Tim Brandin — Founder & CTO | Product Builder

About

Startup founder and full-stack developer with 15+ years of experience taking products from zero to production. Built and operated a matchmaking SaaS platform over 8 years as the sole technical founder — owning everything from product strategy, architecture, and infrastructure to UX, algorithms, hiring, and customer relationships. Three-time co-founder. M.Sc. in Interaction Design from Chalmers. I don't just write code — I build businesses around technology.

15+

Years experience

Co-founder

Years as CTO

npm packages

Expertise

Founder & Business

Product StrategyBusiness Model DesignSaaS PricingGo-to-MarketNegotiationIP StructuringFundraisingInvestor RelationsPartnershipsTeam BuildingFinancial ModelingGDPR ComplianceBoard Communication

Technical

JavaScript / TypeScriptNode.jsReactReact NativeNext.jsGatsbyGraphQLMeteorDockerKubernetesElasticsearchAWSVercelMongoDBPostgreSQLAI-native (Claude Code)LLM IntegrationSSEInteraction DesignFigma

Experience

2018 – 2026 · 8 years

CTO & Co-founder

Relate (Valuesmatch AB) — Stockholm

Sole technical founder of a matchmaking platform connecting thousands of users through professional matchmakers. Built and maintained >95% of the entire codebase while co-driving product strategy, pricing, partnerships, and business development. Architected the complete platform from scratch: REST API, SSE real-time layer, React admin, React Native app, matching algorithms, Docker microservices.

Node.jsReactReact NativeGatsbyMongoDBElasticsearchDockerGraphQLSSEAWS

2015 – 2025 · 10 years

Platform Developer & DevOps (part-time)

Selfleaders (Oneki AB) — Gothenburg

Built the Selfleaders platform as a consultant during the Findwise era, then continued operating and maintaining it part-time alongside Relate for 7+ years. Responsible for deployment, infrastructure, and ongoing platform development. Also built SpaceTranslate as their translation management solution, still in production use.

MeteorNode.jsReactKubernetesDockerMongoDB

2017 – 2020 · 3 years

Co-founder

PinPortGo / SpaceChop — Gothenburg

Started as PinPort (Airbnb for boat moorings), pivoted to PinPortGo (Instagram for boaters, published on App Store), then repurposed into SpaceChop — an open-source image processing service used in production by IGDB and Relate. Also built SpaceTranslate, a translation management SaaS still in production use by Selfleaders. Co-founded with Herman Bynke (50/50), team of 3 developers.

Node.jsTypeScriptReactReact NativeGraphQLMongoDBDockerAWS S3

2013 – 2018 · 5 years

Full-Stack Developer & Interaction Designer

Findwise AB / Studio Interact — Gothenburg

Worked at Findwise (enterprise search consultancy) while running Studio Interact (own consultancy) in parallel. Built web applications, search solutions, and real-time apps. Organized Meteor meetups in Gothenburg at the Findwise office.

Node.jsReactMeteorDrupalGraphQLElasticsearch

2013

Developer

Happiness — Stockholm

Relocated to Stockholm for a short-deadline project with Viasat. Built the TV guide and live show listings for their multi-language website.

Earlier

Developer — Wunderkraut

2012–2013 · Gothenburg · Drupal, agile team lead

Verification Engineer — Ericsson

2009–2010 · Mölndal · SOS 112 platform (CoordCom)

Freelance — Sypreme

2011–2015 · Gothenburg · Sole proprietorship

Wagon Commander, CV90

2005–2006 · Swedish Armed Forces

Speaking & Conferences

Future of Web Apps

London, 2015

“Discover Meteor. Can it be a Future CMS?”

Future Insights Live

Las Vegas, 2015

“Discover Meteor”

Meteor HQ Meetup

San Francisco

Presented at Meteor headquarters

Meteor Devshop

2014 & 2015

Official community demo events

Worldwide Meteor Day

Gothenburg, 2014

Organized and presented as Meteor-Gothenburg captain

Workshop: Building Slack

slides.com

Live-coded a Slack clone with Meteor

19,000+ views

Open Source & Community

124

Public repos

320+

Stars

npm packages

blaze-react

★ 204 stars

React templating for Meteor, bridging Blaze and React ecosystems

SpaceChop

Open-source · npm

On-the-fly image processing service for web and mobile

tracker-component

npm package

Reactive React components for Meteor's Tracker system

Community

2014–2018

Meteor meetup organizer in Gothenburg. Drupal contributor. Engineers Without Borders volunteer.

Education

M.Sc., Interaction Design

Chalmers University of Technology

2010 – 2012

Thesis at inUse AB: Qualitative study of personas in smaller web projects. Built a browser-based persona creation tool with SVG editor.

B.Sc., Computer Science & Engineering

Chalmers University of Technology

2006 – 2012

Thesis: Built an Automatic Guided Vehicle using Java, C++, Arduino, and laser navigation.