Mario Conrad Delgado Elysian
Design and Product Leader in Menlo Park, California
About
ZERO-TO-ONE PRODUCT DESIGN, LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGY AT THE FOREFRONT OF TECH.
I’m a design partner and leader for early-stage companies just starting out, and established companies looking to make a leap forward. If it involves software, hardware, brand, humans, and the space in-between — I can help you bring it to life, from scratch.
As a visionary generalist and dynamic leader, I champion the concept of “Das Gesamtkunstwerk,” or the complete work of art, when I partner with companies. My holistic approach seamlessly integrates a diverse array of technical and physical skills across multiple disciplines, including native prototyping and programming, motion design, sound design, 3D modeling, animation, video production, and analog form-finding exercises. My leadership ensures that these skills are strategically deployed from the earliest stages, where thoughtful design can mitigate risks and maximize value.
Work Experience
Ghost's mission is to make self-driving for everyone. We build autonomous driving software for automakers, based on a breakthrough in artificial intelligence that finally makes highway autonomy safe and scalable for the consumer car market.
As a founding member of the company:
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I helped build Ghost from Zero to One, involved with the company since pre-funding through all rounds of funding.
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Inventor with 8 U.S. patents in the fields of Machine Learning, AI, Human-Machine Interfaces and Automotive Safety.
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Personally led research and development of the Ghost Self-Driving HMI and Software Interfaces. These projects worked in collaboration with Engineering and utilized state-of-the-art ML, optics and advanced sensors. My work spanned the visual, haptic and audio spectrum, where my team and I were able to use a deep skillset to prototype and develop the core interfaces of the self-driving system. Our work was done in a mix of Unity, C4D, Houdini, Origami, After Effects and HW prototyping via Arduino.
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Led multiple hardware industrial design projects from concept to production. Contributed to the overall product architecture and assisted in component sourcing, testing and validation. Some of the products that were designed were cameras, HMI input devices and display output devices for use by consumers.
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Oversaw the Ghost brand and visual identity, eventually growing an in-house brand team. We explored how an extremely technical product can be introduced and trusted by mass consumer audiences.
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Led Workplace Design for all 4 of Ghost's offices in 2 countries.
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Personally led experimentation of product design with Multimodal LLMs, Computer Vision, Neural Radiance Fields, Gaussian Splatting, Procedural Rendering and Procedural Audio.
Sutter Hill Ventures has financed technology-based start-ups and assisted entrepreneurs in building market-leading companies since 1962.
I had the esteemed pleasure of being able to work alongside the Managing Directors of SHV on incubating new ideas and collaborating with companies in the firm's portfolio from early-stage to publicly-traded companies.
Sigma is next-generation analytics and business intelligence that scales billions of records using spreadsheets, SQL, Python, or AI—without compromising speed and security.
As one of the first employees at Sigma, I worked alongside the founding team to take Sigma from a product idea to a product with a customer.
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Created the initial company brand
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Worked with executives to craft a theory of product, and iterate through multiple implementations to develop the base of the product that you see today.
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Led 3 in-house and contracted product designers to develop the product user experience.
As a designer at a hyper-growth startup, I contributed to the overall product expansion, with a focus on developing Wealthfront's first native mobile apps (iOS and Android)
Education
Decided to chase the Silicon Valley dream before I completed my degree :)