“Meeting users where they are matters just as much when your user is an internal product manager trying to get their job done as when they are a game master running a campaign,” he said. “Pressure-testing every decision against desirability, feasibility, and viability keeps both a fintech platform and a solo startup honest.”  

Santiago’s day job sees him and his team supporting the infrastructure that helps Capital One’s AI/ML product organization become more data-driven and customer-centric. One of his product manager colleagues is a former classmate and fellow mpd² graduate—his brother Nicolas (mpd² '22).  

“It’s nice having someone there who understands the context when you want to talk through a problem,” Santiago said. “We're on different teams, but I hope we get to work together again someday. We make a great team.”  

Brotherly love aside, it’s when the lights go off at his day job that a monstrous challenge emerges.  

A long-time enthusiast of role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Santiago created chaggerheart.com as a tool to help those who lead and participate in role-playing adventures. The long-term nature of these campaigns, which can span months or even years, makes remembering important details a challenge.  

“Game masters spend hours after each session trying to write down what happened, who did what, which non-player characters the party met, and so on,” he said. “We can hold a lot in our heads in the moment, but the longer the story gets, the more we lose.”  

Chaggerheart.com aims to solve that for role-playing gamers by providing a structure to remember gameplay details.  

“I realized there was an unmet need in this community for tools that could help preserve the long-term memory of these cherished stories,” Santiago said. “I decided to build something as a challenge for myself.”  

That effort, as well as his work at Capital One, is fueled by his time in the mpd² program. He joined the program while a product development engineer at Stryker, a global medical technology company.  

He was attracted to the program as an avenue for career growth.  

“I kept running into hard requirements nobody could explain and specs written years before I touched a project,” he said. “The mpd² program was a chance to be at the front of what gets built.”  

Santiago learned important lessons in mpd² that shape his day-to-day life at Capital One and with chaggerheart.com. With every task, he dives deeply into whether his proposed solution is something people actually want and if it can help sustain a business.  

One principle rules them all.  

“I have a ruthless minimum viable product focus,” he said. “The instinct is always to build more. The mpd² program trained me to strip it down to the smallest thing that could actually test the idea, ship it, and learn. You can always add, but you can't get time back.”  

Santiago said he is happy with his career direction, both with chaggerheart.com and at Capital One, where he's worked since May 2025. 

As for his side business, he's thrilled that it can help adventurers remember important information for their games. If it provides him with some additional financial support, he'll be even more excited. 

“The primary objective is building something real, learning by doing, and proving to myself that I can take a product from zero to market,” he said. “The cherry on top would be if it becomes a second income stream someday.”