Yeah, sure.
Yeah, thanks for finding, glad you found us through the We
Work Remotely.
We had probably 50, 60 applications come in.
We identified like five or six that seemed very promising,
and so that's why we wanted to talk with you
and just kind of get to know you a bit.
We can definitely talk about some of the projects
we're working on.
And yeah, just see if it's a good fit for both of us
and go from there.
All right, cool.
So just to kind of get an intro, I checked out your website,
checked out your resume, so I got
a good sense of some of the stuff you've been doing.
But just give me kind of a high-level overview
of how you got to be doing what you're doing now,
like what you've been working on recently.
Yeah, so I started working as a developer,
started with Python, actually.
So I started doing some data visualization
and some calculations with a physics professor.
So I did a system for him to visualize some 3D vectors,
the interactive plot, and all that.
It was what I started with, but then I
switched to web development with JavaScript two years later
and have been doing that since.
Most of the things I've done for about two to three years
were more full stack-like.
So I did, for example, Django, the backend, or FastAPI,
and doing either HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the front end,
or using SAS, or then started with React.
And now I'm more focused on the front end.
I'm working full time as a React developer.
I've been since in full stack, depending on the project,
really.
But I'm doing some Python development, some React
development most times.
And I've been creating, right in the most recent years,
more enterprise applications.
So that's why I really can't have client projects
in my portfolio.
I just have my personal projects, and that's it.
So I'm creating ERPs, photo sales, using React.
And yeah, mostly that.
That's awesome.
And are you doing full time freelancer, or what do you do?
What's your current?
Are you working somewhere right now full time, or?
I'm actually more of a freelancer,
as I have my own company.
I work as a contractor, usually.
Nice, perfect.
Yeah.
That's great, yeah.
That's how we roll.
And just bandwidth wise, how available are you now?
Are you wrapping things up, or where are you at?
I'm more looking for either part time or full time,
as what I'm doing now.
I'm looking forward more to full time, if it's possible.
If it's not, it's OK, part time.
But.
No, we've got plenty to do.
Yeah.
I don't want to slow you down.
That's good.
And timeline wise, you could start any time soon,
or in the middle of any project.
Yeah, and when signing a contract,
we are doing the contract thing.
Maybe one to two weeks max, I could get started.
Maybe I could get started earlier,
doing part time, if it's possible for you guys.
But if not, I can pretty quick get full time.
Yeah, that's great.
I just wanted to get a sense of that.
And yeah, and just a little bit about us for background,
like we're a small team.
We have two full time developers now, and then
two part time product managers.
So they're helping with managing clients,
making sure the product is actually going.
And that's pretty much like one developer, one product
manager per client, per project, essentially.
So it's like the developer who's working on a particular project
is doing everything, which actually does actually
make it go faster, if you've ever worked in a team.
Because there's less back and forth
of who's working on what, and all that.
It feels like we go a little slower,
but it's a little more thorough, and I
think a more sustainable pace to do that.
And we aren't, at this point, not starting
any brand new projects.
So most of the time there's an existing back-end,
there's an existing front-end,
it's just coming in and building new modules.
So that's nice since it sounds like
you really enjoy the front-end primarily.
Yeah, that's what I'm specialized because
it's actually what I'm better at,
but I also enjoy the back-end,
but again, I'm better at the front-end.
And how far into the front-end
do you like to go, like, is it, you do wireframes,
do you like to mock stuff up?
Like, what's your process like as far as,
you know, there's a set of feature requirements,
how do you look at a blank page
and kind of get started on how to, what to do next?
Well, we usually, as I work more into enterprise projects,
we have the full team.
So there's a designer that creates some mock-ups
on Figma or Adobe XD, and I take a look at those.
We discuss if there is no designer.
I discuss with the person or the client
that what is the actual need.
Then I look at some mock-ups that I can make,
but I usually don't make mock-ups.
I'm gonna say that I'm not really into the web design part
in the sense of drag-and-drop.
So I'm more inclined to always take a look at some examples
if I don't have a designer for the mock-ups
and present some templates or something similar
to what I'm thinking to the client or something like that.
Okay, that's all good answers.
That's all good answers.
