Manuel Zamora,
founder of Downshift
AI-native engineer. Serial founder. Operator behind 7+ production ventures and $100M+ in funded portfolio capital. Now building startups in public with founders who deserve a real engineer.
Why Downshift
Most non-technical founders get sold the wrong help. Offshore teams that ship demos. Agencies that bill by the hour. Vibe-coded MVPs that crash the moment a real user logs in. The work looks like progress until it has to scale.
Downshift exists because that gap is fixable. Modern AI tooling means a senior engineer can ship production-grade systems in 3 to 6 weeks, not 3 to 6 months. Founders deserve the upgrade. The motion is "technical co-founder," not "vendor."
The Public Build initiative goes one step further. Selective. Free of cash cost. Built in the open with founders who can show up. Same architecture, same standards, same team. Same outputs you would pay for, given to a small number of operators per quarter who match the brief.
Real engineering, real output, public from day one.
Track Record
Production ventures Manuel has shipped or co-built in the last 24 months.
FairStack
AI generation platform
Image, voice, video, music generation behind a single API. Production. Powering downstream Fair products.
RepairSnap
Auto damage estimates
AI vehicle damage and repair cost estimation. Production. Backed and shipping into the auto industry.
JamWise
AI music education
Practice and theory for guitarists. Production at jamwise.com.
Rivalize
Competitive intelligence
Continuous competitor tracking with deep reports and historical intel. Production at rivalize.ai.
TodayIn
Local discovery
City and event discovery. Production at todayin.app.
Fair (10+ products)
Productivity suite
Mail, CRM, desk, form, cal, sign, deck, flow, links, post, crawl. Built on a shared API. Shipping.
FleetSnap
Fleet operations SaaS
Vehicle inspection and repair workflow. Production at fleetsnap.ai.
TIH (TodayInHistory)
Daily history app
Mobile + web history app. Production at todayinhistory.app.
CDMOHub
Pharma operations
Contract development and manufacturing platform. Beta in production at beta.cdmohub.ai.
How I Work
AI-native engineering means specific tools, specific routines, specific outputs.
Daily Claude Code
Claude Code is the primary engineering surface. Architecture, builds, refactors, code review, doc generation. Multiple agents per project, each with a defined role and persistent memory.
FairStack-powered media
Image, voice, video, and music generation runs through FairStack. The same API powering production runs the marketing pipeline.
Cursor + GPT-5 + Codex
Cursor handles inline pair programming. GPT-5 and Codex run adversarial review on every PRD before close. No close passes without a review pass.
Public-by-default
Code, decisions, post-mortems, demos. Public commits, public WIs, public outputs. Founders see the work as it happens, not after.
Fixed scope, weekly demos
Engagements ship in 3 to 6 weeks. Scope locked at kickoff. Weekly demo cadence with the founder. No 'we will get to it next sprint' theater.
Production from day one
Auth, billing, observability, deploy, rollback. The first commit lands on real infrastructure. Demos run on the same stack production runs on.
Want to build with me?
Two ways in. Apply to the Public Build initiative for a free-of-cash-cost build. Or partner on the paid track for a fixed-scope MVP in 3 to 6 weeks.