community was that.

And so in that same vein, I decided to do something that I wasn't comfortable doing, I decided to start posting on LinkedIn what I was working on.

Here's that first post 6 years ago.

A bit later I posted about another mini project I worked on:

Due to these posts, I got this message in my inbox from my previous Maths teacher.

That message was about challenging me to help him write the code behind his thesis, which was about Modeling and Forecasting of Financial Time Series.

This is what ultimately led me to the financial space—and to start OpenBB in my spare time.

Six years in, and the only thing I regret is not starting to post earlier.

I can’t think of a single negative to posting on socials.

So if you’re on the fence — go to LinkedIn or X and just post what you’re working on, or how you’re thinking about something.

And tell me, so I can like your post to get the ball rolling.

Sharing content is a marathon.

And no one will care—until they do. So the best you can do is be true to yourself and post something you would want to read.

At least, that’s what I do.

And what I’ll keep doing.