I’ve been working on the tech and product side of Sole Retriever as co-founder for the last 2 years.

Getting momentum

The 2 initial cofounders were concerned about being able to launch in a timely manner, and I volunteered to help as a technical lead and help manage the project. I worked with them to vet and contract a full-stack developer, manage, and work in parallel. I still was workign full-time as a product designer, but enjoyed spending some evening hours managing and contributing to the site while they built it out. During these early months I focused on keeping our costs down, technology simple, and delivery speed up. The rest of the team was focused on marketing and running the existing business.

0 to 1

• needed a fresh, compelling design that straddled “ecomm” with information
• Website needed to be quick, responsive, and SEO friendly
• GraphQL api to serve multiple contexts, likely a mobile app in the future
• CMS was required for data entry

Mobile launch

After building out our website, I managed the effort to contract a mobile development team.