I moved to Mexico City! My life was yet again uprooted from my hometown Ōtautahi, New Zealand, after living in Berlin for 10 years. Being far from family, as well as my first stint at entrepreneurship, made for a rocky 2024. But what smoothed it out was rediscovering something that was with me all along.

My new home

Luckily I found an apartment quickly. But an apartment isn’t a home until you feel comfortable and familiar with your surroundings, and with a population of 20 million there’s plenty to discover! I quickly got to work finding the best taco shop (next door), breakfast cafe, and of course OXXO.

But what are locations without people? Community is also huge, events at coworking space Haab, Fight Club (non-boring networking events), Hashtag Art Gallery and even co-hosting my own new event series ‘Tacos y Tech’, have all been súper important in fostering meaningful relationships.

Tacos y Tech #3

Entrepreneurship

2024 was my first stint at entrepreneurship, as two friends (and ex-coworkers) and I got together to build a start-up. We hit some major roadblocks early: not having a network in Mexico, different opinions on tech, and not finding a problem to solve.

Antonio, Jakub, and me at an offsite in Valle de Bravo

Ultimately I went back to freelancing as a product/full stack engineer to buy time to build up a local network, as well as discover more problems unique to Mexico.

AI has also been a huge focus recently, focusing on projects that have a chatbot, tech like vector databases, or agents.

I still want to solve a big problem™, but I now believe the discovery phase develops better in background slower thinking instead of focused workshops. I’m also more interested in self-funding rather than applying for any incubators or VC firms.

My favorite books of 2024

Mental Health

Lack of community and career uncertainty have been the largest challenges of 2024.

The English speaking community in Mexico City is more transient than cities like Berlin as 80%+ come from the U.S. which is only a few hours flight back home. One of the first questions I ask now is how long someone actually intends to stay here.

Fight Club Networking Hike

But I’m happy to say I’ve made some real connections. Ultimately Mexico City is a place that attracts a specific type of person and lifestyle, and it’s easy to connect over that.

Shout out to therapy and exercise. Don’t know where I would be without you.

Chapultapec

Nature is always great at bringing me back to ground level, therefore visiting Chapultapec has recently become a necessity. Chapultepec is Mexico City’s national park, and it’s huge. It’s over twice the size as Central Park in New York, and is a quick bike ride from my apartment.

Magnificent Chapultapec

When needed, I make my way over to sling my hammock up and… do nothing. The stillness calms my soul, and does a great job resetting my nervous system from Mexico City’s sometimes overwhelming combination of people and noise.

2025

2024 has reminded me of the role of nature in our lives, especially in front of the huge climate crisis we’re all facing. A big reason for moving to Mexico was to figure out what I could build to help the local community. I’m now confident that reducing the climate impact will be a big part of that.

2025 is about strengthening relationships, freelancing, and building AI focused apps. If you’re building something interesting, I’d love to chat! simonhfrost(@)gmail.com

Thanks for reading! if you’re ever in Mexico City, Edna and I would love to show you around :)