Independent product · From idea to launch
Taking a local pet-care platform from idea to a live product.
I created PawCircle Membership to explore a simpler way for pet owners and independent pet-care providers to find and connect with each other locally. I took it through design, development, payments, launch, and ongoing troubleshooting.
01 / Why I built it
The idea came from my own experience working in pet care.
I saw how much large platforms could control fees, discovery, and communication between providers and pet owners. I wanted to see if a simpler local option could give people another way to find each other and start a direct conversation.
02 / What I built
A full-stack product, not just a landing page.
PawCircle included separate experiences for pet owners, providers, and people who were both. The product combined local profiles, service and availability filtering, privacy controls, introductory messaging, authentication, memberships, and payments into one responsive application.
The portfolio demo preserves the core product experience with fictional provider data, local discovery, availability details, and a preview of the introductory messaging workflow.
03 / Implementation & problem-solving
Building it also meant supporting it when real problems appeared.
- Responsive React interfaces for pet owners and service providers
- Registration, authentication, protected areas, profiles, and role-based behavior
- Local provider discovery, service filtering, privacy preferences, and direct messaging
- Supabase and PostgreSQL data integration with database policies
- Stripe membership workflows and Vercel deployment
- Production troubleshooting across registration, profiles, messaging, payments, data, and deployment
04 / What happened after launch
The product worked. The paid model needed stronger differentiation.
PawCircle launched as a real paid membership product. After launch, I found several free platforms already offering much of the same core value. I did not think continuing to charge people made sense without a stronger reason to choose PawCircle, so I closed the paid membership and refunded the members.
I kept the application online because the development work was substantial and still worth showing. The public version now uses fictional data and lets visitors explore the product without creating an account or entering payment information.