My first communion. This is the typical card you gave people in a 1st communion.
To swim in the public pools, I got a membership card.
Years later that system gets upgraded to the Porto-wide city wide leisure thingy. New card, same number!
As the son of a doctor working for the public administration, I get another card. This one is paper.
Back in the day, when diagonal words were all the rage. My access card to the PT national health service.
The dot com bubble got all the nerds spinning. as a 16 year old, i was surfing the wave as most. I had business cards and all.
After Vodafone, I moved to Optimus.. I lost many SIM cards, this one was during their magma phase.
Another Optimus SIM.
Around the time I got to the university my father got us all a private health insurance, from MEDIS.
Periodically i get a new card.
They all look the same. Boring.
The first passport i remember was the one I took to Argentina in 2002.
This is a 2009 passport, that I needed to go to the MBA in the US.
I started studying in the Public university of engineering FEUP in porto. This meant I got my own uni card too.
I got into FEUP partly because of my mothers uncle, Tio Manel. When he passed I got one of his cards.
As part of registering for the university, you got a university branded debit card.
And that card, too, got upgraded to an exact replica a year later.
We got one card per year.
they evolved the design.. a bit.
Banks started issuing code matrices for security. I never understood why, really.
later on, as I got a job in consulting, the bank gave me a credit card! what an upgrade. Not.
The new debt card issued by CGD.. MTV was all the range in 2009.
many years later, and MTV is still all the rage for this state bank.
At some point I stopped being a university student, and got upgraded to a generic international student status.
In 2022 I got a personal fiscal identification number to start working during my university years. this card was issued in 2004.
this is what the national identity cards looked like. Geez.
now on the back.
this is what the 2016 national identity cards looked like. Geez.
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I got to california for a summer undergraduate research fellowship (SURF). 10 weeks!
When I return for 5 month in 2007, I get a new card. Same ID.
The summer is over, so I have to get an upgraded card to stay there.
When it's time for the driverless car race, I get yet another cool card.
I wouldn't have made it to Caltech without the help of a uni professor, João Tasso, who leads the LSTS lab in FEUP.
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Because i'm at Caltech, they give me a debit card. Credit Unions are popular, and every big university has one (I guess).
when i return to caltech, they give me a cooler card, with a galaxy in the middle.
I get issued more cards.. almost yearly.
yet another renovation..
more cards.
My first car, a 2nd-hand, silver, gasoline powered VW Polo XL from 2003, that I bought from an ex-potential-mother-in-law
With a car, i got an insurance!
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My first real job out of university was as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company. (It's Ayres Pereira, not Pereira).
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McKinsey got you a special healthcare plan (which i never used).
And being in Lisbon, it meant that I could become part of a health club: gym. There were nice yoga classes.
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And I converted to a better bank account, at least one that looked more premium (dumb).
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And that gave me several cards, fancy as the bank account was (360).
Gold card lol.
Another gold card.
Yet another bank card.
And another.
At McKinsey I started flying more regularly, and there was even a corporate travel card.
Soon I realized that I needed a proper airmiles program.
I tried many travel programs.
I tried many travel programs.
I tried many travel programs.
I tried many travel programs.
And when I got down on that flight path, I got inside another bank, BCP.
They had a credit card everyone at mckinsey was using, that doubled miles or something.
I got the full pack, including my first Amex. I never really got to understand how that worked.
Yet another card.
My first project at McKinsey was to help with the tech career at CGD bank. IT sallaries were low back then.
More debit cards.
Another assignment was at O2, when it got acquired by Telefonica.
O2 existed in UK, Germany, Ireland and Checz Rep., so I had to travel.
Another job was at Mbcp bank.
The Mbcp project was to help them launch ActivoBank, which made me a customer!
ActivoBank start kit.
More debit cards.
More debit cards.
More debit cards.
More debit cards.
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And a credit card (note the white C).
At some point I started having headaches, which got fixed by prescription glasses.
Another assignment was at PT, supporting the rollout of the first 100k fiber installations.
Eventually I had to book other hotels.. and that meant more programs.
And at EDP, updating a Disaster Recovery plan.
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At BBVA bank, we helped with digital services upgrade, like moving email to Gmail (a big deal then).
Probably from that Spain project to visit some location.
I stayed in Madrid quite a bit, eventually one of these cards got lost and ended up in this collection.
I travelled quite a bit with McKinsey so I got into the Hilton loyalty program.
Very quickly i climbed up to Diamond VIP status.
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I also joined Starwood (Sheraton).
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I used some of the perks to book a Conrad (hilton) in Istanbul.
After McKinsey I did an MBA at HBS, which means a new university ID card.
More bank cards. It looks like I misplace lots of cards.
There was a bookstore card too.