Yeah, we use very much like a sort of back of the napkin
or whiteboard mock-ups is about as high fidelity as we go.
A lot of our software is highly, highly functional
and it's not like, we're not trying to win design awards,
but it looks nice.
Like we use Tailwind and Tailwind UI to make it look pretty,
but it's not gonna win any awards.
So you just wanna make most of our stuff is three.
So that's good.
So typically you'll, if you'll have a,
let's say you're building out like a,
let's say like there's like a video streaming tool
and there's like a chat next to it,
kind of what would be your process
as far as like getting some ideas for design
if we didn't have a designer on that?
How would you wanna go about it?
If there is an idea that's really specific like this one,
and if there is some existing applications,
for example, Zoom, I can take a look at what they did
and maybe try it for a copy
or at least have something working
in the sense that the design is either similar
if the user experience is good.
If not, I try to engineer something
based on what is already existing,
but usually that's the process.
Got it. That's awesome.
That's good.
Yeah, we work very much in like an iterative process
where we typically get it functional first
and then we make sure it's not ugly.
That's the goal.
Yeah.
Just not ugly.
I mean, I'm happy for it to look as nice as we can,
but that is, we always use the analogy
of like you're architecting a house
and you've got to put different rooms in place.
You have to put the foundation, the framework,
all that stuff in.
The design is like what color the walls are gonna be
and what furniture we put in.
Like it's the last, if you're doing a 90-day project,
it's the last two or three days you spend decorating.
But a lot of people like start with high fidelity mockups
and they get them looking amazing,
but then it's extremely buggy.
So anyway, all that,
all very much aligned with how we work.
Okay, so on your website,
you just mentioned Web3 development.
So that's obviously a hot topic.
Like let's talk about that for a second.
Yeah, I'm, on the meantime that I'm doing,
on the meantime that I'm doing this,
most of the application that I'm doing,
I've been studying Web3 for a bit.
So I've been looking to generative NSE projects,
creating minting sites.
I don't know how deep you are into the topic, so.
Try me, like tell me like where, yeah.
So minting, looks like.
Yeah, so mostly doing, creating smart contracts using Ethereum or even on the Solenium blockchain.
That's what I've mostly focused on, using Solidity on Ethereum and creating landing
pages.
And then the maintenance side, I've also tried creating an FT game.
And how did that go?
I didn't, I just didn't finish it because I didn't have the time, but it was actually
following, I'm not sure if you know about Buildspace.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think I've heard of it.
Yeah.
Some kind of tutorials that they have, there are, for example, this NFT game.
So I was following the tutorial, but I was mostly playing with the code because I wasn't
first aware that they had NFTs for people that finished in the first week, but then
I was just playing with the code and trying to understand it.
And now I first do the tutorials that they have.
So I get the NFT, then I look at the code and try to improve it.
For example, I recently did this, I don't know if you know about Ben Awad?
I think, no, I'm not sure, not familiar with him.
Yeah.
So he is a YouTuber that he does some projects.
He is, I mean, he has done tutorials on React, a lot of stuff.
So I created an NFT collection of his quote-unquote characters that he has done, for example.
Yeah.
He's been business Ben or developer Dan, but not really in that sense, but he just showed
up in different clothes and I created an NFT collection out of that and create a minting
site.
Have you made any money through it?
No, it's only on DevNet.
I just was playing with it.
Nice.
That's awesome, man.
The design is not the best, but it's actually deployed.
I sent it in the chat.
Oh, I see.
Okay.
Yeah.
So yeah, yeah.
So using Vercel, what are your thoughts on Vercel and Next?
Yeah.
Next.js is what I've mostly been using when I can, if the project's not too old to, we
try to migrate it to Next.js if possible, because if SEO, server-side rendering and
this kind of stuff is something to look for, then Next.js is the way to go for me, at least
for now.
And I haven't had any issues with Vercel per se.
I've seen people doing their deploys on AWS on their own, but I don't really think that's
efficient use of your time when you have Vercel.
Gotcha.
Very cool.
At least.
Yeah.
Just, and what are some, like, with Next.js and kind of moving towards that serverless
development process, what are some of the issues that you run into using that tech stack?
