From a small city in Brazil to building AI products

Hey everyone, my name is Jonh Alex.

I’m from Pernambuco, Brazil, from a humble family. My parents did not finish elementary school, and my life was never really easy. A hard part of my story is that my father had problems with alcohol, and my family went through very difficult moments because of that. These things still hurt me a lot when I remember them.

Even with all of this, my mother always carried us with strength. She always pushed us to study. I grew up learning to value my family, my faith, and the little things. I still remember when I got my first toy, a tricycle, and how happy I was. These memories stay with me because my childhood had both pain and love at the same time.

Later, when I was still young, my mother got sick and I had to help take care of her. At that age I did not understand much about what was happening, I just knew I needed to help. I gave medicine, asked for help, called an ambulance, and did what I could. My older brothers were far away working, and I was there with her. That period marked me a lot.

When I was around 15, I got my first phone. It was a simple phone, but I got fascinated. I was very curious, really curious. I downloaded everything, tested apps, explored files, learned little hacks in games, and one day I even managed to update the Android version through articles. At that time I did not know this was my first contact with programming, but today I can clearly see that this curiosity changed my life.

After finishing school, I knew I needed to leave my hometown. I went to Vitória, and later São Paulo. I worked, I tried to survive, and at the same time I was trying to build something for myself. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I created online stores, tried some ideas, tested products, learned a little about branding, pages, ads, creatives, and Shopify. I even sold a watch outside Brazil once. It did not become a real business, but it taught me a lot.

Programming came into my life because of that. I wanted to build better pages for my own business ideas, and when I started seeing code, sites, and products, I got pulled in completely. I could spend hours on it and not even feel time passing. I felt happy doing it.

In São Paulo, there was a phase where I was working as a delivery driver and studying programming in every free moment I had. I used to go by bike from Vila Mariana to Avenida Paulista, work for hours, come back tired, and still study. I was applying to everything I saw: jobs, courses, opportunities, anything that could help me get into tech.

Then I found Programadores do Amanhã. That changed a lot for me. It gave me direction when I was still lost. It gave me structure, community, and people who believed in me. I remember saying that one of the things I most wanted to learn in programming was soft skills, and that mattered. I’m very grateful for that opportunity.

During that time, I studied in the morning, had classes in the afternoon, and worked iFood at night. That was my routine. It was intense, but it built a lot in me.

In this journey, I met Daniel Mendes, who was my teacher and today is my co-founder. I learned a lot with him. We worked on projects together, and later I also got involved with Criptonic. Then came a moment that really changed my mind: Lucas introduced me to AI.

At first I doubted it. I really thought maybe it was not that good.

But when I tested it, I was shocked.

I saw in practice how much faster it could make product building. In one month, we built multiple prototypes and real products with payments, multi-language, deployment, and everything. That was the moment I got crazy about AI in the best way. I started testing tools, learning fast, thinking of product ideas, and seeing that maybe it was possible to build much bigger things than I had imagined before.

Later, I also joined AfterQuery, a YC-backed company, where I worked training LLM models with RLHF. That gave me another level of learning, now not only building products with AI, but also understanding more deeply how these systems are trained and improved.

Today I’m building products like Multifyco and DeepFrame, and I’m also supported by Shiva, where I keep learning a lot about product, growth, business, design, speed, execution, and how to build things that really solve pain points.

What I can say is that my story was never straight. I came from a hard background, I worked a lot, I tried many things that did not work, I had moments of pain at home, I took care of my mother, I worked deliveries, I studied tired, I doubted myself many times, but I kept going.

I stayed curious.

And that curiosity changed everything for me.

I’m here because I want to build real things, solve real problems, and connect with people who are also creating, learning, and trying to make something meaningful.

Happy to be here.