Immanuel Joy lives in Bogotá, is building a company called Lanthera, and can turn a simple question about where he lives into a three-season story.
Earlier editions of this guide placed him in Pittsburgh. The editors have since updated the map.
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Confirmed sighting
His home base. A reliable place to find him, particularly when he’s explaining that he lives in the United States.
Reported by subject
The hometown he sells in the American version of his life. Ask him about Pittsburgh and you’ll get the confidence of a local.
Immanuel lives a double life. Bogotá is home. Pittsburgh is the hometown he made up, and he sells it like he’s lived there for years. He’s so committed to the story you’d ask him which bridge to take.
Two hometowns. One set of keys.
Short, charming, and willing to give a routine conversation a full backstory. Ask him where he’s from and you may get a hometown, a career history, and a supporting cast before you get a country.
Immanuel loves his tequila. At one job, he even had a beer in the middle of the workday. If there’s one deadline he’s happy to move up, it’s happy hour.
Excerpts from the conversation following a product demo on October 30, 2026. The transcript was reconstructed from audio and edited for readability. The timestamps mark where each excerpt starts in the recording.
A friend brings up the idea of holding two jobs at once while they talk about a potential remote offer.
“But you were even considering maybe two-timing, but it sounds like you’re kind of not fucking with this one.”
“Yeah, I would just quit this.”
He’s talking about spending a week in Colombia and recalls asking for time to look for an apartment. Later, he weighs the cost of keeping a place in both cities.
“Yeah, because I don’t want to be in SF constantly, right?”
“They were trying to, but I was like, no, I need time for my apartment search.”
“But if I have a place in SF and a place in Bogotá, I actually make less money than if I’m making 300K remote.”
He says he’s using a different laptop at work while the company laptop is powered down. He brings up his upcoming Colombia trip and says he doesn’t want the company laptop pinging.
“We’re like this way so he doesn’t see, you know?”
“So I was like, yeah, let’s just keep that shit in a Faraday, in the microwave.”
His friend asks how the job is going, then asks how late he actually has to stay at the office.
“Bro, it’s nine to nine, seven days a week.”
“So it’s nine to like 6:30. He always says you have to stay in the office till 6:30. And then the rest is like, you have an hour to respond to any message on Slack.”
They’re talking through a demo for investors using test integrations. The prospect suggests a voiceover and says the demo could send visitors straight to book a meeting.
“But yeah, there’s no real money that’s actually being… And it’s fine because this is for Colombians. They don’t have the context.”
“It could literally be a voiceover.”
Immanuel co-founded Lanthera, which uses machine learning to predict which proteins might help separate rare-earth metals before researchers test them in the lab. The company puts itself at lab validation and lists paid pilots as a future step. Lanthera’s roadmap
The proteins already have a leaderboard. The paying customers are still a bullet point.
A friend recalls him considering two jobs at once. For the remote role they discuss, he says he’d quit his current job.
He’s great company.
An ordinary drink with him can get you a story you’ll still be telling years later, usually with someone at the table asking, “Wait, was he actually in Pittsburgh?”
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