About Me
A gastropunk, looking for soulful experiences.
Hey there,
I’m a software Product Manager with experience in fields such as Financial Services, Hospitality, Health, Information Technology, and many others. For the last 8 years, I’ve dedicated my life to a software development consulting company collaborating with many successful enterprises throughout the world.
Today, I’m working at xMoney Crypto to support Small & Medium Businesses to rely on web3 technology to become better businesses. But yet, that’s just what I do from 9 to 5.
Maybe you got here because you know me from somewhere else…
Music journalism and concert bookings?
Selling independent magazines with Departamento.co?
Helping restaurants through COVID-19 with Jantarada.pt?
Having the biggest craft beer editorial project in Portugal with Cerveja Artesanal Portuguesa?
Finding the right person to get you through that problem? Thankfully, I’m good at doing intros.
Throughout my life, I’ve met so many different people from all backgrounds. This had a great impact on the way I see the world. Eventually, my love for music, drinks, and food (particularly in this order) shaped the last 15 years of my life, making it a lot more interesting.
If you want to know more about me, just keep on scrolling.
A Dreamer
I’m from Vila Mendo, a small rural village near Guarda, the highest and coldest city in Portugal. Throughout my childhood, I always wanted to become an astronaut as I was in love with science, spacecrafts, and exploring the edges of the universe. But on the other hand, I always loved to fantasize about being an archeologist finding lost civilizations and their treasures. Today I understand that I was drawn to both ends of the time spectrum. One into the ancient past, to explore human thought and lost civilizations. And one in the dystopian sci-fi future, to explore the universe.
Though those interests never panned out, in my teens, I started to become more aware of advertising and soon an interest in businesses and the economy came along. I was daydreaming as if I were to create new products and organize events in the name of the companies I liked the most. The child doing this grew up wanting to control whatever he could and a later architecture taste was developing. By this time, pursuing a career in architecture seemed reasonable to me. But very soon I realized I wasn’t any good for that. Yes, I loved creative processes but dealing with actual physics and becoming more of a doer than a thinker wasn’t really what I wanted for me.
I’m better at ideas, coming up with strategies, designing nuanced experiences, gathering insights, playing with numbers, and being a different person every day. As a kid, I either had to choose between following something creative or being focused on applied sciences. Eventually, I went for a mix of both.
A Learner
Though my high school interests were pushing me to pursue a scientific technical career, I knew I’d become pretty bored if I had to do one single thing for the rest of my life. The thought of having to commit to one thing so early on in my life was pretty scary. Because of that and because I knew other people could benefit from the way I come up with ideas, curate visions, and provide clarity to many others, I decided to opt for Business Management. This way, I could understand how businesses work in pretty much every single area, and then be able to push down into any field of knowledge if I wanted.
On top of this thought-process and because of my deep interest in human behavior as a response to advertisement and product design, Later on, chose to study Marketing & Communication - this was fueled by my inner will to understand human nature and behavior. This set of studies shaped my view on how people experience a company - be it the brand, the product, or the service.
Having always been fascinated with the technology world from a very early age, I knew tech startups would be my first step in building my professional career. And so I jumped into the unknown for something totally different.
A Taster
With no particular passion aside from arts and technology, on a 2012 trip to Stockholm, I drank my first craft beer in a small pub. This small event had major effects on my life as I was drawn into the world of craft beer, reading more about it and trying to understand the science behind the brewing process.
I eventually brewed beer with my roommates while in college - fun times indeed, and in 2013 I created Cerveja Artesanal Portuguesa, an editorial project to showcase the portuguese community around craft beer. This is still the biggest project of its kind in Portugal even though I’m not pouring (pun intended) enough attention to it.
The fact is that craft beer not only brought me friends and a hobby of beer tasting but it also allowed me to learn how to taste, deeply and thoughtfully. Once I realized this superpower was unlocked, I fell in love with the food world - not only the restaurants and chefs but also the producers, the recipes, the biodiversity of all ingredients, and everyone around it. This eventually grew even more to support my passion for specialty coffee and wine. Today I’m proud to be a member of a small panel that votes on the best restaurants in Portugal alongside some of Portugal’s best food critics and most talented chefs. I believe this is what it feels like to be a certified gourmand.
A Tinkerer
Because of all my different endeavors and passions that I have developed, I identify myself as a generalist. I like diving into different fields of knowledge until I understand the basics of it and then move on to the next topic. I do it for professional and personal reasons and because my ever-changing hobbies require me to.
I like to do things myself - sometimes you can only value what surrounds you when you understand how much effort is invested in it - like a perfect croissant. I am as much of a customer as I am a creator so it’s in my nature to always push myself to provide the best contributions to the experiences I want to improve.
Today I’m working on web3 with xMoney Crypto. It’s not space exploration but I feel the little astronaut in me never left because I feel I’m at the edge of the next frontier.
