Grayola
B2B design-as-a-service platform. I was Tech Lead and owned the MVP, from architecture to the first payment.
- Role
- Tech Lead · MVP owner
- Period
- May 2025 — Oct 2025
- Stack
- Next.js · Supabase · Stripe · AWS · shadcn/ui
- Link
- grayola.io ↗
Demo with sample data, recreated from the product.
01 — The context
Companies need design every week, but hiring an in-house team is slow and expensive.
Grayola solves it with a monthly credit subscription: the company submits a design request (a brief) and a team of designers delivers it. The goal was to go from a validated idea to a product that could charge, take requests and deliver them.
02 — What I did
The whole MVP, working directly with the founders.
- The full-stack architecture on Next.js and Supabase
- Authentication and per-organization permissions
- Credit-based subscriptions on Stripe, with recurring billing
- The brief workflow: submission, tracking and delivery
- Service catalog and project management
03 — Key decisions
Database, auth and storage in one place
With a small team, Supabase covered everything without running our own infrastructure, and permissions live in the database.
Stripe as the source of truth
Credits update from Stripe events, so the balance never depends on what the browser says.
An MVP that charges from day one
I prioritized the full loop (pay, request, receive) over any detail: validating the model was what mattered.
04 — Outcome
I took the MVP from zero to production.
My first time as Tech Lead: shaping the roadmap with the founders, choosing the architecture and shipping a product that charges and operates.