HuCapital

The Challenge

Building a social network MVP is notoriously difficult. The founders of HuCapital wanted a platform specifically for creatives and professionals to connect, share portfolios, and collaborate.

Most "cheap" developers use no-code tools like Bubble for this, which instantly buckle under the weight of real-time chat, media uploads, and complex relational data. The founders needed a custom-coded, highly scalable MVP that wouldn't crash on launch day.

The Solution

I designed and built the HuCapital platform from the ground up: the React Native app (including Huey AI, an OpenAI-powered assistant), real-time WebSocket chat, and the web social network. Instead of taking shortcuts with no-code tools, I built a custom stack designed to scale.

Key Features Delivered

• Real-Time Infrastructure: Implemented WebSockets for instant messaging, notifications, and live feed updates.
• Media Processing: Built a secure pipeline for users to upload, compress, and display high-resolution portfolio images and videos without slowing down the app.
• Relational Data Modeling: Designed a highly optimized MySQL database schema to handle complex follower graphs, feed generation algorithms, and threaded comments.
• AWS Deployment: Configured an auto-scaling AWS environment (EC2, S3, RDS) to ensure the platform could handle unpredictable spikes in user traffic.

Engineering

• Tests: Load-tested the feed and WebSocket paths ahead of launch; regression coverage on follow graph and media upload.
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions to build, migrate, and deploy to AWS.
• Security: Signed media uploads to S3, session auth, and rate limits on write-heavy social endpoints.
• Deployment: Auto-scaling AWS (EC2, S3, RDS). Launch-day traffic scaled without a single outage.

The Make Real Difference

When you're building a social platform, the database schema and infrastructure are everything. A poorly designed schema will cause the app to grind to a halt as soon as you hit 1,000 users.

By applying senior-level architectural patterns from day one, I delivered an MVP that wasn't just a prototype—it was a production-ready foundation. On launch day, a sudden influx of users hit the site. The servers automatically scaled, the database held strong, and the app experienced zero downtime.