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 110,000 users track 14 million books and log 320,000 hours of reading time.
Now we're looking for a Product 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:
- Strong experience with some or all of our stack (SwiftUI, TypeScript, Postgres, AI)
- Worked at <10 person startup recently
- Can demo at least one quality app you've built
Nice-to-haves:
- Shipped multiple native iOS apps to the App Store
- Ex-Founder or Founding Engineer
- Can work in-person in SF 2 days/week
- Can spend hours listing all the things you want to improve about the app
- 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
FAQ
- Stack? SwiftUI (MVVM, Structured Concurrency, @Observable), Supabase, GraphQL, TypeScript, Next.js, Vercel
- Compensation range? 140-160k cash, 0.4-0.6% equity, US health insurance
- 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
