I Tried Entrepreneurship Again. Then I Became a Father.

After ITFamilyCorp could no longer continue operating, I went back to being an employee.

I worked as a contract programmer at TransCo and eventually made a bigger move: from Cebu to Metro Manila, where I saw more opportunities for software engineers.

I worked in Makati, including a period at Allied Bank, and over the years I moved through different companies and different business domains.

Part of me was simply building a career. But entrepreneurship never completely left my mind.

If another opportunity came someday, I wanted to be better prepared than I had been the first time.

So I kept learning: different systems, different businesses, different teams, and different ways companies used software.

Then came another plot twist 😄

While I was working at Fujitsu, I was introduced to network marketing through USANA.

I didn't just try it casually. I took it seriously. I learned how to approach people, communicate an idea, organize a network, handle rejection, and help a team grow.

Eventually, I reached the level of Silver Director.

I genuinely liked the products, too. I still use them today.

For someone whose career had been built largely around software and computers, this experience pushed me into a very different kind of learning: people, communication, relationships, and building an organization.

And once again, the entrepreneurial part of me started getting louder.

Back to Cebu

I returned to Cebu and tried once again to build something outside the traditional employee path.

But the business wasn't always producing the consistent income I needed.

Around the same period, I reconnected with friends from the old ITFamilyCorp days.

Apparently, one failed company hadn't completely cured us of entrepreneurship. 😄

We tried again.

TriSolution

This time, we created TriSolution and built an HRIS product.

It didn't grow into the kind of sustainable company I had imagined, but the software itself wasn't a complete failure.

We found a few companies that adopted the product, and as far as I know, some continued using it after I stepped away.

When I eventually returned to Makati, I left the product with my friends, who continued maintaining it.

The business didn't become what I dreamed it would become. But something we built continued beyond my involvement.

And while all of this was happening, life gave me a much bigger reason to rethink what came next.

I became a father

Until then, taking risks was mostly about me.

If something didn't work, I could try something else. Start again. Find another opportunity. Learn another technology. Get another job.

But now I had a son.

Suddenly the question wasn't only:

What do I want to build?

There was another question:

What does my family need from me?

And at that point, the answer was simple.

Stability.

I still believed in entrepreneurship. I still had ideas. I still wanted to build things.

But believing in a dream and providing for your family aren't opposing ideas.

Sometimes they simply operate on different timelines.

So I went back to Makati

I returned to Metro Manila and went back to working as a software engineer.

If you looked only at my entrepreneurial attempts, the scoreboard wasn't particularly impressive. 😄

ITFamilyCorp hadn't become the outsourcing company my friends and I imagined. Network marketing wasn't something I could depend on as my family's primary source of income. TriSolution didn't become the sustainable company I had hoped for.

And there I was again.

An employee.

Years earlier, I might have interpreted that as going backward.

But something was different now.

I was a father.

Going back to stable employment wasn't the disappearance of the dream.

My priorities had changed.

Some dreams don't disappear

Entrepreneurship stayed somewhere in the back of my mind.

But I returned to engineering. I kept working. I kept learning different systems, industries, technologies, and ways of building software.

Maybe another opportunity would come. Maybe it wouldn't.

I didn't know.

And perhaps that's one of the things I've slowly learned over more than 20 years in technology:

You don't always know which chapter you're in while you're living it.

Sometimes you're building.

Sometimes you're failing.

Sometimes you're starting again.

And sometimes the most important thing you're building isn't a company at all.