Pebble
Overview
As CTO and lead engineer, I built Pebble from the ground up — a cross-platform mobile app that helps climbing gyms track member activity and helps climbers log and share their ascents. The platform is live in 100+ gyms with over 1 million tracked climbs.
What I Built
- Production React Native (TypeScript) app on iOS and Android, managing the full lifecycle from architecture through App Store and Play Store releases
- Serverless backend with Node.js, GraphQL (Apollo Server), and MongoDB deployed across AWS (Lambda, S3, IoT Core), handling 4M+ monthly API requests
- CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions and Expo for automated builds, testing, and deployment
- Full product roadmap ownership, collaborating directly with gym owners, end users, and stakeholders through structured sprint cycles
Featured Projects
The Pebble platform includes several standalone technical highlights — the Overview Maps renderer, the AR Finder experience, and the RFID Logger hardware device.
Inspiration
Pebble grew out of an earlier project called Wiki-Boulder, a wiki-style guidebook I built for climbers to share information about outdoor climbing routes. Users could create pages for climbing areas and routes, add photos, descriptions, and other details. Building Wiki-Boulder gave me a front-row seat to a bigger opportunity: climbing gyms were ripe for a tech transformation, still relying on paper score cards and spreadsheets to run competitions. I saw a chance to build a platform that could serve both gyms and climbers, so I started working on Pebble.
Results
Pebble grew to serve over 100 gyms and logged more than 1 million ascents, a milestone I'm genuinely proud of. The platform validated a real need in the climbing community and gave me an incredible depth of experience across the full product lifecycle. Along the way, I learned just as much about the business side — particularly that even a strong product needs an equally strong go-to-market strategy. That lesson has shaped how I think about building products today: great technology is only half the equation. Pebble is still running and serving its community, and I'm excited to bring everything I learned from it into what comes next.