We travelled a bunch of times, here the Paris hotel in Vegas.
There was some public transportation thing in Boston, but we mostly walked.
A new University also meant a new health plan.
And a health insurance program
And business cards of my own.
I also needed a new bank account for my loan, so more debit cards.
More bank cards.
More bank cards.
More bank cards.
More bank cards.
cards were all the rage, and I got a FNAC card too.
Internship-1 I got an Internship in NY working for Santander.
Internship-2 I had to work in the 10 weeks of the summer, and I found a place to stay in NYC.
Internship-3 There was a Gym with a pool too!
Internship-4 I needed a bank to deposit a salary, and I wanted something with an App, so i got BoA.
Internship-5 More bank cards.
Internship-6 More bank cards.
I came back from my MBA to work at EDP Distribuição, the distribution network of the local electric company.
This means more cards. One of them was a gasoline card..
I also needed a special permit card to drive their fleet of cards.
This job was in Lisbon, so I started using the local subway system, and that meant more cards. This was a rechargeable transport card
Eventually I upgraded individual tickets to a monthly pass.
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Around the time of being in Lisbon, my landlord pushed me to attend a marketing (think ponzy) scheme called Lyoness. Geez.
Also around this time, I started to get calls for headhunters.
I would need a job post-MBA, so I applied to Apple. Only got a free song.
I applied to Citi bank international operations in Miami for LatAm.
Got a chance to visit Miami. In the end I wouldn't accept their amazing offer.
I started Skin.pt in 2012. It's a beauty ecommerce business. The name was an idea of a colleague. We printed cards.
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That meant new bank cards (Farmactiva was the legal name!).
And more bank cards.
We even got a card to Makro, a cash & carry. It was a realy business!
I made entrepreneur friends.
And more startup friends.
Because i was in porto, I got into swiming. Went some 5 times or less.
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I also did a trip to Santiago de Compostela by bike. Very nice. This was the room key (paper, with a code).
I was really coming back to Porto, even got a loyalty card of a bookstore.
I started going back to local events, and this festival was the biggest local thing.
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the promoter (Optimus) merged and rebranded, and next year the card was different.
Another!
And yet another card.
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Another (probably my wife's).
After a disagreement with my investors at Skin.pt, I co-founded EatFirst.com with 2 others, in london.
Our first campaign card with a discount code.
Another card!
New business, new bank cards.
I had to swim, so I found a nice place near the office.
Moved offices, new pool!
Suits were still used in startups sometimes, and so...!
We travelled a lot between London, Porto and Berlin. I got easyJet plus, that offered front seats everytime.
Rocket was our investor, so we worked off their gigantic offices.
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I moved to Berlin at end of 2014 to work on EatFirst there (we had 2 cities). I got a copy of my co-founders card.
Another access card.
New city, new personal bank. Welcome N26.
More cards.
Yet more cards.
And another bank card.
And another.
I needed internet and a phone. 1&1!
I also got a car sharing card, to move around the Berlin area.
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I got married on 2015-05-01, and we had a southeast asia Honeymoon (here, thailand).
Again in thailand.
I co-founded Rows at the end of 2016, in Berlin. Then it was called EqualsMagic!. Another credit card.
We also opened an operation in Portugal, so yet another bank.
We also opened an operation in Portugal, so yet another bank..png2016-2-Rows.com-1-Bank-3 And the bank card.
I started investing, and opened a legal entity for it. Another bank account.
And then they gave me a personal bank account too.
With another debit card.
We needed a place to work, so we worked at Factory.
And because we were in Porto, we needed a place to work from there too!
Since getting married we started travelling more. One of our first big trips was to India when Maria was pregnant with Penélope.
We travelled in Portugal a bunch too. This is in Comporta.
We travelled a few times to Comporta, until it became too expensive for us.
We also went to Estoril, where Maria's family lives.. there's an old hotel there, sometimes they have nice promos too.
We stayed there twice already!
Another hotel room key left behind.. this time from the Douro region.
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No idea where this one is from, for sure some less-brandable hotel (I'm guessing 3*).
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Even with a baby, we travelled. Our first trip with Penélope was to Brazil, here in Rio de Janeiro (hotel Marina Palace).
We travelled out of Germany a bunch, and in the region. Here we went to Szececin in Poland. The water in the northern sea was 2C.
We went to an event by our investor Accel and Salesforce, in NY.
In 2020 I went to a biz retreat in Salt Lake City, organized by my investor Accel. Stunning mountains.
Because of international travel, I got a phone number that works anywhere in the world.
The Rows team in Porto grew, and our older daughter had alopecia and needed less travel. So we moved to Porto. New subway cards!
We visited an amazing hotel, Montebelo Mosteiro de Alcobaça. Food was ok, but the rennovation of the monestary is very good.