Phrasing is a language learning app built by a polyglot, for polyglots. It was designed to be language agnostic, and currently fully supports over 80 languages. It brings a beautiful, simple, and addictive [1] learning experience to languages big and small, and helps users learn 2-10x more in the same amount of time [2].
The tech stack is a ClojureScript PWA on the front end, and an Elixir umbrella application on the backend. The data processing happens in Broadway pipelines, and are horizontally scalable with FLAME. All of the data is stored in Postgres, and most of the communication between the client and server happens with a custom local-second sync engine à la Linear.app.
The company is bootstrapped and bespoke. There’s no investors, there’s no AI generated code, no shadcdn UIs. I miss the days of the early internet, and acutely feel the mass enshittification of the web. I’m really trying to do something different with the experience as well as the business, all in hopes to bring back a little bit of that wonder that was so prevalent in the days of the early internet.
The app is all working, the experience is great, and the onboarding was just finished. I’ve been using the app now to successfully learn 18 languages [3] and it’s truly a joy to use. Just finishing up the new site [4] after feedback from our last launch and getting ready for more launches [5]. The new video has been getting some pretty rave reviews and is a good gentle introduction to the app [6]
For me, this app is a dream app. This tech stack is a dream tech stack. This company is a dream company. It’s hard to believe I’m the only one these would all be true for.
I’m looking for someone who believes in the product, mission [6], and tech to come in and help me turn this functioning application into something truly great. No experience is required — just a dedication for your craft, and the willingness to take a chance in something you believe in.
If you feel that this post was written for you, please write me a well written personalized CV to hn at phrasing dot app. Low effort applications will not receive a response regardless of your CV.
[1]: https://phrasing.app/blog/humane-srs [2]: https://phrasing.app/blog/10x [3]: https://phrasing.app/blog/language-log-000 [4]: https://phrasing.app/next [5]: https://vimeo.com/1123956044 [6]: https://phrasing.app/blog/mission
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Can you handle projects that seem unsexy and uncool but are actually incredibly gratifying and great businesses? Read on. We’re building software to help small manufacturing firms ($10 - $20MM in revenue) build things with higher quality and speed. Help us help small firms compete against the big guys by delivering manufacturing more consistently and with higher quality.
Three pilot customers/design partners to start working with, on both sides of the border.
The company is not VC backed and probably won’t be for a long time. Good wages, lots of work. Good people. Not a lot of bullshit.
Us: Highly technical founding team with track record of success. Tiny tech team, large manufacturing team.
You: True full-stack. You enjoy shipping features, not code. You keep things simple. The role is “founding engineer”: you must be ok with a tiny team and working mostly by yourself.
Stack: Elixir.
Email me. sebastianv@gmail.com