me&u / Mr Yum2020-2021Co-founder & CTO
Shipping a COVID contact-tracing product from zero to acquisition
Built during the 2020 lockdowns, VenueSafe served more than 1M Australians and was acquired by me&u six months in.
- 1M+
- Australians served
- 6 months
- Idea to acquisition
- 2021
- Acquired by me&u
- 3 repos
- Product stack
Context
Venues in 2020 needed a practical way to collect visitor details and stay open under public-health rules. It had to be fast, reliable, and obvious to operators and customers with no patience for software.
What I Built
I built the whole stack: a Craft and Vue marketing site, an Express and MariaDB backend, a React client, Stripe billing, and analytics dashboards. Ship the useful version, then handle the edge cases as they arrive.
Outcome
More than 1M Australians used VenueSafe, and me&u acquired it six months after the idea. I joined as a senior engineer, helped scale the platform to 15M+ users, and supported the US launch from Austin.
FAQ
VenueSafe was a COVID contact-tracing platform for Australian venues and hospitality businesses.
VenueSafe was acquired by me&u, formerly Mr Yum, after going from idea to acquisition in six months.
Matthew Blode joined me&u as a senior software engineer, helped scale the platform to 15M+ users globally, and supported the US expansion from Austin, Texas.