Mayker Oviedo is Chief Technology Officer at GCO Ventures. His work sits at the intersection of technology, company building and scaling new businesses. In this interview, he reflects on the creativity involved in building startups, the role of artificial intelligence and the importance of creating teams that can move forward in uncertain environments.
If you had to explain what you do at GCO Ventures without using your job title, what would you say?
Without using my title: create. But really, a lot of it is about being creative and finding ways to build things well, not only from a technical perspective, but also by thinking about how the companies and startups we create actually work.
A good example is La Plataforma: we reuse technology across our new companies to reduce the cost of launching a startup by 40% to 50%. We do not start every company from scratch, which means we can focus our energy on what truly makes each one different.
We work with a great deal of uncertainty. You do not always know exactly what needs to be done or how to do it; you have to figure things out along the way. And that is precisely what makes the work so rewarding.
Before joining GCO Ventures, how did you see the startup world, and what has changed since then?
I came from corporate environments: Oracle, NTT Data, Logicalis, Mercantil… I had been CDO within the group itself, and I had also been an entrepreneur. I knew both sides, but building companies from a venture builder has a different pace. In a large company, processes and structures are already in place; here, you often have to build them as you go.
It is a fascinating and challenging world because everything is incredibly dynamic. Things can move very quickly: you can fail fast, and you can succeed fast.
I have also been struck by the human side of it. In a startup, you have to bring a lot of passion and put a lot of yourself into making things work.
My idea of startups came from films and TV series: The Social Network, Silicon Valley, or stories like Spotify. The reality is less epic and much more creative. Since joining, I have seen the ecosystem up close, including Y Combinator, Lanzadera and other initiatives, but what has really drawn me in is exactly that: the creative side of building a company.
Even though I work in technology, which can seem more structured, the level of creativity you have to apply is enormous. I like feeling that I am doing innovative things and, above all, that I am part of creating them.
Now that artificial intelligence is becoming part of almost every area of work, where do you think people really add value?
I think work has changed enormously.
In the past, you placed a lot of value on someone’s ability to identify a problem. Think of a consultant coming into a company, figuring out what was going on and proposing how to solve it.
Artificial intelligence changes that. Today, you can identify patterns, problems and potential solutions much faster. The value is no longer so much in spotting that a problem exists, or even simply in being able to come up with a possible solution.
For me, the real value lies in deciding which path to take, applying judgement and making sure that the solution genuinely addresses a problem.
Artificial intelligence makes you faster and gives you a boost, so to speak. But doing things faster is pointless if you do not apply judgement and you are not solving real problems. That is where human value remains incredibly high.
Which professional mistakes have taught you the most? Is there one that, despite everything, you would not erase?
Many. From trusting that something could work without having validated everything I could have validated before making a decision, to mistakes that simply came from inexperience.
For much of my career, I was very young to be in leadership positions. I found myself leading people who were ten or fourteen years older than me.
When you are young, you can be somewhat reckless and dismiss someone’s point of view because it feels old school, without fully appreciating everything their experience brings. Looking back with more maturity, I think that was one of my mistakes.
But I do not regret having been reckless or insufficiently diplomatic at times, because I learned from that too. I was a bit like Sonny in The Godfather, when Vito reproaches him for saying out loud what he thought in front of the wrong person. Over the years, I have understood that it is not about keeping quiet; it is about choosing when and how to say what you think. I still say what I think today, but I listen more first.
If you never make mistakes, it is very difficult to improve and gain experience. There is a saying I always remember: no sailor learns in calm waters. You need to encounter mistakes to learn how to handle different situations.
Is there a skill or hobby you might not put on LinkedIn, but that plays an important role in how you work?
I really enjoy drawing. For a while, I even wondered whether I should mention it because, in certain consulting environments, it did not seem particularly relevant professionally.
But over time, I discovered how much it helps me. I like visual thinking because it allows me to explain ideas, build concepts and make something very complex easy to understand simply by structuring it visually.
