HeyFam: Friends & Family Sync
Re-engineering the synchronization engine for a contact organizer app featured on Germany's Shark Tank, securing €150,000 in funding.
Project Overview
HeyFam was designed for European clients to bring families closer together by providing a structured, secure digital space to organize personal relationships, set call reminders, schedule family events, and automate gift selection.
The Challenge
With users connecting from different countries with varying network speeds, the primary challenge was implementing an offline-first synchronization engine. If a user updated a family calendar or contact details offline in a train or basement, the local changes had to merge seamlessly with the cloud database once connection was restored—without creating data conflicts or blocking the UI.
Our Engineering Approach
Our engineering team restructured the data flow to use a client-side lightweight SQLite storage layer on mobile (React Native) coupled with a message-queue sync processor in the Node.js backend.
- Custom conflict-free replicated data types (CRDT) to auto-merge changes.
- Optimized JSON schemas to reduce network payloads by 60%.
- Web-based gift search catalog using clean static generation to index results fast.
Shark Tank Success
The technical execution and smooth UX of the prototype played a central role in the product's pitch on Germany's Shark Tank reality startup show (Die Höhle der Löwen), helping the founder close a €150,000 investment.