Proof point → Connecting founders to angels, VCs, and private equity is the heart of every startup ecosystem. I didn’t theorize that connection - I built it as a product.
🩻 Problem
Startup fundraising is gatekept by networks. Founders outside Lagos - let alone outside Nigeria’s big cities - don’t know who invests in their stage and sector, or how to reach them. The mission, stated in the API’s own README: democratize startup fundraising.
🔨 Solution
TheInvestorDirectory - a searchable, paywalled directory of angels and VCs, shipped as an entire business across six repositories:
Architecture Overview
- API (TypeScript/Express/Sequelize/PostgreSQL) - an investor model with ~25 fields (verified contact emails, key people, social links), Google/Facebook/LinkedIn OAuth plus JWT, Stripe subscription lifecycle including cancellation-flow emails, AWS SES, rate limiting, and a CSV bulk-import pipeline that preloads the investor dataset into Postgres.
- Paywall enforced at the type level - a
ModifiedAttributesForFreeUserstype masks premium fields for free-tier users in the data model itself, not just the UI. - Frontend (React/Vite/Tailwind/shadcn) - storefront, checkout with Stripe Elements, profile and subscription management, SEO head/sitemap; the production frontend carries 286 commits and three deploy environments (dev/staging/prod).
- Waitlist funnel - a six-step application form (contact → business profile → funding needs → traction → materials → segment) persisting to Google Sheets via Apps Script: zero-backend lead capture.
- Support desk - a white-labeled Chatwoot (Rails 7 + Vue) deployment, rebranded as TIDSupport.
- Growth stack in the API itself - HubSpot, ConvertKit, Bitly, Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics, Slack webhooks, Sentry - marketing automation as engineering.
Business completeness
The repo ships what most side projects never write: Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Cookie Policy, a Data Processing Agreement, FAQs, and internal marketing/customer-success/legal planning notes.
📜 Philosophy
Ship a whole business, not a repo. Buy the commodity layer (UI scaffolds, Chatwoot, Sheets), hand-build the differentiating layer (paywall, billing, data model, ingestion). Legal and compliance documents are part of the product, not an afterthought.
🎓 Key learnings
- The full subscription-SaaS surface: OAuth, JWT, Stripe lifecycle, dunning emails, tier-based data masking.
- Bulk financial-data pipelines: CSV → validated Postgres records at directory scale.
- Operating open-source infrastructure (Rails/Chatwoot) alongside a custom TypeScript stack.
- What investor-readiness data actually looks like - the waitlist’s traction-metrics step is a founder-diligence form in miniature.
📈 Output & impact
- A 25,000+ investor dataset productized behind a working paywall (the dataset figure is the repo’s own documented claim).
- Six repositories spanning API, two frontends, two waitlist funnels, and a support platform - built and iterated solo, March–August 2025.
🌍 Why this matters
Access to Capital · Platforms & Registries. Founder↔investor matching is the connective tissue of any startup ecosystem, and a verified directory with eligibility tiers is the same machine as any serious registry. I have built the directory, the matching funnel, the data pipeline, and the compliance documents once already - for whoever needs it next, the lessons come priced in.
🚀 Hire me
Building a directory, marketplace, or capital-access product? Let’s talk → · See also: RFX-core · The thesis