Product designer with a founder's mindset, fluent in design, code and business.
20 years of tripling MRR, shipping to millions, and building things that outlast my time there.
Work
Selected projects
Astrolink
From zero mobile to 4M downloads
Research revealed four critical friction points that reshaped everything — from trust barriers to onboarding failure. What followed turned a desktop-only platform into Brazil's category leader in astrology.
4M+ downloads · R$1M/month · #1 in Brazil
yampa
Two years cancelled. Rebuilt in two months.
A complete redesign cancelled a week before launch due to critical technical debt. The forced pivot became an AI-first workflow that rebuilt the entire frontend in under two months.
R$80k → R$370k MRR · frontend rebuilt in <2 months
Kaizen
Prompt-Driven Design System
Architected and documented an entire design system to be used through AI prompts. Every component, token, and pattern was defined so a model could build the UI from instructions alone.
Full design system delivered via structured prompts
Like what you see?
Let's talk →“I join companies before the blueprint exists. I leave with something that lasts.”
Results
Impact in numbers
About
For twenty years I refused to pick a lane. Turns out that was the point.
I started in development, moved into design, and somewhere along the way took on product direction too. For 20 years I've been sitting at the intersection of those three — and for most of that time, I felt like an outsider for it.
AI changed that. Now I can bring business thinking, design, and code together in a way that wasn't really possible before. I go from problem to prototype to production without losing the thread between them.
I work best when the brief doesn't exist yet. When the structure needs to be invented. When the product has to earn its place in the market before it earns a roadmap.
Brazilian, based in Ivrea — the city where Olivetti invented the personal computer.¹ Living here with my wife and two kids, which tells you something about how seriously I take long bets.
¹ Ivrea is a UNESCO World Heritage site — "Industrial City of the 20th Century".
Contact
Let's connect.
Enquiries
cahe.mendes@gmail.comGitHub
See my work on GitHub ↗