A bit

About Me

Alex Cruz and Brilliant Directories team

One of my last photos with the Brilliant Directories team — that's me on the right with my two kids 🥰

Alex Cruz and Brilliant Directories development team

With the BD dev team (Fer, Joe, Stu & Me) 🤟

My name is Alex Cruz, and I'm a software developer based in Costa Rica 🇨🇷. I have over 10 years of experience as a developer, and I can't talk about my career without mentioning Brilliant Directories (BD).

In 2015, I started my journey as a developer, and it was with BD that I took my first steps. Since then, I've worked with them both directly and indirectly.

That's where I took my first steps, growing both personally and professionally thanks to the incredible team around me. I'll always be grateful to Jeff (el jefe) and the entire team for everything they taught me and for all the patience they had with me (Matt, Joe, Fer & Stu).

In 2019, I decided to start working with Luis Alvarado on the Brilliant Directories marketplace. I wanted a change, and the opportunity came up. I got to see the other side of things: custom development and working directly with clients — which gave me a whole new perspective on their needs and pain points.

Where all the magic happened 💻

After a wonderful period working on the marketplace with Luis, I decided to take a step to the side and start my own journey as a solo developer.

That was in 2023. It's wasn't easy — lots of uncertainty starting from scratch. I was especially insecure about my English level.

That first client meeting? Terrifying. The second and third? Also terrifying 😅. But after a few calls, I realized we understood each other — and that's what really matters.

2023 was a tough year — personally and professionally. Starting from zero in the marketplace was a huge challenge. Even with all my Brilliant Directories dev experience, no one knew me.

Earning trust with new clients took time. I'll always be grateful to those first few clients who gave me a shot, left reviews, and gave me the confidence I needed to make this stage a reality.

Since then, I've been lucky to work with amazing clients, helping them bring their ideas to life — and I've learned something from each one. I truly love working with people from all around the world and making incredible friends along the way.

This also gave me the opportunity to work with other technologies apart from BD, allowing me to practice what I've been learning and apply it in my side projects. I've created tools to automate tasks, integrations with various platforms, built a construction software (still in development), and more.

So, what's next? I'm already working on it: launching my plugin store, an alternative to Elfsight focused on Brilliant Directories — a kind of Elfsight alternative, but tailored for BD directories. The goal is to offer high-quality plugins at a fair price, easy to install, customize, and configure. I don't know if the store will be live when you read this, but you can check it out here or join the waiting list for early access.

That's it for now. Whether we end up working together or not — or if you become a client of my plugin store — I wish you all the very best.

And remember:
Launch fast, validate and iterate on it