iPyxel Creations

Dear Candidate.

I am a non-technical, solo founder of a bootstrapped, profitable early stage SaaS startup targeting the high traffic, data-heavy performance advertising market.

You don't hear that combination every day, and for a long time, being non-technical, I just didn't think I could participate in the creation of a startup heavy in technology that I so passionately watched from the sidelines growing up.

Since launching our flagship product, Thrive, in October 2014, we have been growing an average of 17% month-over-month, and we are very profitable while still being very small, lean, and early-stage, with the company comprising essentially of 5 people (myself and 4 full time engineers) with support from various contractors with smaller roles.

With a high net profit margin, the time has come to reinvest the profits by hiring more (this is where you come in!) so we can progress our product and company to the next level.

But, this is not a story of overnight success (not that we've "made it" already) but rather one that I hope conveys the true meaning of hard work and perseverance.

Over 4 years ago, I had a cushy 6-figure job in private equity. Having come from nothing as a child immigrant, that was the dream my parents had for me.

6 months into that job, I realized that even if I had to give up everything I had worked for up to that point, I was going to try to found a software company.

I started saving everything I could from my job and started working nights and weekends. I downsized to the shittiest apartment I could find on Craigslist within range of work (~$600/mo). Every morning when I left my front door, I would be greeted by the garbage cans as the unit was in the back alley of an old building.

A little over 3 years ago, I quit that cushy job so I had no way back. With my savings in hand and a desperate determination, I started building iPyxel full time.

It would take another 2 years before our latest cutting edge product, Thrive, was launched. Those initial days were long periods of me sitting in front of a computer in a shitty apartment grinding away, as thousands of dollars shipped out of my bank account every month. If it weren't for David, now VP of Engineering, we would not have made it.

Meticulously, block by block, we built a couple of other products before then that sustained us. And this past year, we are seeing the fruits of our labor, but we are still early stage as our dreams are much grander.

The illustration is to convey our philosophy and mindset. If you are looking for a VC-funded (many times unprofitable) startup where there's free food, laundry, ping pong tables, team outings, launch parties, and other distracting perks, this is not the place for you. Everything we do is precise and with purpose.

Our team bonding comes with progress. It comes with contribution to our product and mission. It comes with everyone's self-starting attitudes to give your whole, best self to a cause for as long as you've contracted yourself to do it.

Half joking, but I think this old famous ad describes it very well:

The only thing I would add is that women are equally welcome on this journey :)

About the Product

iPyxel builds demand-side technology for the performance marketing industry, serving the needs of agencies, affiliate media buyers, and advertisers in programmatic advertising, specifically in tracking and optimizing purchased traffic.

Thrive is a complex, high-traffic, data-heavy, globally distributed product that is used just about every single day (even weekends) by our users. It is an application that they most likely keep open in a tab at all times as this is the most crucial platform these very data-driven media buyers use to run their business.

Thrive serves 3 primary functions:

1. Conversion tracking & optimization: Users can track the ROI of paid media campaigns from any traffic source and fine optimal conversion funnels by split testing various landing pages and offers.

2. Meta data tracking and reporting: Data for every single click is logged, such as location, browser, operating system, device information, and any traffic source-specific data users pass in, and users can run complex, multi-variate drill-down reports to find the exact permutations that are performing the best.

3. Traffic distribution system: Through various filters and redirection rules, users can direct traffic to specific funnels based on each click’s meta data. For example, users can create tailored funnels based on location, device, and any other data point. Full control of traffic distribution allows users to buy traffic in bulk at lower prices and then monetize the traffic themselves.

Thrive’s cloud service is run entirely on AWS. For Thrive users, redirection speeds and overall performance is crucial. Thrive is able to process large amounts of data in real time with low latency through our proprietary technology stack.

We are working on completing our cutting edge high-availability, auto-scaling infrastructure that utilizes all 9-10 of Amazon's data centers for global traffic coverage.

If you're someone who is looking for (and is excited by) big engineering challenges, this is for you!

About Our Hiring

Every single person who starts with us I hope to work with permanently. There's nothing more I want than to have you, the dependable, motivated, and hard working person that you are, to work and grow with our same dynamic team for all future battles to come.

We want you to learn and to improve your skills over time so you become more and more valuable.

There's no best way than to simply start working on a contractual basis (hourly or weekly pay) on real problems and production-level code. You'll start on simpler bugs and features, and hopefully, work up to solving our hardest problems.

Two of us are based in Los Angeles area, but you can work remote from anywhere in the US, Canada or even South America, as long as our working hours more or less line up.

Future Prospects

The potential market size for our product to grow into is enormous. There are a ton of needs in the space that are going unmet. Digital advertising is growing faster than the technologies and tools available to automate all of the work involved.

The products simply need to be built out at high quality. Our goal is to build out our company into a highly efficient engineering organization to dominate this sector of advertising tracking and performance optimization.

A potential acquisition is possible at any time as we've already received 2 term sheets, neither of which we have moved forward with. This is indicative of the opportunities in the future.

I hope you'll be a part of this journey with us! Please give us a shout.

Sincerely,

Tom Fang

Founder & CEO