case study
Sporgates
Co-founder & CTO
Sports community and business platform: discovery, facility booking, squads, leagues, and organizer tooling built as a full-stack product with a documented API and a modern web app.
Problem
Athletes and organizers were stuck between spreadsheets, phone calls, and disconnected apps. There was no single place to discover sessions, book venues, run squads, or grow a sports business with a consistent product experience.
Constraints
- Small core team: needed clear API contracts so frontend and future integrations could move in parallel.
- Domain models (sports, facilities, memberships, leagues) evolve quickly—schema flexibility mattered early.
- Security boundaries between public marketing, authenticated app, and role-based features had to be explicit.
Decisions
- Spring Boot 3 with REST and OpenAPI/Swagger for discoverable, versionable endpoints and faster partner onboarding.
- JWT-based auth with refresh patterns and Spring Security for role-based access across domains.
- MongoDB for document-oriented entities that change with product iteration, with Atlas-ready deployment assumptions.
- Next.js frontend with a split between marketing hosts and the app host to simplify cookies, routing, and SEO.
Impact
- Delivered a multi-domain API (auth, users, sports, facilities, squads, leagues, activities, and related collections) documented for consumers.
- Owned architecture from database design through CORS, error handling, and integration with the product roadmap.
- Enabled a single narrative for the company: one platform for players, venues, and organizers.
Stack
Next.jsTypeScriptSpring BootJavaMongoDBRedisJWTOpenAPI