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Long-running product

@unicorn

Founder & Product Engineer·Apr 2022 — Present

A long-running social and self-expression product, in continuous iteration since 2022 — product direction, authentication, profiles, posts and media, built and rebuilt as the platform matured.

The problem

Building a consumer social product that survives multiple technology and design iterations without losing continuity of product direction or user data.

What I owned

  • Product direction and UX across multiple platform iterations
  • Authentication, user profiles, posts and media upload flows
  • Responsive application architecture across web and native-web surfaces
  • Ongoing iteration and modernization of the technology stack

Technical challenges

  • Maintaining product continuity through several rounds of architecture and stack changes
  • Building responsive interfaces that work consistently across web and React Native Web surfaces
  • Iterating on a live consumer product without a dedicated backend team

Engineering decisions

  • Firebase as a managed backend to keep infrastructure overhead low for a founder-run product
  • React Native Web to share application logic between web and native-leaning surfaces
  • Progressive modernization of the stack (Next.js, styled-components) rather than a disruptive rewrite

Technology

Next.jsReactFirebaseReact Native Webstyled-components