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I'm Charles,a Technical Partner for Startups

I turn ideas and domain knowledge from non-technical founders into shipped products

I specialize in technical strategy, system architecture, and full-stack & mobile app development

Charles Chen

An Owner's Mindset

I co-founded two startups and led a third, taking them from idea to market — so I've had to live with my own technical decisions, including the expensive ones.

That changes how I work with clients. I ask what the business actually needs before scoping, tell founders what's worth building now and what can wait, and explain the trade-offs in plain terms rather than jargon.

I've worked with teams across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, across design, marketing, and engineering.

Clients

Building WithFounders

I work with founders and domain experts to turn business needs and domain knowledge into technical direction and shipped products — from architecture through hands-on building.

Writing Process Visibility Extension for Teachers

Ed-tech · New York

Revision History is a Chrome extension that shows teachers how a student's work was actually written — replaying the document from first keystroke to final draft, rather than guessing at AI use with a detection score. Used by 200,000+ teachers.

On a 3-person team, built two products from zero: slide replay for Google Slides and Byline, which lets students use AI openly while giving teachers visibility into the process. Designed the architecture, reverse-engineered undocumented data structures, and built the pipelines behind both.

Revision History landing page: See How Your Students Actually Write in Google Docs & Slides

ESG Reporting App

ESG · Taipei

Greeni helps companies measure and report their environmental impact.

Worked with the team to turn ESG domain knowledge and product needs into product logic and technical structure. Rebuilt the frontend around reusable patterns and a clearer architecture, so a small team could ship and validate changes quickly instead of fighting the codebase.

AI Travel Booking Agent

Travel · San Francisco

Voy lets travelers book trips by talking to an AI agent instead of filling out search forms.

Built the mobile app end to end — conversational UI, backend, and agent integrations — on a React Native and Next.js monorepo with a custom design system.

Voy Travel landing page with the tagline Your AI Travel Agent Is Here

Automated Price-List Processing System

Agriculture · Netherlands

A leading vegetable trading company in Europe manually processed daily price lists from suppliers in various formats (PDFs, emails, images), resulting in inefficiencies and high operational costs.

I independently designed the architecture and built an OCR-powered system to automate parsing, processing, and structuring data for direct business use, eliminating manual entry inefficiencies.

Rainbow International automated price list processing system

Contactless Guest & Operations App

Hospitality · Japan

Hokkaido Track, a luxury ski resort in Japan, required a contactless solution to uphold its high-end service quality as guests avoided direct interaction during the pandemic.

I transformed hotel operation manuals into automated digital workflows, streamlining guest requests and staff coordination. I designed the entire system architecture, UX and UI, and built an interactive Figma prototype for guest and operator apps.

Contactless guest and operations app for a luxury ski resort

E-Commerce Platform for a Heritage Brand

Food & Beverage · Taiwan

Taiwan-New Beef Noodle, a 40+ year-old brand in Taiwan had to pivot during the pandemic lockdown as in-person dining was no longer possible.

I set up an e-commerce platform to sell ready-to-cook products, enabling online orders with seamless inventory, logistics, and payment integration. This allowed the restaurant to continue operations and reach new customers.

E-commerce platform for the Taiwan-New Beef Noodle brand

Ventures

BuildingMy Own

Through my own journey of self-discovery, I’ve been driven to help others embrace their authentic selves — their emotions, talents, and true worth.

I built three ventures around that mission, and now bring what I learned to the products I build with founders.

Emocean: Gamified Emotion Visualization App

2024–2025

CEO

Emocean helps users understand and accept their emotions through meditation, self-reflection, and a gamified fish-raising system that visualizes emotions in an engaging way.

Led a 2-person team to design, develop, and launch the MVP in 3 weeks, releasing updates every 4 days based on user feedback.

Emocean app screens showing the gamified emotion visualization

Gigwok: Culture-Fit Job Matching Platform

2021–2024

CTO

Gigwok connects users and businesses through cultural fit and personality, enabling authentic self-expression via images and videos.

Led a 2-person dev team to build a complex platform featuring candidate matching, in-app payments, real-time messaging, and social media features. Scaled the platform to nearly 1,000 users.

Gigwok platform screens showing culture-fit job matching

AInimal: Pet Raising Dating App

2019–2020

COO, Product Manager

AInimal is an AI-powered dating app that matches users by personality, using virtual pets to create a playful, low-pressure chatting experience.

Led a cross-functional team of 10 across marketing, design, and engineering, growing the app to 2,000+ users. Raised USD $30K in funding and won multiple awards.

AInimal app screens showing the virtual pet dating experience

Skills

What I Build With

I see myself at the intersection of technology and human needs, leveraging technical skills to create meaningful solutions.

Experience
7+ years building complex applications and systems
Specialties
App & Backend Development, Architecture & Database Design
Core Systems
Payment & Subscription, E-commerce, Intelligent Matching, Real-Time Messaging, Social Media
Tech Stack
JavaScript, TypeScript, React, React Native, NodeJS, ExpressJS, MongoDB, AWS
Design
User Journey Mapping, Wireframing, Prototyping, Developer-Friendly UI

Outside the Work

PhotographySolo TravelCookingMeditationJournalingReadingRunningCoaching

Interested in collaborating?

Drop me a message

hi@charleschen.cc