Early products — Django marketplaces and ticketing

In one line: Before enterprise data work, I shipped two Django products — ticketing for small events and a surplus-food marketplace — to learn product flow, UX, and delivery with minimal stack.

Context

After TUVA, I wanted to practice web products with the same ownership mindset: sketch → build → put in front of users.

Why it was worth building

Both ideas tested whether simple flows could work for non-technical organisers and local businesses. The cost of inaction was guessing about commerce UX instead of learning from working software.

What I built

Digital ticketing (Django) — event creation, admin, payments, and responsive purchase flow for small organisers; prototypes in Sketch, implementation in Django and Bootstrap.

Food-surplus marketplace (Django) — Jönköping-focused MVP: eateries publish surplus windows; customers browse and collect in person; deliberately lean scope.

How it was adopted

Small-scale pilots with local participants; focus on validating flows rather than scale.

Effect

Foundational product sense — scoping, UX, and full-stack delivery — that later informed B2B platform evidence work and founder-led apps.

Where AI fits now

These cases predate the AI timeline, but the lesson persists: decide what is worth building before automating it. Today the same product discipline applies when choosing agent workflows or analytics investments.