Issues that I had was mostly, I haven't had really issues, was mostly using the tech or
doing the immigration, for example, using their image optimization thing.
So they have the image component that we use.
And sometimes that you have to set a width and height.
So pretty simple stuff.
Not huge things that I had issues with them.
So not really sure what other people are having issues with.
Okay.
Cool.
What's, like, a recent project, you mentioned the Web3 stuff, maybe that's, there's an example
there, but what's, like, a project you've been working on that has challenged you or
that you're really proud of?
If you want to share your screen and show it, or if you have anything that could work, too.
Recently, it was mostly the NFC game.
Okay.
That was quite challenging because I was learning hardhat and how to get into Solidity, doing,
didn't even get to do tests, but that was the next step.
deploying them, uh, the, the contract to open C with the, the mints.
Uh, so the NFTs would show up on that point and see, I guess there it's still
in there probably on the, uh, at this one, the test net, um, I'm trying to
find the collection that actually has the metadata.
Okay.
I guess this one for, I guess, details loves.
Yeah.
This one is I'm going to send him in chat.
This one is one of the NFTs on the, that was looking to do.
So it actually had, uh, attributes that were dynamic because, uh, it, it had
an interactive game that it was sort of like a, uh, Pokemon thing that was,
uh, NFTs had attack damage, create chance, defense, and health points.
And the health points would decline if the NFT would have been attacked and
you were taking turns to, uh, defeat a boss, for example.
So multiple NFTs, multiple people would join to defeat a, uh, really strong boss.
And yeah, that's the idea of the game.
Got it.
Nice.
Um, awesome, man.
That's good.
Um, yeah, all good stuff.
Uh, um, so the reason I asked about all the web three and the, and all everything
blockchain related is, um, so we have three kind of app clients that
we work with on a regular basis.
So, and then we do have our own SAS product.
It's like a video streaming community platform.
And just because there's so many of those types of platforms, we're trying
to build it a little bit differently.
And so we just recently like moved to all of our storage, um, like the video
storage, the image storage, all that to like a, um, blockchain based platform.
Um, and so we, and that actually just went live yesterday.
And so we're just looking at every, at every point, how could we make it more
built, build more of it on the block on blockchain, um, to doing some smart
contracts, even with like, you know, user, um, registration, authentication,
authentication, absolutely.
So that that's cool.
So we're in the very, very beginning stage of it.
In fact, you know, all we've done is really, um, this video hosting.
Uh, and it, we are kind of doing some interesting stuff.
We worked with a company called storage, S T O R J dot IO.
Um, they have their own coin and everything, and they've
been around for quite a while.
I think there's like 450 million in circulation on their coin.
And, um, when we published our video hosting transcoding thing, their tech
team, like reached out to us, like, Hey, can you guys write a blog post?
Can we do a case study?
Like, this is the coolest, like no one's integrating it the way you guys are.
Um, so we feel like we're a little bit on the bleeding edge of the tech there.
So it's, it's been fun.
Um, so some of our developers had the chance to like write some articles for
them, kind of breaking down how we did some of this stuff, which was fun.
Um, so we're experimenting, right?
Like it's, it's our own internal app, so we can literally
do whatever we want to do it.
Um, and we have about a hundred paying clients on that and potent probably
like, I would say two to 3000 monthly active users on the platform.
Um, and so it's enough volume, so you can experiment, you know, with it.
But anyway, that's, that's one project.
Um, we're going, we're going really deep into the web three stuff as much as we can.
Um, I'm still fairly new to it, but, um, yeah, if you're interested in that stuff,
there's, there's a lot of opportunity to, to, to geek out on that, um, an experiment.
So, um, yeah, that's awesome.
Um, I mean, um, that's what I'm looking for at least to actually
switch to be a web tree developer.
So that's really nice.
Yeah, I think so.
And, um, yeah, we're just with, um, like, yeah, in every aspect of it.
So there's, and there's so many, like saying you're building on the blockchain
is like, kind of like saying like you, you're building a website, like you can
build an app, you can build a webpage, you can build a brochure, like there's a
million ways you can build a website.
And there's so many ways you can build on the blockchain.
