Meet the Founders
From Puerto Rico🇵🇷 to the world🌍.
José Plaud Ortiz
Co-Founder & CEO
José loves building things that last. Before co-founding Festa, he spent years engineering at Datadog, Oracle and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory designing systems that power the tools people rely on every day. He’s fluent in the language of infrastructure—Python, Go, and DevOps—and passionate about building systems that empower teams to focus on what matters most: creating. At Festa, he channels that same energy into building a platform that runs seamlessly behind the scenes, so celebrations can shine at the front.
Experience
- Software Engineer @ Datadog
Beyond Work
Julian Navarro Rodriguez
Co-Founder
Julian believes technology should make life simpler, not busier. A software engineer and co-founder of Festa, he brings a background in systems design, software development and leadership shaped by his studies at Caltech, where he earned a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Data Science. At Oracle, Julian helped develop high-impact projects in virtual machine infrastructure—work that deepened his passion for scalable, reliable systems. At Festa, Julian combines technical precision with a human touch, helping shape a product that feels effortless to use and powerful underneath the hood.
Experience
- Software Engineer @ Oracle