Inside Studio Responsivo: how we ship products

In December 2025, Codrops published a profile of basement.studio written by the studio itself. The piece, From Basement to Breakthroughs, covers who they are, how they work and what they've done. I liked the format: a studio talking about itself plainly, with facts.

basement is based in Mar del Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was founded around 2018 by Facundo Santana and José Rago, who merged their independent studios. Today it has about 40 people and works for companies like Vercel, Cursor, Harvey and ElevenLabs. If an Argentine studio can tell its own story this way, a Fortaleza studio can too. This is my “inside look.”

What basement's profile teaches

Three things in their piece caught my attention.

The first is clarity about what they do: four areas, each explained in one sentence. The second is candor about culture: they describe weekly labs for testing new tools, where many of their best projects came from. The third is a line about clients: “Most of our clients come to us for one project… and stay for three.”

We're not basement. They do brand and digital experiences for some of the biggest tech companies in the world. We launch digital products for founders. But the structure of the profile works well.

Who we are

Studio Responsivo is a digital product studio from Fortaleza. I founded it in 2014. Since then, we've done more than 600 projects for clients in 13 countries.

I've been a Product Designer for more than 10 years. I hold the Adobe Certified Expert, Adobe Instructor Design & Layout and Google UX Designer certifications. I've spoken about AI in business at Siará Tech Summit. At the Studio, design and development live on the same team: I handle product and design, and our in-house dev team handles the code.

What we do

In one sentence: we launch digital products, with a fixed price and a date.

In practice, the work splits into five areas:

• Systems and SaaS. From discovery to a live product with real users.
• Apps. Apps for businesses that need to be on their customers' phones.
• Websites. Websites and product pages built on a design system.
• Rescue. Projects that stalled with another vendor.
• Evolution. Ongoing improvements to products already live.

How we work

Our method fits in a few rules:

1. Discovery first. We don't quote before understanding the problem.
2. Fixed price. After discovery, the price is a number.
3. Deadline in the contract. The delivery date is written down, as stated in our delivery policy.
4. One team. Design and code stay with our team, so the people who design and build are actually on your project.
5. AI in the build, people in charge. We use Claude Code and Figma every day, for design and build. AI speeds things up; the accountability stays with us.
6. An agent that stays after launch. Every system we deliver ships with an AI agent that runs daily, flags issues, suggests improvements and checks that the data makes sense.

Day to day, this becomes short cycles: each cycle, the client sees a clickable version and decides the next step with us.

Two projects that show the method

LCX. A travel company operating in more than 10 countries in South America. Each country had its own system. We merged everything into a single system, live in 29 days.

AI Vou Eu. An AI travel SaaS. With the Studio, the product went live in 4 weeks. The project included a landing page, a system and an app, with 4 AI agents.

Why Fortaleza

basement shows that a studio outside the big hubs can serve companies all over the world. Distance from New York or São Paulo doesn't matter when the work is done well and agreed clearly.

Fortaleza has been our base since 2014. For our clients in 13 countries, what matters is what they see: the product live, on the contract date.

What this means for you

If you're choosing a studio, run this piece's exercise with them. Ask them to introduce themselves in facts:

• How long they've been around and how many projects they've done.
• Who will work on your project, with names and experience.
• How price and timeline are set.
• How many projects they handle at the same time.
• Two case studies with timelines and results.

A studio that answers this in one page has a process. One that answers with adjectives is still selling.

How we do it at the Studio

Everything above applies to every new project. And, as with basement, the best measure is whether the client comes back for the next one.

If you have a SaaS to launch and want to see the Studio from the inside, our custom system and SaaS development service starts with discovery.