Building Launch, a coaching platform to help fresh grads get hired.
Innovation Labs needed a full product built end to end — sign-up and coach matching, portfolio building, payments, and scheduling — for Launch, a platform that pairs fresh graduates with career coaches.
Client
Innovation Labs
Product
Launch Career Services
Role
Full-stack developer
Innovation Labs had a clear vision for Launch: a platform where fresh graduates could build a professional portfolio — profile, executive summary, resume, and introduction video — and get matched with a qualified coach to help them break into the job market. That vision needed a real, working product: accounts and roles, a guided portfolio builder, coach discovery and booking, and payments, all shipped as one coherent build rather than a stitched-together prototype.
Launch is a single-page React application deployed on AWS Amplify, backed by a Node.js API running on AWS Lambda. Amplify handles hosting, CI deploys, and authentication with role-based access control, so students and coaches sign into the same platform but see entirely different flows from the moment they land.
Two third-party services are wired directly into the core journey rather than bolted on afterward: Stripe handles payments at the point a student books a coach, and Calendly handles the actual scheduling handoff, so booking a session is one connected action instead of a redirect to a separate tool.
- 01Account creation with role-based sign-up (student vs. coach)
- 02Guided multi-step portfolio builder (profile, summary, resume, video)
- 03Coach discovery and selection flow
- 04Stripe payments and Calendly booking integration
- 05Full-stack build and deployment on AWS Amplify
AWS Amplify + React + Node.js + AWS Lambda + Stripe Payments + Calendly Scheduling + Role-Based Access Control
Built on AWS Amplify with React, Node.js, and AWS Lambda.
How we built it
Scope the product
We worked from the product vision to define the core flow: account creation, portfolio building, and coach matching as one connected journey.
Design the experience
We built a guided, multi-step portfolio builder — profile picture, professional title, executive summary, resume upload, and introduction video — designed to feel simple even though it asks for a lot.
Build to launch
We built the full stack on AWS Amplify with React and Node.js, wired up Stripe for payments and Calendly for coach bookings, and shipped it as a live, working product.
Support the next move
We stayed engaged after the initial build to refine the product, which is what Innovation Labs highlighted afterward — working as one team rather than a single handoff.
What actually got in the way
Making three integrations feel like one product
Stripe payments, Calendly scheduling, and Amplify authentication each come with their own redirect flows and states to reconcile. They had to disappear into a single connected journey rather than feel like three separate services stitched together behind one login.
A multi-step builder that had to feel simple despite asking for a lot
Profile photo, professional title, executive summary, resume upload, and an introduction video is a lot to ask a fresh graduate to complete in one sitting. The builder needed careful state persistence across steps so nobody lost progress and had to start over.
Two very different user roles sharing one platform
Students and coaches needed distinct onboarding, permissions, and views without maintaining two separate codebases or duplicating the account model underneath them.
<20 min
From sign-up to matched coach
Launch shipped as a complete, working product — account creation, the guided portfolio builder, coach matching, and payments all live together rather than assembled from disconnected pieces. Students go from sign-up to a matched coach in under 20 minutes, and Innovation Labs saw a significant lift in engagement after launch. That end-to-end ownership is what Innovation Labs called out afterward: a partner that held the whole product vision, not just a slice of the ticket.
“Naeem is an incredible developer and has a whole product mindset that was inspired to work with on my project. We worked as a team to bring the vision to life; if I could recommend higher I would.”
Justin Hooker
CEO, Innovation Labs
Own the full product, not a slice of the ticket — the flow across sign-up, portfolio building, coach matching, and payment only feels coherent if one team is responsible for how the pieces connect, not just each piece in isolation.
Multi-step forms live or die on state persistence. Treating each step as a real save point, not just a UI step, is what let students stop and resume the portfolio builder without losing work.
Staying engaged after launch caught more real friction than the entire pre-launch review process — production usage surfaces things a spec never will.
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