The Spine
A single pattern, repeated at four scales — turning bespoke, client-funded work into reusable platform capability.
2007–2013: Agency MD, FormFunction Digital — 62 clients, £3.2M P&L, 30-contractor org across 10 disciplines. National award winner.
2021–2022: Founder & CEO, Camvas (Founders Factory + Guardian Media Group) — £70k spend over 8 months, 8-person distributed team, 5k+ signups.
2022–2023: Director, Interact Chat Products & AI, Clickatell — Commissioned NLP architecture behind Absa Chat Banking on a no-CapEx usage-based structure.
2024–Now: Independent builder — 9 shipped agentic systems, including pgvector entity resolution after ruling out Neo4j/GraphRAG.
Evidence with Limits
142M+
Automated FAQ interactions via Absa Chat Banking“I commissioned and negotiated the NLP supplier architecture and set the usage-based commercial structure. I did not build the model, and I had left before this was measured.”
224%
YoY growth on Clickatell’s AI-enabled Chat Commerce platform“I piloted the AI capability the growth is attributed to. I did not deliver the growth and I wasn't there when it was measured. Downstream evidence, not a claim.”
Feb 2022
Camvas deck roadmapping intelligent summarisation, semantic search and automated transcription before the LLM ecosystem commoditised all three.“Proves foresight and thesis selection, not implementation. The deck is dated — judge the dates.”
3×
Bookmarks Awards for Media24 titles (Sarie.com, YourParenting.co.za)“Agency work, delivered by a team Joe led and hired. What’s his is that the studio produced them three times.”
£70,066
Camvas spend through 8 months“Most pre-seed founders burn £200–500k by month 8; this was structured, invoiced and allocated across two entities under Founders Factory governance.”
Award
Excellence in Innovation – Banking Product, Global Banking & Finance Awards 2022“Publicly verifiable third-party validation — which is exactly why it leads; it removes the need to defend an internal metric.”
Community
Founded ProductTank Cape Town (first in Africa, Aug 2014) — 1,966 members, 4.7★ from 91 ratings, 22 events. Still running, without him.
Founded Remote Product (Apr 2020 → Sep 2021) — 17 events, free, remote, built solo from lockdown, scheduled across four timezones.
Testimonial
“FormFunction's quick and professional service, the can-do mentality, and the collaborative nature of our relationship have been the key to the success of sarie.com, the second largest women's website in SA.”
— Maryke Cumpsty, Digital Editor, Sarie.com, Media24
Engagement
Not a Fit?
You want someone hands-on with deep technical depth.
Do this: Look for a Principal Product Manager with strong engineering background.
Do this: Look for a Principal Product Manager with strong engineering background.
You’re early-stage and need day-to-day tactical support.
Do this: Engage a junior-to-mid level contractor or product coach.
Do this: Engage a junior-to-mid level contractor or product coach.
You don’t value systems thinking or cross-functional leadership.
Do this: Reconsider your hiring priorities — product leadership requires both.
Do this: Reconsider your hiring priorities — product leadership requires both.
About
[No photo of Joe]
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Joe da Silva is a product leader based in Cape Town. He builds products, teams, platforms and communities. He works with organisations seeking strategic direction in product, especially at scale or in uncertainty.