So it's just like kind of the early stages where, um, just saying like,
Oh, it's built on, on chain.
Like that's, that's great.
But, um, like, but how, like, what.
are you actually, how are you actually implementing this?
And so our clients love it.
Like they're very big on decentralization
and having like sensor-free platforms
where they can post and share their thoughts.
And a good thing to have in 2021
with all the big tech censorship stuff going around.
Yeah, absolutely.
So that's kind of one of the things we,
you know, and I don't care one way or the other,
but just the fact that Amazon can shut down a site,
like, you know, like Parler,
because they decided they didn't like it,
is, you know, we're like, no, we're not, you know.
So we don't build pretty much anything on AWS.
Moving all of our storage out of S3
over to this new Ethereum-based platform was awesome.
And so anyway, those are just some of our like underlying
sort of what we believe here as a team.
Cool.
So one of the things we didn't really talk about,
our whole team is very much bought into the ShapeUp
platform, so I know you mentioned
you hadn't really heard of it,
but you're willing to test it out.
Like, did you have a chance to check it out?
Yeah, I actually took a look at it.
It was funny and pretty cool, actually.
I quite understand the issue that they talk about
when you have a backlog and you have everything,
and that's just madness.
And it's quite good to see other things coming up,
like ShapeUp.
Yeah.
Well, that's just one thing.
Yeah, I mean, if we're working together or something,
definitely, you know, take some time.
You can bill us for the time reading the book
or whatever, but it's worth getting up to speed on that.
And they prioritize very functional design,
meaning it's more on the UX side,
which is very much aligned with how we work.
And all of their stuff, Basecamp and Hay,
their email service, is very, very minimalist
and very simple, but it's very easy to use, right?
It's not the most beautiful thing.
They're probably not winning design awards either,
but it's extremely user-friendly,
and that's actually, that honestly is a better design
than something that's got pretty colors
and tiny fonts you can't read and all that.
Yeah.
And so we worked with a branding house
and did websites many years ago
where they were literally picking, you know,
oh, this is two pixels to the left
and we need to adjust this one to the right.
We don't do any of that anymore.
We did it plenty of times, not ever going back there.
Oh, thank God.
So anyway, so that's good.
But yeah, any questions for me?
I know I got about five minutes left,
but anything, I know I asked you a bunch of questions,
but anything for us or how we work or?
Yeah, I mean, I've seen the offers you have on the website,
the applications you mentioned,
and on the development offers,
they always have, it's more of a shaping up thing
to actually question.
So you always have three developers on the same project,
but you mentioned, I'm not really sure right now,
but I think you mentioned that you work more
on one developer and one project per client.
So how does this actually work?
Yeah, so we, again,
kind of following the shape up stuff,
everything is built around a project.
So it's either a two, four, six week project,
whether you work on stuff for clients
or you work on stuff for our own internal apps,
it's all in two, four, six week.
We occasionally will try to do a one week
for a very small project,
but really those end up always going to two weeks anyway.
So we're just kind of made to the minimum.
And so we kind of have that sort of,
work where we're putting together
very specific deliverables for a larger project.
We also have what we call like reactive work,
which is just, hey, there's like tasks and stuff
that kind of pile up.
And I actually did an interview with Ryan Singer,
who's the author of Basecamp a couple of weeks back.
And I was talking him through our process.
And he was like, oh no, that's like the only way to do it.
Like you can't, because you're inevitably gonna have,
someone's gonna log a bug.
Someone's gonna like give you feedback.
There's a typo on this page.
Has to go somewhere.
At some point we have to check it off the list.
So there does end up with like a little bit of a backlog,
but it's for very, very small,
things that you could go fix and.
15 minutes, sorry, 20 minutes.
So if there's time, we'll just go chip away
at a bunch of stuff.
So people are between things.
Or sometimes as a developer,
you just want to change the scenery.
You're like deep into one module,
like want to go get some quick wins,
spend half a day just knocking out some quick bugs,
you know, and then push that all the way
through to production, you know, in a few hours,
it just is a good sense of accomplishment
and then go back to hammering away at something else.
So we have two, the two,
everybody on our team is very technical.
