Manuel Tejeda

It came down to how much ownership I wanted versus how much I had. I'd been doing solid work, but a lot of the why behind decisions happened without me. What drew me to Dema was that here I'm actually in that conversation, not just building what I'm told but weighing in on what's worth building at all. That pull toward more ownership is what made the decision for me.

Less process, more trust. I don't need three approvals to make a call, and stuff ships fast because there's not much bureaucracy in the way. The bigger shift for me is being close to the product and business side of things instead of just getting handed a spec.

You see what you built land in front of actual users almost immediately, with no long chain of approvals between writing the code and someone using it. And you end up doing a lot more than your job title suggests.

Nano apps. We shipped it in about two to three weeks: an AI tool that lets users generate their own apps inside Dema, connected to their real data and integrations. We ran an AI day where customers tried it for the first time, and watching what they actually built with it, and how fast they figured out ways to push past what we'd designed it for, was the best kind of validation. That's the whole reason I like building at this stage: you make something, and two weeks later real people are already bending it in directions you didn't plan for.

There's a roadmap, but it's more of a direction than a script. I'm expected to push back if I think there's a better way to do something, and that's taken seriously. It feels less like being handed a list of tasks and more like being trusted to help figure out the right list in the first place.

If you want your name actually attached to outcomes and not just commits, you'll like it here. If you need a lot of structure and clear guardrails at every step, it might feel like too much ambiguity. For me that ambiguity is the interesting part.

I'm a bit obsessive about pour-over coffee, still tweaking grind size, ratios, and water temperature trying to get it right. Outside of that I love to run, travel, try new restaurants, and cook a lot at home.