Netta Selene's Desktop

I've always liked making things.

Some became companies. Some became apps. Some became websites. Some were experiments that quietly taught me something. They all represent a different season of my life, and I'm grateful for every one of them.

Current

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Ongoing

Domingo is the skincare company I founded in 2023.

What started as a personal ritual during one of the hardest seasons of my life eventually became a business focused on helping people feel safe and beautiful in their skin. Today I formulate every product, run the business, write every email, build the website, design the packaging, photograph the products, and still spend my weekends making body butter by hand.

Building Domingo taught me what it really means to build a company, not just a product.

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Matta is the project I'm currently most excited about.

It's an AI companion designed to help people make sense of everything competing for their attention. Rather than becoming another task manager, I'm exploring what it looks like to build software that understands context, notices patterns, and helps people feel a little less overwhelmed.

It's also been my excuse to dive back into building software, which I've discovered I still absolutely love.

This website exists because Squarespace raised their prices. I took it personally.

Turns out the best website builder for this website was just HTML, CSS, JS, and a Git repo.

Rather than moving to another platform, I built the kind of website I wish more people still made. One that feels personal. One that invites exploration. The desktop is inspired by Windows 98 and the early web, not out of nostalgia, but because those corners of the internet felt handcrafted in a way that many modern websites don't. It's all built from scratch and designed to work just as well on desktop as it does on mobile.

It's probably the most fun I've had building a personal website and I've hid little easter eggs for you.

Hindsight was a project I created after realizing I was answering the same career questions over and over from designers just starting out.

Instead of keeping those conversations in email, I turned them into a small website filled with the advice I wish someone had given me earlier in my career.

The site is still online, but time hasn't been especially kind to it. I've intentionally left it untouched as a snapshot of where I was at the time rather than rebuilding it.

Three was an iPhone weather app I designed many years ago.

It eventually found its way onto the App Store, received recognition twice from Apple, and taught me an enormous amount about designing and shipping software.

The app has long since been retired, but it'll always have a special place in my heart.

Not everything I build needs to become a product.

Lately I've been spending time following whatever sparks my curiosity next.

Learning Spanish
Working toward becoming a Master Naturalist
Reading more than I probably should
Getting outside whenever I can
Improving my running form

How I approach the work

I’ve spent more than twenty years designing products, building teams, and leading organizations. Along the way, I’ve found myself returning to the same ideas again and again.

These aren’t hard rules or a fixed framework. They’re principles that shape how I understand problems, make decisions, lead teams, and evaluate good work.

Curiosity is usually where I begin. I follow questions across disciplines, look for patterns, and bring what I learn back into the work.

If you’re considering working with me, this is probably the quickest way to understand how I think.

Design begins with understanding.

I don’t believe design starts with pixels. It starts with understanding the people, systems, constraints, and decisions surrounding a problem.

The strongest teams spend enough time defining the problem before becoming attached to a solution. Once the problem is clear, the shape of the work usually becomes clearer too.

I care deeply about craft because details communicate care. Consistency builds trust. Simplicity reduces effort. A polished interface cannot rescue a poorly understood problem, but thoughtful execution can make a good idea feel inevitable.

Great product work balances user needs, business goals, and technical realities. The interesting work is finding the path that moves them forward together.

Create clarity, not dependency.

My goal is to build teams that don’t need me for every decision.

I think leadership is about creating the conditions for good work: clear priorities, honest feedback, meaningful ownership, psychological safety, and a shared understanding of quality.

The best managers aren’t the people with every answer. They help others ask better questions, develop stronger judgment, and make confident decisions.

I care about coaching people as individuals while building systems that help the whole team succeed. Success isn’t measured by how many decisions I make. It’s measured by how well the team can move without waiting for me.

Execution gets faster. Judgment gets more valuable.

AI has dramatically expanded my ability to explore ideas, prototype, write, design, and build software. I use it every day, and my perspective comes from working with it directly rather than observing it from a distance.

It can accelerate research, iteration, and execution. It can help a small team attempt work that once required far more time and resources.

What it doesn’t replace is curiosity, context, taste, or judgment.

As making becomes faster and cheaper, knowing what is worth making becomes more important. The ability to ask better questions, recognize meaningful ideas, evaluate the output, and know when something is truly finished becomes the differentiator.

Taste is discernment.

I think taste is developed through curiosity, attention, and repetition.

It comes from reading outside your field, studying why something works, building things, taking them apart, and noticing the difference between something that is merely polished and something that feels right.

Music, writing, nature, architecture, formulation, and product design all sharpen different parts of my judgment. The patterns often transfer in ways I don’t expect.

Good taste isn’t a single visual style. It’s knowing what matters, what can be removed, where care is needed, and when the work has reached the point where adding more would make it worse.