So our product, like our product managers
are also like making Git commits
and fixing little typos and, you know,
improving design a little bit.
So we're all, and myself included as well,
I just started learning JavaScript and React in January.
And I know enough to like do some basic front end stuff,
like layouts and making sure tailwind,
you know, stuff is, you know, looking nice,
but that's about it.
And so, but, you know, so there's some support there,
but yeah, it's really just one developer
and then one product manager on every project.
So each of those two, four, six week projects,
there's just two people involved.
One person's doing the code,
the other person's doing everything but the code
as far as like doing meetings with clients,
doing QA, you know,
helping with some of the mock-ups and stuff.
We are all involved, the developer, designer,
and sometimes me as well in the shaping process
and putting together this,
and it actually goes into a document in Notion
that we can track and we can put,
like, we define the problem.
Here's what we're trying.
And we write it out in like paragraph form.
And then we talk about the solution
and we actually spend time as a team
looking at the problem, looking at the solution,
and us all getting on a call,
mocking stuff up together.
Like, you may have a design idea
that I didn't think of or vice versa.
So we're all really bought in.
So when we all agree like,
yeah, this feels like about two weeks
or this feels like about four weeks,
like we're all very much on the same page.
It's not a project manager sitting in his office
being like, I think they could do it in two weeks
and like kick it over to a developer.
And then the developer's like,
no way, this is a six week project, minimum.
We don't want that.
It's very much, it's very transparent
to the point where our clients
are also looking at this document.
So everybody's on the same page, literally.
And our developers typically will be on client calls
to do reviews and hear feedback and stuff.
It's just easier and just rather than someone
trying to take a bunch of notes and hand them back to you.
We do very, we're also very anti-meetings.
So they're normally 20, 30 minute calls,
just quick check-ins.
We're not spending hours like thinking
of all the new things we could do to the app.
And so, yeah, so that's kind of how we think about it.
All right, yeah, you went all the way.
That's a little more than I expected,
but also very helpful.
Thank you.
Yeah, about that, that's okay.
So you mentioned that there is someone working
from Columbia and you're in Atlanta.
So I assume that the hours of,
the working hours are all asynchronous
or do you have an expectation to work?
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, we'll find a time, like since the clients,
so you'll be like, say we're on one project,
you'll find a time that works for those two or three people
that are involved in the project.
Like they can set their own schedule
if that's sometimes, we've got some people are single.
We've got one developer that is married, but no kids.
I have a baby that's seven months.
So like everybody's in different stages.
One of our operations person has one child
and then she is also pregnant with her second.
So like everybody's in,
so sometimes like later evenings are better.
Sometimes early mornings are better.
We don't set any like overlap,
but we all have to be on for the set time.
Okay, great.
But we will find if there's meetings,
we just try and pick the most convenient time for everyone.
So we do like to connect,
especially on the dev.
One thing we've started doing recently
is doing monthly check-ins,
just a one or two hour call where we just do a show and tell
and each developer just shares what they're working on
and some of the cool things they're experimenting with.
And we just kind of do a learning meeting type thing
where we just kind of, it's just a hangout
and we just kick around ideas
and get to kind of show off what we're working on.
And it just helps everybody sort of see what else is going on.
And again, those are all scheduled randomly
every maybe four to five weeks.
And we just pick a time that works for everybody, so.
Yeah, that works great.
Try to create a calm.
a working environment as much as possible.
So go ahead.
Well, this is really good.
I mean, I feel really good about trying
to do something together.
Like I said, all of our work is full-time.
It's project-based.
So I would love to do a two- or a four-week project, probably
a two-week project, try something.
It's all work that has to be done anyway.
It's obviously paid.
And then if that all goes, we'll do another one
and another one and just put you on payroll.
And we do everything once a month with our team.
Currently, we're doing everything hourly,
still paying developers hourly.
We are experimenting with going to a project-based price,
where for a two-week project, you would just
be paid x for knowing it's about 50 to 60 hours.
And that way, if you get it done in 40,
your rate just goes way up.
And that way, I hate billing hourly.
It's not a sustainable thing, because at some point,
we need to switch to value-based pricing.
So as a company, we have switched to value-based pricing.
