How we rebuilt MomoCentral — a freelancer platform — in 2.5 weeks
In my previous post, I mentioned how we’ll share our story of rebuilding MomoCentral — a freelancer platform. We did it all within 2.5 weeks! Just 2 of us — me and my co-founder. Not with a legion / army of coders but I’ll caveat this with saying my co-founder and I have over 10 years of experience building and shipping production-grade products for startups, government and banks. We were able to do this so fast due to the experience and knowledge of shortcuts we’ve gained over the years.
Alright lets get to the real deal!
- We did not build from scratch
Nope! With both our experiences in coding, we definitely have the skills to build the whole platform from scratch. But! Neither of us wanted to spend hours tediously coding mundane functions/operations like the invoicing system, user account sign up, user login, forgot password, payments system, bla bla bla… you get the idea. Every project has these mundane boring tedious elements that just has to be there no matter what.
2. We bought an existing engine for USD89
Here I’d like to introduce you to the magical world of engines! Yes, thanks to the explosion of tech, there’s now countless engines and libraries for most common ideas out there — including marketplace, e-commerce and Uber/AirBNB of X clones.
ThemeForest is our favorite haunt for finding beautifully designed and reviewed Wordpress engines! (Yes, Wordpress has grown over the years to become way more than just a blog engine).
A quick search of “marketplace” gets you a bunch of results with engines you can buy for $59–$129.
3. … and the plastic surgery begins!
These engines are highly customizable because you get access to the full source code. Any professional developer will be able to modify this to your liking!
We picked an engine that already had everything tedious we didn’t want to build out of the box:
- User Sign Up/Login, including Login with FB or Google integration
- Jobs Listing including job posting and editing mechanisms
- Freelancer Profiles including profile updates and editing mechanisms
- User dashboard for both clients and freelancers
- Payment Gateway integration with Stripe and PayPal
- Invoicing System with Coupon Codes
- Chat / messaging
- Email notifications
- and the list goes on…
I call this point “Plastic Surgery” because the original design that came with the engine didn’t fit our branding and the user experience wasn’t to our liking. We had to do extensive code and aesthetics modification to make it a lot more simple and user-friendly.
We needed an interface and user flow that builds trust on both the client and freelancer side.
The irony is we spent more time hiding all the unnecessary and confusing options / functions than building new features! If we used the theme’s interface out of the box we’d have been done in a week.
(No, I definitely do not recommend using any engine’s design out of the box unless it really fits your branding and user experience goals. Most of these engines are built by developers who are ace at building functions but not so great at design).
4. Test test test!
Once plastic surgery is done, we tested every possible scenario we could think of. This is the most important step clients/product owners should be heavily involved in. There is no one who will understand the mindset and possible actions of your customers more than the people who talk to customers everyday!
Unfortunately sometimes this is TEDIOUS! but there’s no shortcut and it has to be done the manual way. Examples of scenarios we tested which could not be automated:
- Client / Freelancer disputes and resolutions
- Refund of payments (both full and partial)
- Checking of invoicing and accounting records to match local accounting standards
- Testing of payouts via different mediums and examining the hidden charges from payment services/banks!
- Failed payment and retry scenarios
- Copywriting in all system notifications and emails to ensure all users are clear on the next steps and all confusing lingo removed!
- …and etc etc
5. Launch and Pray!
Actually no, keep an eye out for bug reports and user feedback! Thankfully for us, most of the initial clients on our new platform are our existing clients who have my WhatsApp number. They were able to report bugs and feedback to me directly! This was a huge blessing for us. (Thank you! you know who you are!).
Are engines reliable or are these all just for MVPs?
Definitely reliable. We’ve handled thousands of dollars in transactions on the new platform since launch. For another real life case and example, the fundraising portal Ray of Hope, also built on a Wordpress engine and heavily modified by our freelancers, processed $4.8 million in transactions last year.
How much would this all have cost?
It’s hard to put a number to the experience my co-founder and I have. Combined we have over 20 years of experience shipping products for everyone from bootstrapped startups to unicorns and Fortune 500 companies.
Assuming a pretty senior developer charged USD90/hour, 2.5 weeks would be 100 hours. That’d be USD9,000 each for 2 of us, leading to about USD18,000.
Is 2.5 weeks realistic for others?
No. Definitely not. We were able to build this fast because we are our own client. This means there was close to 0 wait time in checking if a client is happy with XYZ or how a specific unique scenario should be handled. We have been running MomoCentral for over 7 years. This means we were already hyper clear on our branding, operational workings, business model, freelancer and client expectations/mindset, lingo/language our clients and freelancers are comfortable with and most importantly, all the financial accounting side of things. We had all the servers and 3rd party services/accounts needed for the successful operation of a platform all ready.
How will I know if there’s a shortcut for my idea especially if I’m non-technical?
Right now it’s all in my brain from knowledge and experience gained over the years coding too much. I should at some point figure out how to AI my brain into a Chatbot.
Until that happens, I’m happy to share with budding entrepreneurs and fellow founders. Get in touch with me!
- Go to https://momocentral.com
- Click “Schedule One-on-One”
- In the form section where you fill in your idea, add the phrase “I am looking for a shortcut!”.
Yes, you will get in touch with me because MomoCentral is not venture-funded and is fully bootstrapped for the past 7 years. This means my co-founder and I can still run things the hyper non-scalable way with our own hands! Don’t worry, we won’t put you in touch with a customer support staff reading off a sales script. ;)
Talk soon!
