An existing product

Much of my work has been on software someone else started. It usually arrives in one of these shapes:

• An agency handoff, and the agency is gone
• A build that stalled when the developer moved on
• Fine at ten customers, creaking at a thousand
• A codebase nobody understands anymore

Picking one up starts with reading it, not rewriting it.

1. Read it

   I get it building, ship a release under your account, and find out what's actually true: where the risk sits, what's taped together, and what just looks scary.

2. Steady it

   Stop the bleeding first, the crashes and the release process, so shipping stops being an event.

3. Move it forward

   New features, shipping again. Hipmunk came to me years into its life; Sonato Pass went into a codebase I hadn't written.

What you get back

A written read on the state of things

The fixes, ranked by what they'd cost and what they'd buy you. Most of the time a rewrite is the wrong answer. I'll tell you which one you're looking at after I've read the code, with the reasoning behind the call.

What picking it up can include

• A written read on the codebase
• Risks ranked by cost and payoff
• A working build and release process
• Crash and performance triage
• App Store review unblocked
• Dependency and OS updates
• Tests around the fragile parts
• New features, shipping again
• Documentation as I go
• Accounts moved into your name

Selected work

Sonato Pass

Tap your phone to get into your club: an Apple Wallet membership pass with NFC.

Apple Wallet pass

Hipmunk

The travel app with the visual flight search. Led the iOS team; featured by Apple in 2019.

iOS app

Twitch

Built the Go indexing service that feeds live streams into the search millions use.

Search indexer

Tuenti

Spanish social network. Built the messaging and SMS framework, a key feature in the Telefónica acquisition.

SMS platform

Bonjournal

Travel journaling app, featured by Apple. Consulted on the iOS app.

LOOKBOOK

Fashion community. Consulted on web, the iPhone app, and SEO.

Magic

On-demand personal assistant service. Built features across the React Native app and the backend.

React Native app and API

How it goes

It starts with the same first call as anything else, then the code. I need access to the repository, the App Store or hosting accounts, and an hour with whoever knows the most about it, even if that person is a customer rather than an engineer. I’ve built inside large established codebases where the rules were someone else’s, including Twitch’s, so your repo, your conventions, and your review process are the normal case for me.

The full walkthrough, from first call to launch, is on the services page.

Is this you?

Good fit

You own a product that's live and earning, and the person who built it is gone or leaving. Nobody currently ships it with confidence. You want that fixed before you think about what's next.

Less good fit

What you have is a prototype with a few weeks of work in it. Starting clean will be faster and cheaper, and I'd rather build you the first real version as an iOS app or a web app than restore a scaffold.

Also: iOS apps · Web apps · Fractional work · All services

Let's build it

I'm taking on new projects. Tell me what you're working on and I'll tell you how I'd build it.

Get in touch

I read every message myself.