Blabu technology is for sale
Acquire Blabu technology
Our five-member product development team has spent two and half years developing a marketplace platform for an instant conversational
English practice. From the very beginning, we focused on building a robust product that will be able to handle thousands of calls a day from around the world and will comply with all legal requirements. The Covid-19 pandemic turned us in another direction, which in the end did not prove to be viable. We therefore decided to close Blabu.com down and offer the entire technology for further use.
Blabu in figures
20k calls
Blabu has successfully connected 20,000 real calls from around the world.
23k Hours
It took 23,000 hours of work and constant iterations to develop Blabu product and technology.
17k Users
Thousands of registered students and professionals were using Blabu.
Use of technology
Marketplace for Gig Economy
Connecting two parties, where one provides skills, advice or time to the other, who is willing to pay for these skills. Blabu was built for an international environment with different time zones and currencies, fulfilling the conditions of PSD2 for marketplaces.
Example:
Consulting, tutoring, various counseling services (coaching, psychotherapy, …), yoga, and fitness training.
Video call integration
If you already have a running application, you can easily add a video call and chat module connecting individual users.
Example:
Extending an existing discussion forum by consulting an expert online.
Booking systems
Blabu works as a booking system, where one party lists its availability and the other party books available times. Bookings may be charged at the same time. Blabu supports different time zones, different languages and different currencies.
Example:
A website featuring hairdressers gives customers an opportunity to book them and pay directly online.
Transactional portals
Blabu has a sophisticated system of transactions between individual users, fees for payment services, tax payments, etc. The entire system works with multiple currencies, can automatically convert them, and at the same time keep one basic currency for reporting.
Example:
Gig economy portal such as Fiverr or Upwork, where activities are ordered without a specific date and are paid exclusively online
Not sure if Blabu is the right fit for you? Contact us and we can talk about it.
How does Blabu work?
Marketplace
A marketplace enables users who provide services to meet people who want to pay for them. Blabu ensures order and uniform rules in these relationships. At the same time, Blabu is strictly an intermediary enabling professionals to provide their services, not the end service provider responsible for the delivered quality.
Clarity in transactions
Blabu collects payments for services from clients, deducts fees from the payment provider, deducts platform fees, and immediately deposits the rest on the professional's virtual account. Thanks to this setting, it fully complies with the strict conditions of the PSD2 directive.
International platform
Every aspect of Blabu takes into account the international environment. Blabu works with users' time zones and automatically translates them into local times. It can work with multiple languages and multiple currencies and automatically convert them.
Individual price lists
All professionals set their services and pricing. In addition, Blabu supports individual price settings according to individual clients. As a result, the same service can have different pricing and visibility for different clients.
Instant calls
Blabu is the only system that supports instant calls with no need to book in advance. The client calls the professional instantly without previous agreement, just as if making a regular phone call. At the same time, Blabu can combine instant calls with pre-booked calls.
In addition you get
Admin
The entire application has an administration system used by the internal team to set up and manage key entities, especially serving customer support activities.
Storybook
Our design is clearly structured and all elements are based on defined rules. We build on material design.
Wireframes
We have wireframes for the whole project with descriptions of logic behind all the functionalities. It is easy to understand the context and connections from the documentation.
Legal documentation
We will provide know-how and general terms of use for the proper functioning of marketplaces in an international environment. We've spent hundreds of hours with lawyers and tax advisors on this topic alone.
About the technology
Node.js, React, Google Cloud
Scalable platform is written in Node.js and run in Kubernetes in Google Cloud with the frontend written in React.
Infrastructure provides
Google Cloud Platform - two environments - production, staging
Gitlab - code repository, backups, orchestration, pipelines
Infrastructure tools
kubernetes - main component, container orchestration manager
terraform - tool for scripting and setup of infrastructure
sentry - monitoring and alerting (self hosted, can be in cloud)
grafana - visualization tool for infra dashboards
loki - log collection and analysis
prometheus - metrics collection, analysis and reporting/alerting
3rd-party tools
Twilio - video webrtc technology
Mailgun - e-mails
StitchData - ETL PostgresQL -> BigQuery
LogRocket - problem resolution / user session recording
Intercom - ad hoc popups, support chat
Architecture
Fully automatically scalable via Kubernetes/kops/GCP
GraphQL + REST based microservices exposed via Schema stitching
API first design - everything is exposed via GraphQL API with authorization layer
JWT based auth
Built on top of PostgreSQL/Redis
Timed events via delayed message queue or cron
Typescript
Mocha/Cypress/Jest tests everywhere
FE Analytics layer -> Google Tag Manager
Partial PWA support
Who are the founders?
Petr Kovacik
CEO
Petr started as a developer 20 years ago and has worked in many positions in the development of internet projects. He founded his first company 13 years ago and in 2017 he sold his last company Skrz.cz to British Secret Escapes. Petr has a master's degree in Management in IT from the University of Economics in Prague.
Tomas Strejcek
CTO
Tomáš is a Senior Software Engineer with 12+ years of experience in all positions in a software/product workflow. His experience includes working at iflix and Mall Group.
He loves to build challenging products composed of many technologies, learn new stuff and solve problems. His current passion is Nodejs.
Blabu recordings
We prepared several videos presenting the main scenarios and functionalities to facilitate a better understanding of the system complexity. There are, of course, many times more logic and gadgets in the application, which we have developed in several iterations during almost 2.5 years of work on the project.
Tutors
Signup for tutors and tour through their interface.
Students / Clients
Signup for students/clients and tour through their interface.
Call booking and cancellation
A student books and then cancels the call.
Call invitation
A tutor suggests a call to a student.
Instant call
A student calls without a prior booking.
Booking cancellation
A student cancels a previously booked session.
Chat
The permanent chat between a tutor and a client.
Tutor's services
Tutor's service settings and price list
Tutor's Schedule
Tutor's availability setup for potential bookings.
Our offer?
We offer the entire program code, including additional documentation in the form of diagrams and wireframes. We offer initial launch in your Cloud and long-term advice in case of implementation ambiguities. Further development of the application will be fully in your control.
Code?
The program code will be fully in your control. You can freely modify it according to the needs of your product.
License?
The license is time unlimited for one specific project. Program code must not be reproduced/multiplied.
Team?
We only offer the initial implementation in your cloud. Subsequent development must be handled directly by your team. If you do not have your own development team, we recommend Ackee developers or DEVIX developers who know our technology.
Blabu?
The Blabu.com brand and domain are not intended to be part of the sale. If you are interested in this brand, please let us know.
