technical co-founder (Angular, Ionic, GraphQL, NodeJS) - read in full before applying.

NOTE: This offer is not for you ... unless you're sure it is ;)
Please read through this co-founder offer to the end before applying. Let know why this particular project is interesting to you and what is your story.

Idea:
Build a SaaS platform to create, host and develop mobile marketplaces (aka sharing economy / next Uber/Airbnb for X).

Problem:

Validation of marketplace/sharing economy idea without tech co-founder by quickly build and publish generic reasonable quality MVP

Continue to develop an app using customizable building bricks and connected to a marketpace-as-a-service provider (the platform).

Stage:
Advanced side-project. First mobile app (first use case for the platform) just reached AppStore / Google Play. Although no funding, no revenue yet.

Looking for:

Tech co-founder being:
- a passionate
- open minded
- independent
- reasonably experienced
- with Angular skills
- track of record

Not looking for:
- any outsourcing form. This is for serious long term commitment


About the project:

I’ve started this as a side project about a 2 years ago (quite a long time :) spending roughly 10+ hours a week.

I’ve started by creating from scratch first mobile app for real use case / first customer - to connect expats with local people to help with tasks while being abroad (longer stays).

The first mobile app just reached AppStore and Google Play (yay - I am really proud of it!).

The current solution is already modularized and generic enough so next apps reusing existing features can be delivered in 2-3 weeks.

There is a company already formed (mainly to shape the relationships with the first mobile app owners) and we are currently two founder - me as an idea provider and software developer and my partner dealing with operations or other non-tech stuff.

In the future the platform should provide not only mobile but also web app - most probably starting with a PWA but also back office will be needed.

In the future connect third party developers and provide even more modules, plugins, integrations (later stage).

We recently graduated the Start Up School - we tried to approach it proactively and we learned quite a lot.

We found one competitor company so far - they seem to do pretty well which is great. Main difference is that they are targeting web platform and do not offer further customization/development beyond existing modules.

Current goals/challenges

Find a 1-2 tech people to join as a co-founders/early employees.

Develop second mobile app (there are currently some 2-3 ideas to choose from).

Finding a balance between working with particular customer on next mobile app and moving toward early MVP of a platform.

Introduce / switch to a build-measure-learn mode.

Clarify/Precise business model - SaaS subscription per user volume / features used - investigate more on price levels considering complete mobile app from the git-go.

With two mobile apps published and gaining traction we plan to start talking to investors and find a way to switch to full time.

Tech stack and project management:

I try to not be biased and have in mind the business goals in the first place.

Still having in mind the above I am pretty happy with where I got so far with

reusable modern architecture,

CICD pipeline, with automated release builds in the cloud (PoC),

mobile apps integration testing with Appium,

many other including i18n, analytics, user metrics, feature flags, logs collection, etc,

upon request I’ll send a link with more details about the tech stack and infrastructure.

Currently key technologies are Ionic 4 / Angular / GraphQL / NodeJS / Parse Server.

I try to manage the project in a kanban way constantly adding things and maintaining the backlog. Fine grained user stories helped me a lot to get that far.

About me
I am a passionate developer with over 15 years experience, fascinated in startup ecosystem (having some entrepreneur experience), following how social networks and sharing economy works. I am also an expat, moved 3 years ago from Poland to Mexico with wife, a kid having now another 3yo boy born abroad. I work for a big “sharing-economy”-ish company. I’m continuously learning how to be patient, how to do the right things and do things right. I love good movies, music, food, I’m great fan of Adam Grant and love to share with others.

Are you the one?
Please reach out, I’d love to answer questions, know your story, why and how you would see your participation!

Why me?
I dream to build a great business from early childhood. Having many ideas throughout my life I realized some of them (organizing skiing trips for my friends while being a student, arranging sailing vacations with two boats for 14 people, creating SMS gateway software sold to number of companies in early GSM, pre-start-up era, creating first WAP movie database, JEE games, mobile provisioning platform etc). I was patiently waiting for the right opportunity which I believe showed up some 2 years ago. I was already working as a tech leader in sharing economy business thinking in the back of my head that this kind of business could be served by a dedicated service provider able to handle variety od business cases like Uber, Airbnb, home tasks or walk the dogs. Being also an expat I connected with someone looking for a dev to build mobile app matching expats with locals to solve tasks being abroad. I found it perfect match of my situation, experience, expertise, excitement and more. One of the main challenges so far is to meet family commitment, with a side-project. Having good MVP feature set broken into fine grained user stories helped to make and feel a constant progress from the first comment to a great moments having my first mobile app being published in Google Play and App Store. During that time I was also doing business research, balancing between generalizing and keeping things simple. I’ve researched and involved number of cutting edge technologies that helped me creating reliable and reusable environment and infrastructure (even though it still closer to PoC, it does it job where it’s supposed to). I’ve already convinced trusted person to become my partner responsible for operations. While I have doubts sometimes I threat is as an opportunity to note things down or rethink them yet overall I am getting more and more excited about the idea each day week and month. As technology is the crucial part of this idea I believe this is a right time to connect with another developer complementing view, approach, skills, ready to take on the challenge, learn and contribute to exciting project and help building next big thing.