Parthean

Alex | Last updated: January 2, 2023

Parthean is a startup that focuses on affordable personal finance education and automation. I worked there for about a year building consumer technology from scratch before leaving to pursue other goals. During my time at Parthean, I was responsible for contributing to and maintaining four codebases:

• Mobile Application (React Native, Expo, TypeScript, Firebase, Google Cloud Functions)
• Node.js Environment (Google Cloud Functions)
• In-House Desktop Coaching Tool (React, TypeScript)
• Digital Marketing Web Assets (React, TypeScript)

Mobile Application

My biggest contribution to the company was rebuilding much of the mobile application from scratch—given the pace at which startups move, I doubt much of that original work, if any, still exists in the application.

The technologies I used included:

• React Native (TypeScript) for the application’s frontend interface and state management.
• Google Firestore for backend data storage of educational content, user data, and user financial information.
• Node.js and Google Cloud Functions for our backend to interface with APIs such as Plaid via webhooks to update data and process errors

Features

Using these tools, I built features such as:

• Bank Account Connections (Plaid Integration)
  • Used Plaid Link and OAuth to integrate a streamlined login experience so end-users could authenticate and permission financial data with the Parthean app.
  • Used Google Cloud Functions to set up listeners to receive Plaid Webhook notifications to ensure our backend database contained up-to-date user financial information.
• Financial Toolkit
  • Net Worth—Users could see their current net worth, as well as their net worth over time in numerical and graphical form
  • Budgeting—Users could classify their spending using Plaid’s transaction data categories or creating custom categories (or a mix of both) and allot different portions of their income to the spending categories they choose to use
  • Transactions—Users could see and update their transaction history
  • Investments—Users could see their investments in graph form
• Educational Content
  • We served modules (series of videos surrounding a financial topic) to teach financial literacy
  • Built visual progress trackers so users could keep track of modules they’ve completed and videos they’ve watched within a module

Performance Improvements via Refactoring State Management

I performed component refactorization to improve app speed performance and reduce redundant code:

• Migrated the bulk of our state management to Redux.
• Reorganized Context wrappers to eliminate many unnecessary rerenders.

Coaching Dashboard

I built an in-house desktop application for coaches to interact with users via chat, see user financial information (with user permission) to make better recommendations, and gauge user activity/engagement. The tool also allowed coaches to manage in-app content—upload videos, create/edit/delete modules and create/edit/delete “playbooks” (personalized educational tracks containing modules and to-dos) for users.

Product Marketing

I was also responsible for building some of the tooling and assets for digital marketing.