Mimo is a startup developing an app for learning to code available on Android and iOS. 100,000+ subscribers pay for the learning experience, enabling 25,000,000 of other to learn for free.

My time at Mimo

I joined Mimo as employee #14 as a course engineer, creating their course Kotlin and Android Development. Within my first two months there, the company strategy shifted from supporting multiple courses in programming to going all-in on web development.

The shift opened up opportunities to contribute to product changes on their mobile apps and I quickly found myself jumping back-and-forth between the curriculum team and a cross-functional team. My role shifted to diving deep into user research and analytics, allowing me to construct roadmaps and work with teams on execution to hit KPIs.

During my time at Mimo, I facilitated the launch/iteration of four major features that enable millions of beginners to learn web development on their platform today. Learning paths (shown above), daily challenges, gamified practice, and mobile projects.

My favorite learning from building Mimo

The key to building a startup is momentum in the right direction. To build momentum is tough but the more you can remove roadblocks for teams and clear up where they should be heading, the more your teammates can take care of things themselves.

A phrase I used at Mimo with the teams I worked with was “Never be the bottleneck”. The phrase still gets used at the startup today!

Here are some things that I facilitated at Mimo that built momentum:

• Organizing OKRs with the CEO and setting up Mixpanel/Metabase dashboards filled with KPIs for teams’ product areas.
• Architecting (and occasionally coding) changes to the learning management system and content packing, saving 2-4 developer days per sprint.
• Implemented a Basecamp-like development process that pushed as much product development ownership over to team members as I possibly could.

Tip Yourself is a savings app where users share the reasons why they're saving with a community. It became a Top 20 Finance app on the Apple App Store and was acquired by Earnin ($125M in funding).

Screenshots of the Tip Yourself app

My time at Tip Yourself

During college I created an app development business called Apps by Lukas, where I built apps for people starting startups. The original founders of Tip Yourself, Mike Lenz and Sam Rodriguez approached me at a networking event in Chicago, where they hired me to build an idea they had for helping people build a habit of saving money.

We started development right away with me focusing on the iOS app and another freelancer developing the backend.

When we launched, the iOS app became a Top 20 Finance App, got featured in Oprah magazine, and got 30,000+ downloads within three months of launching. Sam and Mike were so impressed with the results, they asked me to join as a co-founder, where I eventually also took over backend development.

Eventually, the app got bought by Earnin, a financial service that helps lower-income individuals get an advance on their paycheck.

My favorite learning from building Tip Yourself

I was 21 at the time when I built Tip Yourself and had always thought of highly-regulated areas, like banking, as something that was impossible to build something for.

It was amazing to develop a product that managed millions of dollars of people’s money and the experience gave me the confidence not to be afraid to tackle any kind of project. Much more is possible than you initially might think, if you’re willing to put in the time to find a way.