Hi, I'm Rui. I build web and mobile products from Porto 👋

I have a Master's in Psychology from the University of Porto. In 2018, while working out whether I actually wanted to practise, I found out you could learn to build for the web without a Computer Science degree. I started that September, and by April 2019 I had my first job at Antisocial, a marketing agency, building WordPress sites and stores for brands like KitchenAid and SodaStream.

In February 2020 I joined Coletiv (later merged into Significa), building MVPs, dashboards, and e-commerce for clients. Then Assembly, where I worked on a merch customisation platform for brands like Sony and Universal Music. Since January 2025 I've been at Primetag, working across the frontend and Python services of an influencer-marketing platform used by brands like IKEA and Mango.

Somewhere along the way the job stopped being only the frontend. I like owning the whole thing: the idea, the design, the build, getting it into the App Store or onto the web, pricing it, and figuring out why nobody's using it yet.

That's what happens under ItzaMi. I've shipped seven iOS apps on my own, plus web tools and a handful of small websites. Some are meant to make money, like X-tra, ScreenEdit, and Buggy. Some are free because they're useful, some exist because I wanted to see them, and some failed. The projects page has all of them, including the ones that didn't work.

I have a wife and a young daughter, and a lot of what I build starts with something one of us needed. Outside of that I read a lot (it's all here), play games, and fall into internet rabbit holes.

The reason I started still holds: I wanted to leave a mark on the internet, even if it's on an obscure website nobody visits.

You can find me on X, GitHub, and LinkedIn, or write to hello@itzami.com.