TitanFlow
I co-founded and built a mobile-first options flow platform for retail traders. Native iOS, real-time backend, zero paid acquisition. Acquired in 2023.
Retail traders needed institutional data. Nothing existed on mobile.
During the 2020-2021 retail trading boom, the tools traders needed - real-time options flow showing what institutional money was doing - were expensive, desktop-only, and built for professionals. Retail traders were making decisions on the go, from their phones, during market hours.
Nobody owned mobile options flow.
Help traders understand what's happening. Don't tell them what to buy.
The winning product would compress institutional-grade options activity into a mobile workflow fast enough to use during market hours. Data had to be real-time, the UI had to reduce decision time to seconds, and alerts had to turn passive monitoring into active workflows.
I built iOS-only when the common advice was web. The web space was crowded and mobile wasn't, so that's where I went. It worked because the users were already there.
A real-time options flow platform, native on iOS
TitanFlow shipped as a native iOS app with a backend built around real-time market data ingestion, options flow processing, and subscription management.
Mobile-first options flow, designed for quick scanning during market hours.
The primary surface was a live feed updating in real-time. Every entry showed ticker, expiration, strike, premium size, volume, call/put, sweep/block classification, and unusual activity flags. Users could filter by aggression level, expiration type, and contract characteristics.
The goal was straightforward: open the app and within seconds understand what institutional money was doing.
End-to-end. Frontend, backend, data pipeline.
I wrote approximately 80% of the iOS frontend in Swift, solo, without AI-assisted tools. First version live on the App Store in under 90 days. Everything built in-house: no third-party services for core functionality.
Frontend
Native Swift iOS app, mobile-first data surfaces, alerts, and trader workflows.
Backend
Real-time market data ingestion, subscription management, and options flow processing.
Data
Filtering, trend detection, unusual activity flags, dark pool processing, and snapshots.
Zero paid acquisition. Community was the channel.
The retail trading community lived on Discord and Reddit. Credibility in those spaces drove organic, high-intent growth. We seeded the beta through trading servers and subreddits. The positioning - democratizing institutional data for regular people - resonated.
I brokered partnerships with five trading groups and fintech-adjacent tools for cross-promotion and revenue sharing. Beta launched with over 1,000 signups by the next morning. First week after App Store launch: 50 paying customers.
Pricing tied to trader sophistication
The more actively someone traded, the more valuable real-time alerts, trend detection, and dark pool data became. Pricing mapped directly to that.
Free
Enough to understand the app and see the value of mobile options flow.
Pro
Real-time alerts, richer filters, and signals for active traders.
Elite
Dark pool data and advanced discovery surfaces for high-intent users.
Community
Distribution through trading groups where trust mattered more than ads.
Acquired in 2023
A private mid-sized trading firm approached us. They wanted the visualization libraries and UI - the way the data was designed and displayed. Rather than build their own, they bought ours. Acquired at approximately 10x monthly revenue.
Some Android users switched to iPhone to use TitanFlow. That kind of pull comes from a product feeling built for the person using it.
What this demonstrates
Lifecycle ownership
Discovery, definition, engineering, GTM, partnerships, and growth. Team of 12.
Technical depth
~80% of the iOS frontend in Swift. Distributed backend and real-time data pipeline.
Product judgment
Committed to iOS-only when consensus said web. Turned that constraint into a moat.
Execution speed
First commit to App Store in 90 days. Launch to acquisition in three years.