Jelly Services is the technology agency I started in 2021 with the goal of combining emerging technologies like blockchain and machine learning with solid, no-nonsense engineering practices I learned during my time in Germany. The idea stemmed from an experience I had over and over again — that technologies experiencing hype cycles are often misunderstood. Business leaders often get caught up in the buzz and the promise of big returns, while engineers might understand the technology, but miss the mark when it comes to the actual use case or the needs of the target audience.
Jelly aims to close this gap in understanding, and represents my core belief that technology is a tool that is ought to be used responsibly and sensibly. Our agency helps companies, startups, and projects bring digital products and experiences to life — products that make strategic sense for the client. We typically get involved when clients are considering the use of cutting-edge tech around blockchain for a new software product. From there, we take care of planning, architecting, designing, engineering, and executing the project from start to finish.
For each project I hire and assemble multi-disciplinary teams that take on the bulk of the executional workload such as UI/UX design, frontend/backend development, QA tasks, or sprint planning. While I still engage in specific development tasks that I find particularly interesting, like smart contract development, my primary role is to act as the interface between the client and my team, and architect the application. I work closely with clients to ensure we have a solid strategic business case, a clear set of requirements, and a comprehensive understanding of what the final product should accomplish, how it should function, and how all the components should come together.
This part of the process is often the most challenging, especially since clients — many of whom are C-level executives — usually are accustomed to thinking in broad strokes and find it difficult to pinpoint specifics. Moreover, it's at this step of the process where false conceptions about technologies such as machine learning usually have to be debunked, and instead of on the technology, get the focus of the client to be on the use-case, the user requirements and the strategic direction of the company. Having a background in both tech and business comes in very handy at this step.
Based on the requirements that were decided on during the discovery sessions, I then architect the application. This typically starts with translating the requirements into user journeys and then reverse-engineering the backend needs from those journeys.
At this point, I start to get a good overview of the functionalities the app will have to support, and the shape, volume and size of the data that will occur and will have to be stored. These factors guide decisions about the infrastructure — such as which database to use, whether the application should run on a blockchain, where caching might be necessary, whether to use gRPC or REST, and whether to opt for a monolithic or microservice architecture for the backend. Our guiding principle is simple: we don't use technology just because it's new or trendy. If a particular technology or pattern doesn’t offer a clear advantage, we won’t apply it. Just because something can run on blockchain doesn’t mean it should. And just because AI is an option doesn’t mean it’s the most economical, intuitive or ethical solution.
A great example of the kind of work I do at Jelly is Watt2Trade — the new venture from a big Mexican electricity conglomerate, and an attempt to democratize the access to the financial electricity markets. While this is not widely known, electricity is traded just like any other commodity on the financial markets. Every day, trading firms and companies heavily exposed to the electricity price hedge or bet on the price of their electricity using common financial instruments such as Futures and Options. Unfortunately, these markets aren't accessible to private consumers, primarily because they're controlled by central entities and market operators that impose significant entry barriers, such as costly licenses that can run into the thousands of dollars.
The founders of Watt2Trade, who have over 15 years of experience in the field of electricity trading, recognized the need to change this. With the global shift towards more unpredictable green energy, increasing price fluctuations, and a growing number of people participating in the markets not just as buyers but also as sellers of electricity through solar panels etc., they saw the importance of giving everyone access to the same financial instruments. This would empower individuals to protect themselves from volatile prices and take advantage of arbitrage opportunities on any electricity they produce and sell.
With this idea Watt2Trade approached us in the autumn of 2022 to begin talks about a collaboration. Their initial plans for how to implement such a trading platform were vague and at times wild, ranging from creating thousands of crypto coins to building an entirely new blockchain. Despite this, their vision for how the product would eventually help people was crystal clear. Eventually, through a series of discovery sessions and meetings in Mexico City, we managed to refine what kind of platform we had to build to have strategic fit. It needed to be an exchange allowing users to place financial bets in the form of options and futures on the electricity prices in different markets. It also needed to have low entry barriers: Placing trades should be possible with as little as 1-2$ of starting capital, trading for as little as 1 KWh of electricity. Lastly, the platform had to be self-governed and transparent. Watt2Trade didn't want to become another centralized entity controlling the flow of trading; they wanted to empower users to trade directly, without needing an intermediary.
This made clear that blockchain would be a key technology for this platform. Not because it was trendy (actually, by the time the project began, the hype around NFTs had faded, and crypto was in a "crypto winter" with significant price drops), but because the technology itself was the best way to satisfy requirements. Blockchain would enable peer-to-peer trading, keep costs low, and allow for trades with as little as $0.40 in capital. The Polygon PoS network was ultimately chosen for its low transaction cost, proven reliability, wide adoption, and familiarity with the common Ethereum ecosystem.
In March 2023, Jelly officially began development on the Watt2Trade Exchange. We followed the process I mentioned earlier, and by May 2024, we had launched a closed beta within budget and on time. As of July 2024, the platform is in open beta and is being actively stress-tested on the Polygon production network. An official launch is planned for Q4 2024. You can check out the live exchange here (not optimized for mobile).
This development project was one of the largest I’ve tackled with Jelly so far, with a budget around the seven figures and a team of over 20 talented freelance developers, designers, and QA engineers that I hired and onboarded into multiple teams, each one led and coordinated by myself.
The duality of managing and leading such a project and such teams, while also being responsible for all technical decisions regarding app & infrastructure architecture is what's the most challenging, but also the most enriching about having my own company. It’s always an incredible experience, and the growth and learning that come from it make the deadline stress and occasional late nights absolutely worth it. Each client and project is unique, and over time, the lessons learned from previous projects build up as you work across different industries, markets, and countries.
