Talk it through

Social platform · Web, iOS, and Android · 2018–2022

They asked for features that brought people together. Every new member shortened their runway.

Four years with a faith-based social network as it grew past 100,000 members around the world: first as the advisor between its executives and its engineers, then as its CTO.

Years
2018–2022
Platforms
Web, iOS, and Android
Role
Advisor from 2018, CTO from 2020
Engagement
Freelance and embedded, four years
Team
Duncan Platt, leading an external development team
Closest service today
Fractional CTO
A woman on her sofa in the afternoon sun, scrolling the FaithSocial feed on her phone, a mug of coffee beside her
a month for servers, down from over $22K
<$10K
members while Duncan was CTO, from about 20,000 to 100,000
5×
engineers led, backend to QA
30+

What they asked

Turn what leadership wants into features people use.

FaithSocial was a social network for Christians around the world, built to help people connect, share, and grow in their faith, on web, iOS, and Android.

Duncan joined in 2018 as a freelance advisor. He sat between the CTO and the rest of the executive team, turning what leadership expected into features and technology the engineers could build. A social network grows when people find real reasons to connect, so the ask was steady: more ways for members to connect with each other and with their faith.

Over time his part grew, and in 2020 he became FaithSocial’s CTO. The platform had about 20,000 members.

What was really going on

Growth, runway, and investors pulled in different directions.

As CTO, the job was three jobs at once. The platform had to keep growing, and on a social network that means more ways to connect: groups, live streaming, photos, and video.

But every member and every feature added to the bill. Posts and comments filled the database, media storage compounded, and live features needed servers that never switched off. As the platform grew, the server bill passed $22,000 a month, and it was starting to decide how long the company had left.

And the company had to be ready for new rounds of investment, with a platform that would stand up to their questions.

The call

Grow on the runway we had, not the one we hoped for.

Slowing growth or cutting features would have saved money by giving up the reason the platform existed. So the savings had to come from how it ran and who it ran with: the infrastructure, the vendors, the partners, and the development team. Every decision was weighed against all three pressures at once.

The trade-off: some new features waited while the engineers worked on optimizing and cutting costs.

What we did

Build for connection, and make it affordable.

Duncan led an external development team of more than 30 engineers, and worked with FaithSocial’s executives on everything the platform needed.

  1. Build for connection

    More ways for members to meet: groups, live streaming, photos, and video. Duncan owned engineering delivery, and worked with the other executives to bring each feature to life.

  2. Cut the server bill

    New forms of caching, so the platform stopped redoing work it had already done, and graph databases, built for a network of members and the connections between them.

  3. Make vendors partners

    Credits from vendors, and better terms from partners, so the companies the platform ran on shared some of the cost of its growth.

  4. Cut the cost of building

    When the runway shortened again, the development team’s cost came down too, without stopping the work.

  5. Prepare for investors

    Support for the company’s investor conversations, and a platform built to stand up to due diligence.

The role

Duncan Platt joined in 2018 as a freelance advisor between the CTO and the rest of the executive team. In 2020 he became CTO, leading an external development team of more than 30 engineers across backend, frontend, mobile, DevOps, and QA.

The work

The members went up, the bill came down.

Groups, live streaming, and multimedia, on web, iOS, and Android. Each one gave members another way to connect, and each one added to the bill. The work brought the bill down while the platform kept growing.

The server bill, a month

  1. At its peakOver $22,000
  2. After the workUnder $10,000

Members

  1. In 2020, when Duncan became CTOAbout 20,000
  2. By 2022More than 100,000

What changed

Less than half the bill, and five times the members.

The server bill fell from over $22,000 a month to under $10,000, and the cost of development came down too. That lengthened the runway while the platform kept growing, from about 20,000 members to more than 100,000 around the world, with the full feature set still running on web, iOS, and Android.

And members used it for what it was for. The team received letters from people who had met on FaithSocial and become lifelong friends, and from couples who met there and married.

Afterwards

The company closed. What people found there lasted.

FaithSocial shut down in December 2022, when post-COVID market conditions made further funding untenable. The cost work bought time; it couldn’t change the market.

When the decision came, we helped wind the platform down too.

Who carried it forward

The external development team ran the platform until the company closed. The friendships and marriages that began on it outlived it.

The service behind it

03Fractional CTO

Who’s making the technical calls?

Two quarters, then reviewHow it works

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