Marcos Mena-Brena
App design & development

Have an app idea you want to bring to life?

Founder, engineer, and product partner to 150+ startups.

Whether you're starting with a simple concept or already experimenting with tools like Lovable, Bubble, Replit, or n8n, I can help turn your vision into something your customers will love to use.

I help founders and businesses turn ideas into AI-powered products, internal tools, and scalable software, without wasting months or tens of thousands of dollars.

Book your consultation Open for new projects
Client results

Numbers that came from shipped products.

Trusted by teams at

My story

From the wrong hires to an Inc. 5000 company.

A few years ago, I was sitting exactly where many of my clients are today: trying to turn an idea into an app.

Marcos Mena-Brena sitting at a reading-room table in a university library

I was looking for freelancers, tried to build it myself and hired the wrong teams. It was a nightmare, to say the least.

After years of mistakes and learning to code, I finally launched SchooLinks, which grew into an Inc. 5000 company and raised over $90 million.

Since then, I've helped more than 150 founders launch products across SaaS, marketplaces, AI tools, mobile apps, and internal platforms. Some of them have made it to Forbes.

That path is why I work the way I do. I've already paid for the expensive lessons: the wrong tech, the wrong team, the months spent building something nobody asked for.

So when we talk, you get the shortcut: a clear read on what your idea actually needs, before you spend a dollar building it.

What I build

Products that earn their place.

The apps I've built come in four shapes, all of them designed, developed, and shipped end to end.

01

SaaS platforms

Subscription products built to scale from first customer to enterprise rollout.

02

Internal platforms

Operations tools that replace spreadsheets and manual work inside a business.

03

Mobile & web apps

Customer-facing products people actually return to, on every device.

04

Marketplace apps

Two-sided products where supply, demand, and payments all have to work at once.

Technologies

The stack behind the work.

OpenAIClaudeGeminiFlutter Node.jsAngularAWSMongoDBFigma
Watch first

Not sure how to launch? Start here.

One minute on how I work, and how to tell whether we're a fit, before you book anything.

Marcos Mena-Brena, Top 1% on Upwork worldwide
Next step

If you're serious about building your app the right way, let's talk.

Book your consultation today. I'll save you months of frustration by helping you understand the ins and outs of bringing an app or platform to life: how much it costs, how long it takes, what the process looks like, and more.

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