Hi founders and fellow VC Friends!
Each week we deliver one awesome person to your inbox. These are the people you need to know—the marketers, sales gurus, engineers, ops wizzes — who give your startup superpowers 🚀. The best part is, everyone is hireable on a part-time basis.
Please meet Nick, Your iOS Developer 📱
Nick recently teamed up with my friend Maddy (former recruiter at Uber, Snap, and Instacart) to build an HR tech startup. They’re bootstrapping (yes!) and he’s currently consulting 50% of the time. Maddy always raves about Nick. When she nominated him for Awesome People, I was a “hell yes.”
Nick is one of those unicorn developers who likes making things pixel perfect. He’s a big fan of motion design, specifically animations and transitions.
He's under the radar (no Linkedin or website). Maddy describes him as being SO talented and fast. Most recently, he built Watch Dog, Buzzfeed Tasty, Playboy Coloring Book, and Nike SNKRS. One little known fact about Nick is that he’s in a band!
He's trusted by Joey Flynn (Facebook, Instagram), Darian Edwards (Dropbox, Nike), Dave Carrico (Nike, Instagram) and more.
You can hire him to:
Build your iOS native app, especially if you’re looking for well-designed transitions and animations
Design and build your Java backend (Spring, Hibernate)
Nick is a go-to if you want your pixels to dance! Let me know if you want an intro 😀.
He kindly shared 3 simple tips to make your apps more delightful ✨
Provide visual feedback to your user
You want the user to feel comfortable using your app, and confident they’re using it right. Aim to remove all user uncertainty and doubt in your product by providing visual feedback. When someone selects, taps, saves — or does anything in your product — provide visual feedback. In the example below, the feedback includes a bounce and color change.
Think of animations as confirmation of your app interactions. For example, when you delete an object, you can make it disappear, fade, or crumples away. Aim for sleek transitions and responsive animations that logically follow interactions.
Nice loading experiences and transitions pay dividends
Users don’t like to wait for apps to load. Every second spent waiting decreases conversions. Beautiful transitions turn wait times from a negative to a positive. Think about how you want your users to feel when they use your app. Use transitions to inject that feeling into your product. For example, Cyclesafe’s transitions feel playful and smooth.
Simple apps are often the most delightful
Life Minimal’s app is mostly charts. Think that sounds boring? Think again. The developers use animations and transitions to make the data feel exciting and fresh.
This exercise screen below is also super simple. You just change your weights and reps. Despite its simplicity, the animations, transitions, and effects make it engaging and fun.
Consider simplifying and streamlining your app as much as possible and then use small details to produce delight.
Need a freelance iOS developer? Let me know and I’ll connect you with Nick!
That’s all for this week ✨!
Stay awesome,
Founder of Awesome People and Awesome People Ventures
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PS 🤩
The smaller the team, the less process and communication overhead
Nick has worked remotely for years and had some great insights. They didn’t fit with today’s animations theme, but that’s what the P.S. is for 😀! Back over to Nick:
I recently built an entire app where we never spoke live, all the communication happened via Slack, completely freeform. No JIRA, no standups, no agile --- zero process. The designer produced the screens in Figma, I built them, then we’d go back and forth. It was that simple. We were just 2 dudes building something. Notably, this isn’t scalable to larger teams. The larger the team, the more dependencies, documentation, and greater need to get people’s input and keep them in the loop. There’s a huge advantage to keeping teams as small as possible, for as long as possible. Ultimately, each team needs to find the process that works for them.
Transcend Prejudice Workshop
Our friends at Alpha Bridge Ventures are hosting a half-day “Transcend Prejudice Workshop” for founders on September 18th. Kemy Joseph is running the show. His past founder and VC workshops have been a smashing success. DEI is not just a lip service program. It’s key to finding and retaining the best talent 🙏.
Learn more and register here. The Alpha Bridge team generously gave us a promo code. Use AWESOME for 50% off!
Most recent Awesome People 😍
Kendall - Product Management and Gamification Expert. He’s worked with Microsoft, Tencent, and Mya to launch products, design user flows, and scale engagement.
Vlad - Video Producer and Content Marketer. He’s worked with Fast, Eaze, and Forgerock, to produce eye-popping content, plan affordable marketing campaigns, and supercharge user engagement strategies.
Laura - Geo Expansion and Product Ops GM. She’s worked with McKinsey, Sierra Ventures, and held product and ops leadership roles across Opendoor, growing the company from 2 cities to 20+ and 100 employees to 1500+.
Let me know if you want intros to any of the people above and I’ll connect you!
❤️❤️❤️