Wrote an 18-page business plan with a team of 3 others (90% me) for our BUS5 181 (Intro to Entrepreneurship) course at San Jose State University. I proceeded to polish the same business plan to compete in the Silicon Valley Business Plan Competition (SVBPC) later that month, awarding my business $1500 cash and $1000 in legal support.

Interested in reading the business plan? Contact me!

Built the first web app prototype with a team of 3 other engineers for our CMPE 148 (Computer Networks I) course project at San Jose State University. We used the Python Play! Framework to build a simple interface allowing a user to log in and submit a ticket. We quickly learned that this framework had way too low of a ceiling for our complex app.

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Registered Minute.tech as a Limited Liability Company in the state of California.

Built the second web app prototype with a team of 2 other engineers (90% work done by me) for our CMPE 138 (Database Systems I) course project at San Jose State University. I used the Python Flask Framework and MySQL to build a full-stack interface that included authentication, profile editing, and ticket creation. 

Early ERD of MySQL Database

Expanded the second web app prototype from the previous semester with a team of 2 new engineers (90% of work done by me) for our CMPE 130 (Advanced Algorithm Design) course project at San Jose State University. I focused on building a question ticket priority sorting system using the DIPS (Dynamic Insertion Priority Sort) algorithm to efficiently display the most important tickets on the system to a technician.

After a few group projects where I did most of the work, I decided to hire an inexpensive Fiverr.com developer from Morocco to work with me to quickly expand on the Flask framework prototype. We successfully implemented real-time chat with instant messaging using Socket.io and SQLAlchemy libraries, but more importantly, this was a great experience for me as a lead engineer. After researching more features to add such as video calling and mobile apps, I realized that the Flask framework also had too low of a ceiling for the features I was looking for. I was deciding between the Python framework, Django, or the Javascript framework, React.js. I ultimately went with React.js because it was an especially powerful technology when coupled with its sibling, React Native, that allowed me to create an iOS/Android mobile app with one code base. 

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Built the first mobile app prototype with a team of 3 other engineers (95% work done by me) for our CMPE 137 (Mobile Software Engineering) course project at San Jose State University. I used the iOS native language of Swift to build an app that tracked both users (technician and client) navigating on a map view using MapKit and Google Maps API. Simulated a similar experience to food delivery apps tracking the driver on their way to the client's location. 

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Unsure of how to move forward after failing to find reliable teammates, I thought finding potential investors might help my plight. I expanded the 18-page business plan to 60 pages, expanding upon my plethora of discoveries and prototypes accrued since the first business plan. To properly quote investors, I needed to research the cost and timeline differences between hiring a large engineering firm, and a few software engineers, or just doing it myself. So, I interviewed 5 large software development firms for web/mobile app quotes and interviewed 20 potential software engineers from a physical flyer posted at SJSU. Although I ended up just going with Ryan Morris with equity options (see web app v3 below), I learned a ton about interviewing & vetting engineers, as well as learning realistic pricing of large firms (hint: expensive, $100k for good work). Near the end of my search, I came in contact with an older, IT business owner/family friend who was interested in being a partner/investor on the project. Unfortunately, he ended up wanting to be a 50/50 partner of the business, which I was advised not to do and ultimately was probably the best decision. The decision was now to just push through on my own and build a more fleshed-out MVP to learn web dev deeper along the way!

Interested in reading the business plan? Contact me!

Using the legal funds awarded from the Silicon Valley Business Plan Competition in 2016, I secured the trademark on the 'Minute.tech' name.

Worked with two graphic designer friends and housemates, Ryan Wall and Mitch Licata on the web app wireframe using Sketch, XD, and InVision. (See web wireframe screens above)

Built the third web app prototype with Ryan Morris using React.js, Redux, and Firebase. We successfully implemented the following features:

• User authentication
• Clients can ask questions to the system
• Technicians can claim questions on the system
• Users can communicate in a chat room sending texts and files
• Users can transition to voice/video/screen share calls using Twilio API
• Clients can pay technicians directly for their services using the Stripe API
• Technician/client ranking system and algorithm that gamified the interactions on the site
• Clients can resolve questions and review technicians they interacted with

Ryan ultimately wanted to step away from the project because he wanted to go more down the robotics path instead of web. I had to scrap most of the code from this build because Redux was not properly set up, but Ryan taught me a lot and was the best teammate I have worked with yet on Minute.tech who helped propel the project forward. 

This project code is still classified, but contact me if you are interested in viewing it.

Started building the second mobile app prototype for iOS and Android devices using React Native and a shared back-end with the web using Firebase. This was mainly a proof of concept that React Native apps could be easily built with a shared backend.

 So far, the application features:

• User authentication
• Clients can ask questions to the system
• Technicians can claim questions on the system
• Users can communicate in a chat room by sending texts
• Clients can resolve questions

There were a few motivations for building the React Native app:

• Practice my React Native skills for potential client projects
• It's much easier to maintain one React codebase as a solo developer. Between the web and mobile app builds, there is over 50% overlap between reused React components and Firebase server-side functions, increasing what I am capable of doing on my own.
• Minute.tech is losing clients who are not getting push notifications on their mobile devices they carry everywhere for important app messages.

See progress screenshots in the React Native section above. This project code is still classified, but contact me if you are interested in viewing it.

Built the first fully featured mobile app prototype with a team of 3 other engineers (60% of work done by me) for our senior project at San Jose State University. We again used the iOS native language of Swift to build the app, but this time implemented nearly all the required features:

• User authentication
• Clients can ask questions to the system
• Technicians can claim questions on the system
• Users can communicate in a chat room sending texts and files
• Users can transition to voice/video calls using Twilio API
• Users can schedule an in-person meetup at a time and location (UI only)
• Clients can resolve questions and review technicians they interacted with

Full demo video and screenshots in the Swift section above. 

This project code is still classified, but contact me if you are interested in viewing it.

Building off some of the project code developed with Ryan Morris, I built a new React.js app that was more organized, had fewer bugs, and was more production-ready than version 3. 

This build has the following features:

• User authentication
• Clients can ask questions to the system
• Technicians can claim questions on the system
• Users can communicate in a chat room sending texts and files
• Users can transition to voice/video/screen share calls using Twilio API
• Clients can pay technicians directly for their services using the Stripe API
• Clients can resolve questions and review technicians they interacted with

Full demo video and screenshots in the Web Application section above. This project code is still classified, but contact me if you are interested in viewing it.

Registered Minute.tech LLC in Oregon, since I moved here recently!

The Minute.tech web app was stable enough for me to actively use it for years as a technician! I have been focusing a lot of my tech consulting time on building custom web apps, which Minute.tech has solved many pain points for me. Things like easy payment for clients with built-in invoicing, quick follow-up questions directly to me, compensating me for the time I spend stepping them through their questions with the timed video calls, and much more. I am now using some downtime between projects to hard fork the project to use Next.js instead of CRA, replacing old packages, adding new ones, and many more changes I have wanted to make to the build. The main Minute.tech v4 build is still live at www.minute.tech, but keep an eye out for a new and improved version in 2024!