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portfolio-bloom

Portfolio narrative for Bloom, "multi-tenant apprenticeship platform for African markets." Status: Live. Co-founded, engineering lead.

Key extractions

  • Thesis: apprenticeship programs in African markets run on WhatsApp groups and manual bank transfers. No structured cohort management, no scale.
  • Multi-tenancy: Supabase Row-Level Security (RLS) — data isolation at the database layer, not application.
  • Real-time: Supabase Realtime + PostgreSQL LISTEN/NOTIFY.
  • Payments: Paystack Split Payments API for auto apprentice→mentor payouts with platform fee extraction.
  • Key decision: RLS over app-level multi-tenancy — eliminates an entire class of data isolation bugs. Tradeoff: more complex SQL policies.
  • Key decision: Supabase over custom backend — speed over lock-in risk.
  • Hardest problem: onboarding went through 12 iterations to reach 70% completion. Users had varying technical literacy — every step had to work without a tutorial.
  • Outcome: 1,200+ users, 50+ live apprenticeship programs, 15+ partner orgs onboarded in 3 months.