Decentralife: A Decade of Building Better with Fernanda Orduña Rangel, Decaf

The most important voices are the ones behind the solutions, the people building toward change. Blockchain has a knack for drawing big thinkers and dreamers looking to solve real-world problems into the ecosystem, and each one of them has their story.

This summer on Decentralife – a series unveiling the authentic lives of people realizing their potential, building and problem-solving using blockchain technology – we’re celebrating 10 years of the Stellar ecosystem with people who are building better. Better solutions, better communities, better access.

For this installment, we spoke with Fernanda Orduña Rangel, co-founder (and developer) at Decaf.

I am Fernanda. I am a software developer and we [Decaf] are actually four – three technical founders and one that does everything else – and I am basically focused on the design and end user side of our products.

I want to give people financial freedom through blockchain, without friction. There is huge friction in terms of how hard it can be to get into crypto, how expensive it can be, how much you have to know about crypto. So we are working on making it easy for people initially.

It's actually a funny story because I never coded in my life in high school or anything.Then I got into university and I started as an industrial engineer. I had this class that was needed that was ‘Introduction to Coding’ or something like that. And I was the only one that had never coded ever in her life before.

Wow. What was the rest of your time in school like?

I studied in Tecnológico de Monterrey, which is a really good school. They have campus everywhere basically, so I went to the campus that is close to my hometown.

Everyone was like, you will suffer in that coding class. I was so scared of that class. But then as classes went on I realized that I enjoyed it a lot, way too much! I was just excited about that class, instead of anything else related to my career. So at the end of that semester, I started considering changing to computer science and technology.

Everyone was like, don't do that. You think it is easy just because you took ‘Introduction to Coding’ but once you get deep, it is horrible. Long story short: I decided to change to computer science and technology and I ended up loving it.

I am in a small town, it’s also where I am from. But I am actually in the process of moving, to Puerto Escondido. I met my co-founder there. That’s where the idea of my company started. That's a special place in my heart because it's where everything started.

I am kind of a nomad. For example, the last three months I was in Australia. Now I came to my hometown to spend New Years and everything, but I am moving again soon. Yeah, but my routine is similar most places I go.

Yeah, so right now because we have a deadline, I have been waking up very early every day at 6:00 am. Depends how I am feeling, but sometimes I exercise first now. I don't know why but I am enjoying coding more when everyone is still sleeping and there's no noise or anything.

I can see that.

So I wake up at six. I start working. Then we usually have our daily stand-up. And after that is when I have breakfast. I like to fast. I usually wait for a while to have breakfast. Then after that is when I go to the gym. I like exercising so I go to the gym. And right now because I'm in my town, my routine is a bit different. But for example when I'm in Australia or when I'm in Puerto Escondido, I’ll come back and work a bit more. Then when it is sunset time, I like to go to the beach–swim, watch the sunset, have dinner. And then I stay maybe out for a bit longer and then I come back home.

That sounds like a great way to end a work day.

Yeah, that is during the week. On the weekends, I am starting to surf. I started learning two years ago, then I stopped because we weren’t close to a place where I could surf. When I was in Australia, I was surfing every day. So that was part of my routine in Australia.

I love that it’s switching my brain off in terms of working. For me it’s so hard as a founder to just stop thinking about work. With surfing, you don't have any device close to you, you don't get any messages. So it is just you, the waves, and then the adrenaline that you feel when you see a good wave coming, and then when you catch it is so much joy.

It sounds like a good way to find some balance.

Yeah, basically my life is work, so I like to have a healthy lifestyle. I always try to exercise every day. I like to eat healthy. So yeah, I think that that balance is what has kept me alive.

Because it's very hard to be a founder and trying all the time to make your company successful and find product market fit. So I think that if I was just coding and working the whole day I’d already burn out. So I find that exercise and having a healthy lifestyle is a good way to rest from that and think about other things.

When I started getting into the [crypto] ecosystem, I started going to hacker houses of Solana. And what this was in 2021, so everyone was talking about NFT collections and things like that, how every project was making so much money. Everyone was excited and doing the same thing. And I was thinking I mean, obviously you can make a lot of money, but I want to work on something that helps somehow.

The place where I am from, for example, I have seen and I know what it is like to have a financial system that doesn't work really well. People are being excluded. They don't have many options. They don't have financial freedom. This is something that happens everywhere in Latin America and especially now, for example, if you look at Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, people have a real need. I realized that the technology was ready to start building solutions that substitute the traditional banking system. And that is something that was impossible before. Everything, every transaction was super expensive, or slow. Now you can do micro transactions that are so cheap and fast.

I learned all of this and it made sense, and then I talked to my co-founder who also liked the idea. He wasn't interested in these NFTs. He also wanted to have an impact. So we started coming up with this idea. At first we wanted to make it possible for people to buy everyday stuff with crypto and things like that, but then we realized that first you need to get adoption. So that's why we focused on this app where people can invest, hold their value, protect themselves from inflation and devaluation, which is a huge use of crypto in general and many people don't even think about it.

Decaf makes it possible for people to hold value in US dollars using USDC, and invest their money. We’re focusing in Latin America and Africa now. Initially we were focused only on Latin America, but now we actually have more users in Africa, which was a surprise. We’re actually going this year to Africa.

That growth is amazing to see.

That's actually why I enjoy doing this. In the moments that I see someone tweet “I just used Decaf” and I don't know who this person is, but they used it and it was great for them, it's so fulfilling. Knowing that what you are working on has helped people in Colombia or other places solve their problems.

Yeah, yeah because there is this bad idea that people have of crypto. It’s easy to have the conversations flow organically when you actually believe in your cause and what you are working for.

We feel the same. All right Fernanda, thank you so much for what you're building and all your stories.