The path into the demanding world of technology startups rarely follows a straight line. For some, it's a gradual immersion; for others, a sudden spark. And for a rare few, it begins, improbably, with childhood contemplations of mortality. This is where our subject's story diverges from the norm, setting the stage for a journey marked by intense curiosity, relentless learning through trial-and-error, and a profound search for purpose that ultimately forged a specialist in the intricate dance of product engineering, design, and management.
As a young boy, barely four or five, grappling with the unsettling finality of human existence, he didn't turn outward to philosophy in the conventional sense, but inward, towards the nascent world of technology. He daydreamed of robotic solutions, of consciousness integrated with machines – an early, almost visceral, pull towards using technology to transcend limitations. This profound, almost existential, curiosity soon morphed into a deep fascination with the tangible magic of electronics. While other children played, he was engrossed in YouTube deep dives, watching processors and smartphones being meticulously disassembled, captivated by their intricate workings. He filled notebooks not with doodles, but with designs for his own imagined devices, focusing instinctively on user experience, driven by an innate sense of what felt right, even if the complexities of actual hardware creation were yet unknown. By nine, he had charted a course: mechatronic engineering, the perceived nexus of hardware, software, and the robotics that had first captured his imagination.
This wasn't passive interest. It quickly became active exploration. He dove into programming ("coding a really bad website, but it was mine"), explored the burgeoning concepts of data science and machine learning, even encountered Bitcoin in its early days. The drive was palpable. A move to a bigger city in Brazil at 14, encouraged by supportive parents seeking better education, proved pivotal. Isolated in a new environment, he sought connection through school programs, stumbling into one focused on student-run companies. Here, amidst the unproductive churn of teenage brainstorming, impatience sparked action. Annoyed by the lack of progress, he stepped up, attempting to corral his classmates, define a product, and organize the effort. "I sucked at it," he admits with refreshing candor, "it failed miserably." Yet, the experience was transformative. It was the first taste of leadership, of product definition, and critically, of the immense gap between idea and execution. The lesson, though harsh, was formative: building something requires more than just enthusiasm; it requires method, understanding, and relentless focus – the seeds of realizing one must make something people want.
The pursuit of better education led him, still a teenager (15 or 16), to one of Florida's top schools. There, serendipity struck in a political science class. Overhearing a classmate, Bruno, lamenting the inability to build an app idea due to lack of funds and know-how, he impulsively offered help, despite possessing neither himself. This audacious moment sparked a partnership that would define his early entrepreneurial years. Living in the dorms, fueled by youthful determination, they dove headfirst into the unknown. Discovering Proto.io, they immersed themselves, spending hours daily teaching themselves visual prototyping. They realized the need for a business model, for funding, for structure. It was messy, inefficient, guided only by instinct and necessity.
Somehow, their raw drive convinced an early investor – likely betting, as the subject now reflects, more on the tenacious young founders than the fledgling idea itself. What followed was a masterclass in common startup pitfalls, learned the hard way. "We made all the possible mistakes you could think of," he recounts. They hired the wrong team, burned through precious capital building a complex product without validating it ("We didn't talk to our users"), and faced the stark reality of potential failure despite working grueling hours. The consequence was stark: a bad product, wasted resources, and a near-miss with collapse. Yet, this intense period ignited a deeper fascination with the business of startups, the mechanics of creating a company, not just a product. The necessity of pitching investors had forced him to learn communication, structure, and persuasion on the fly. He and Bruno didn't just fold; they persisted, eventually launching multiple ventures together – perhaps as many as six – learning, adapting, managing remotely as their lives took them to LA and San Francisco respectively, while maintaining a startup hub back in Brazil.
His time in Los Angeles proved to be another inflection point, this time deeply personal. Influenced significantly by Christianity, his worldview underwent a dramatic transformation. This wasn't merely a private matter; it fundamentally reshaped his professional purpose. The drive for impact, previously perhaps an echo of those childhood mortality musings, crystallized into a clear mission: to create positive change in the world – measured by quality, quantity, and speed – seeing businesses, particularly software companies, as the most sustainable and scalable engines for achieving this. This newfound conviction provided a powerful lens, viewing work not just as building products, but as contributing, positively or negatively, to a larger whole. It fostered a commitment to integrity, empathy, and prioritizing the "right thing" over the easy one – core tenets of trustworthiness.
This sharpened focus coincided with a period of deepening expertise. After exiting his first venture with Bruno (who continued with it), he launched and scaled another company solo. This venture, an all-in-one data platform helping large B2B clients like TV networks and major brands collect and leverage data, became a crucible for honing his product and engineering leadership skills. Scaling internationally to six countries and over 50,000 B2B users presented formidable challenges. On the product front, it was the constant tension of balancing diverse customer needs with a cohesive, focused vision. On the engineering side, it demanded building infrastructure to handle millions of simultaneous interactions on limited resources, optimizing front-end experiences, ensuring robust security, and managing a growing team effectively. His management philosophy solidified here: maintain high talent density, hire reactively to solve scale-related problems (not preemptively), and cultivate a culture focused on quality, productivity, and using code as a tool to solve real problems. Successfully scaling and exiting this venture validated his approach and marked a transition from frantic learning-by-doing to more deliberate, strategic execution.
It is this rich tapestry of experience – the early philosophical sparks, the harsh lessons of failed projects, the pivotal personal transformation, the hard-won expertise in scaling complex B2B software, and the unwavering commitment to creating tangible value – that culminates in his current venture, Ego Eimi. Founded as the synthesis of over a decade in the trenches, Ego Eimi aims to solve a core problem he experienced firsthand: the immense difficulty startups face in building high-quality software productively.
Its core offering today, the "Adaptive Team," directly embodies these lessons. It provides companies access to a flexible team of elite, pre-vetted engineers (selected from the top 0.5%, screened for their ability to build quality MVPs fast, incentivizing AI tool use) managed by a dedicated technical lead who integrates deeply with the client. This model is designed explicitly to maximize productivity and quality, allowing founders to focus on their "secret sauce" – understanding users, strategy, sales – precisely the areas where he saw early ventures falter. Ego Eimi's internal culture mirrors this focus, centered on just two values: "obsessively focusing on making something people want" and "being nice."
Looking ahead, the vision extends far beyond managed teams. He aims to build the "largest productivity ecosystem in the world," a comprehensive suite of resources – talent, knowledge, processes, and eventually products – designed to make the entire process of innovation, of "making something people want," fundamentally, even "stupidly," easy. It's an audacious goal, grounded in the belief that empowering entrepreneurs is a powerful lever for positive global change, capable of transforming lives and economies, echoing the developmental leaps seen in places like South Korea.
The journey from a child pondering existence to an entrepreneur building ecosystems to accelerate innovation is unconventional, certainly. But it reveals a consistent thread: a deep-seated drive to understand, to build, and to transcend limitations – first personal, then technological, now systemic. Through embracing failure, seeking purpose, and relentlessly honing his craft across design, code, and management, he has forged the expertise and earned the trustworthiness that comes not from an easy path, but from navigating the complexities of building truly valuable things in the real world. His story serves as a compelling testament to the power of focused iteration – applied not just to software, but to oneself.