Our clients pay a fixed price for two, four,
or six-week projects.
So I don't have to do any quoting or any of that.
So we try to keep it really simple.
So we're experimenting with next year,
kind of moving towards that, where you would just know,
oh, two-week project, it's this.
Four, it's that.
And that way, it's just a lot calmer
than having to track hours and do the whole stuff.
So we're working on it.
Those are just something we're experimenting with,
but for now, hourly.
And the last quick question I have,
and I know we're a little over time here.
Do you have a target rate you're looking for
for that hourly, if it was, say, 30 to 35 hours a week?
Yeah, so I actually usually go for value-based, again,
as same as the company.
But hourly, the last time I was doing hourly,
I was taking the $40 to $50 an hour.
Okay.
Yeah, that's definitely within our,
within our, kind of what everybody else is in.
So yeah, absolutely.
And so that would be easy to do that.
And then, like I said, if you're,
look, we're experimenting and trying out
the project-based pricing,
because it's a good move for our business.
I'd love to pass on that workflow
to the developers as well.
So you can also get the benefit
of just having a fixed price.
Also, side note, all of our money is all upfront.
So it'd be like, here's a two-week project,
and also here's 100% of the payment for it
before you start.
Because that's how we bill our clients.
We have clients who really trust us.
So none of this 50% then 50% stuff,
it's all upfront.
And so yeah, those are the things we're experimenting with.
But really excited.
So as far as next steps,
you said potentially you could start within a week or two,
or maybe do some part-time stuff.
Yeah, if it's required,
like you have the project now and you need someone out,
I can probably start working on it
if it's how you really need it.
But if it's not that necessary,
it's better for me to start in maybe a week
or at least next week.
Not to, yeah, not like it's already Thursday.
So yeah.
Let's look at, maybe if you wanna chat,
if you wanna do, can we maybe chat Monday,
maybe at like 10.30 Eastern?
Does that sound, it could work?
Let me actually check.
Or tomorrow afternoon.
I mean, just what I would wanna do is just spend
a little bit of time,
like pulling out a specific project.
We can talk through the pitch
and like basically finish shaping it up together.
And then just, if you feel good about it,
you can take that on.
None of our projects are very time sensitive.
So what we could do is give you
like a one or a two week project,
but it doesn't have to be done in two weeks.
It's, you can kind of,
if you take three weeks to do it or whatever, it's fine.
So I can give you something that's very flexible.
Yeah, is there a good time tomorrow or Monday?
Tomorrow, anything on,
you're on the Eastern time zone.
Yeah.
Let's check.
So anything on past month.
30, your time till 4, that works for me.
OK, till 4, my time?
Yeah.
OK, let's do, let's make sure I got it.
So yeah, if you can do 2 PM my time, which I think
are you an hour behind?
I'm actually two hours ahead.
Two hours ahead, OK, gotcha.
So 4, your time then.
Yes.
Does that work?
Yeah, it works.
OK, I will send you an invite for that.
Let's plan to chat then.
I'll give me, it'll give me some time
to just put some notes together.
If I can't, I'll send them over to you ahead of time
so you can look at them.
But we'll try to be, we'll just be a quick 30 minute call.
And then as I said, like if that works,
we can just let you take that as a small project
and run with it, get you connected in.
So cool.
Yeah, absolutely.
I just want to say, as well as there is only usually
one developer, but just asking because I
had some issues lately, I don't need
to use Linux, Mac, or Windows, right?
Just make it share.
No, we were just whatever you like using, it's good.
All right, all right.
Yeah, I guess that's it.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's one developer, but we have,
I think everybody on our team has at some point
worked on this internal video platform that we have.
So there's, you can definitely jump in and ask questions.
And as you're getting familiar with the project,
there's people who can answer, like everybody on the team
will be happy to help you with any tech questions you have.
So there's support, but you're sort of running that project.
It's not like we're just send you off and talk to you
in two weeks, but we do like to at least have
some social connection with everybody.
So cool, man.
Yeah, absolutely.
OK, we'll talk soon.
This is great.
Great to meet you.
Look forward to doing something together.
Yeah, me too.
Cool, thanks for your time.
Appreciate it.