Why We Built Self

I am Javier, a software engineer and CEO of Self. I went through something many professionals know well: uncertainty at work and the real possibility of losing my job. Suddenly, my CV was no longer something I could postpone. I had to rebuild it from scratch.

While updating it, I kept thinking like an engineer: what if I stopped treating my profile like a static PDF and started treating it like a product? I wanted a clean, professional page I could share with one link, on any device, without friction for recruiters or hiring managers.

So I built one for myself. The difference was immediate. Instead of sending attachments back and forth, I could share a single page that presented my experience, projects, and story in a way that felt current, polished, and genuinely mine.

Then I asked a bigger question: why should this be hard for everyone else? I looked for tools that solved the problem well. Most of them still felt stuck in the past, like old document templates pushed onto the web. They were dull, overly rigid, or too generic to reflect a real professional identity.

That gap is why we built Self. We are creating a platform where anyone can turn a resume or portfolio into a polished, beautiful webpage quickly, without design or coding overhead, while still keeping their own voice.

Self is about helping people present themselves online with clarity and confidence. Not just as a list of roles, but as a credible, modern professional identity that opens doors faster. That is the product we wanted, and that is the product we are building.