We want to be the first thing one billion people think of when they think of books.
We've started with a high-craftsmanship native iOS app to track and discover books, targeting the 20 million Americans who read a book a week and the hundreds of millions who aspire to read more.
Since launching on Christmas Eve, we've had 100,000 users track 13 million books and log 250,000 hours of reading time.
Now we're looking for an SF-based iOS Engineer to help us win an Apple Design Award.
If "craftsmanship" and "books" resonates, send a description of some things you've worked on to paul@margins.app
You
Must-haves:
- Has shipped multiple native iOS apps to the App Store
- Can work in-person in SF 2 days/week
- Values collaborative product design
Nice-to-haves:
- Can contribute to web, design, or backend
- Has worked at an early-stage startup recently
- Can spend hours listing all the things you want to improve about the app
- Has founded a company before
- Tends to stick around for multiple years
- Is often described as "obsessive" about your work
- Can name at least 3 books that changed your life
Us
We are...
Between us, we've…
- Read 5,000+ books
- Founded 5 companies ($35m+ raised)
- Led product, software, and AI at startups that have raised $300m+
- Written open source Swift libraries with 5,000+ stars
- Built social apps, AI apps, and a Kindle competitor (Daylight)
- Studied CS, Education, and Business at Stanford
Advisors and investors include the founder of Goodreads, the Head of Marketing at Notion, the founder of Twitch, book influencers, and authors of books that have sold millions of copies.
The Work
- Shipping production features that will reach millions of users
- Improving the craftsmanship of the app through performance engineering, handling edge cases, and caring for little details
- Making sure the same bugs don't happen twice through good test coverage
- Incorporating the latest Apple platform features
FAQ
- Stack? SwiftUI (local-first, MVVM, Structured Concurrency, @Observable), Supabase, GraphQL, TypeScript, Next.js, Vercel, Python
- Compensation range? 120-160k cash, 0.5-0.8% equity, US health insurance
- In-person? 2 days/week in-person in SF
- Runway? 3+ years
- Monetization strategy? Subscriptions, book sales, publishing
- Product references? Spotify, Duolingo, Netflix, Day One, Instagram Stories
- Why now? LLMs, BookTok, self-publishing, creator economy, enshittification of socials
- Books recs? Gideon the Ninth, Braiding Sweetgrass, Blindness
