Mucho Hangouts: Social Events Platform
A location-based social networking platform connecting people through in-person events and recurring group activities. Serving as Fractional CTO, led technical direction, mentored junior developers, eliminated technical debt, and drove migration from SPA to Next.js MPA architecture.
- Client
- Mucho Hangouts (Fractional CTO)
- Role
- Fractional CTO
- Service
- Technical Leadership & Full-stack Development
- Technologies
- Node.js TypeScript React Next.js MongoDB Tailwind CSS
The Challenge
Modern social networks excel at digital connection but fail at facilitating meaningful in-person relationships. Location-based features are shallow, event discovery is poor, and there's no way to build recurring social groups around shared interests.
People want real-world connections but lack tools to find compatible people nearby.
The Approach
Led technical transformation by establishing TypeScript standards across the codebase, eliminating pervasive ts-ignore usage on the frontend, and systematically converting backend JavaScript to TypeScript.
Mentored 2 junior developers through code reviews and pair programming, unblocking technical challenges and accelerating feature delivery.
Drove architectural decisions including migration from SPA to Next.js MPA for improved performance and SEO. Established CI/CD pipeline with GitLab for automated deployments and managed production VPS infrastructure with PM2 clustering.
The Outcome
Transformed codebase quality and team velocity through systematic technical debt elimination and mentorship. Enabled junior developers to ship features confidently with proper TypeScript patterns and comprehensive code review process.
Established scalable deployment pipeline and production infrastructure supporting live platform at muchohangouts.com. Platform demonstrates effective technical leadership in early-stage environment, balancing rapid feature delivery with long-term maintainability and team growth.