Interestingly, the thing I once hesitated to mention has almost become my trademark: the CTO who explains things through drawings. When a team sees a problem drawn out, the conversation changes: everyone is discussing the same thing, gaps become visible sooner and decisions improve.
What do you do outside work that, perhaps without realising it, also helps you professionally?
During a mentoring programme, I learned a name for it: transferable skills. They are the capabilities you develop outside work that later strengthen the way you work. Someone who plays music develops certain sensory abilities; drawing helps you communicate; the mountains teach you how to make decisions and lead. There are many skills you simply do not acquire through studying.
In my case, drawing and cooking give me a sense of calm and balance, while cinema is a constant source of stories and lines that stay with me at work too. And the mountains, which have been part of my life since I was very young, have probably been my best school. As a child, I planned lots of trips to the mountains, and over the years that led to expeditions to places such as Mount Roraima, Pico Humboldt and Chimborazo.
When you are above 5,000 metres, deciding whether to keep going or turn back is leadership in its purest form: you assess the risks, read the group and take responsibility for the decision. This summer, I completed Las Feixas, seven stages across the Pyrenees, covering 119 kilometres with more than 11,600 metres of elevation gain, and it reinforced the same lesson: planning, adapting and looking after the team is exactly what we do when we build a startup. A large part of my ability to organise, decide and lead comes from there.
I am also currently preparing for the Barcelona Marathon in March, and I use artificial intelligence a lot to help me organise. I have my training and nutrition structured, and I can plan when to run or what to eat based on my own data, always with professional guidance. I also use AI for my personal finances and to plan trips.
I find it incredible how much structure and tracking you can achieve today for activities that used to require an enormous amount of time. It is the same principle we apply at work: AI gives you structure, but you still make the decisions.
When you think about a project, a startup or even our own team, what matters most for it to work?
It is like life, or like dancing: your dance partner matters enormously. No matter how good your steps are, if the other person does not move with you, there is no dance.
Exactly the same is true of projects and companies. If the team works well together, I believe there is almost nothing that cannot be achieved.
It is also important to know yourself and understand what kind of people bring out the best in you. I work best with people who see an opportunity when they face a problem. Energy is contagious, and a team with that mindset can turn uncertainty into momentum.
Ultimately, you can have a great idea, but without the right team to build it, it is very difficult for it to go far.
And if you had to recommend five books to someone who wants to build companies, which would they be?
Rather than management books, I would recommend the ones that have helped me think, create and tell stories better:
The Creative Act, by Rick Rubin. I love it. It sees creativity as a way of being in the world, rather than a gift reserved for a select few. That is exactly what I try to apply when we build companies.
Portraits and Encounters, by Gay Talese. I am fascinated by the way he tells stories: he uses the surroundings to explain the person, and it is through that environment that you see how the character is formed. It reminds me that, to understand a product or a team, you have to look at the context it lives in.
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. It was originally published in serial form in a magazine, as Sherlock Holmes stories later were, which forced the author to pay close attention to readers. Conan Doyle even brought Holmes back because of public pressure. To me, it is a wonderful early example of what we do with digital products today: launch, listen and adapt.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Essential for understanding how we make decisions and why we get things wrong. In the age of artificial intelligence, it is a powerful case for human judgement.
The Back of the Napkin, by Dan Roam. Proof that a good drawing can solve a business problem. It is almost a handbook for what I try to do at the whiteboard.
And, because I cannot resist, one film: The Godfather. It has more lessons about leadership, loyalty and communication than you might expect.
The conversation with Mayker Oviedo places technology where it can add the most value: as a tool to accelerate understanding and execution, not as a substitute for judgement. His experience spans technology architecture, data, artificial intelligence and venture building, but the conclusion is less technical: projects move forward when people know how to decide, learn and work together.
In uncertain environments, that combination becomes critical. Technology can expand a team’s capabilities, but on its own it cannot determine which problem is worth solving or how to build a useful response.
If you would like to discover more perspectives from the GCO Ventures team and the professionals building new companies, visit the blog for more Inside GCO Ventures stories.
