--- title: The Story of Building the SeaPeople App | daily.dev description: Jean-Michel Lemieux, former CTO of Shopify and engineering leader at Atlassian, shares the story of building SeaPeople — a social app for boaters described as... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-story-of-building-the-seapeople-app-chd6tqyy8 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Story of Building the SeaPeople App | daily.dev og:description: Jean-Michel Lemieux, former CTO of Shopify and engineering leader at Atlassian, shares the story of building SeaPeople — a social app for boaters described as... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-story-of-building-the-seapeople-app-chd6tqyy8 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/CHD6tqYy8.png og:image:alt: The Story of Building the SeaPeople App og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Story of Building the SeaPeople App **[Software Mansion](https://daily.dev/sources/swmansion)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Jean-Michel Lemieux, former CTO of Shopify and engineering leader at Atlassian, shares the story of building SeaPeople — a social app for boaters described as 'Strava for boaters.' He discusses running a million-user app with just two developers, why React Native and Expo were the tech stack of choice, the value of avoiding overplanning, and the difference between giving developers tasks versus missions. The conversation covers startup philosophy, choosing development partners, and how small teams can move fast. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Quest Journal \#1 — The journey of shipping an app I don’t know how to build](https://daily.dev/posts/the-quest-journal-1-the-journey-of-shipping-an-app-i-don-t-know-how-to-build-y7z4d91pc) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [From React Web to Native in One Week](https://daily.dev/posts/from-react-web-to-native-in-one-week-zxr4npbt3) · Expo Blog · 62 upvotes · 3 comments --- Tags: [#startup](https://daily.dev/tags/startup), [#mobile](https://daily.dev/tags/mobile), [#react-native](https://daily.dev/tags/react-native) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-story-of-building-the-seapeople-app-chd6tqyy8) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Story of Building the SeaPeople App","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-story-of-building-the-seapeople-app-chd6tqyy8","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-story-of-building-the-seapeople-app-chd6tqyy8"},"datePublished":"2026-08-02T07:15:36.798Z","dateModified":"2026-08-02T07:40:00.620Z","description":"Jean-Michel Lemieux, former CTO of Shopify and engineering leader at Atlassian, shares the story of building SeaPeople — a social app for boaters described as...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/14bf0e779119e028b26139a11e11590e?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/14bf0e779119e028b26139a11e11590e?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Software Mansion","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Software Mansion","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--sOx0vaVZ--/f_auto,q_auto/v1785654908/logos/swmansion?_a=BAMAMicg0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/swmansion"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-story-of-building-the-seapeople-app-chd6tqyy8","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"startup,mobile,react-native","timeRequired":"PT5M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Software Mansion","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/swmansion"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The Story of Building the SeaPeople App"}]} ```