Player 1 · Newcastle · open to London

Juan Pablo Guzmán

  • Developer
  • Product owner
  • Founder

Passionate about building applications. Real ones, with real users, that you can open on your phone today.

I find a problem worth solving, write down what "done" looks like, build it, and ship it in small releases. A university matcher for Latin American students, a friend-group app in Newcastle, an AI tool that gets websites approved by Google. Pick a level below.

Press start Build my app
Photo of Juan Pablo Guzmán smiling Pixel-art version of Juan
8-bit JuanTap for HD
Apps shipped4 live
SuccessWay releases200+
Publishers integrated700+
StatusBuilding
World 1

Select a level

The apps I've designed, built and shipped. I own each one end to end: talking to users, writing requirements with acceptance criteria, building with AI coding agents, and releasing in small steps.

Level 01LivePWA

SuccessWay

Helps Latin American students find, compare and apply to US universities.

Co-founder · Product owner · Developer

In 2017 I ran a consultancy in Bogotá doing this by hand. SuccessWay is the software version: a questionnaire captures what matters to each student (budget, grades, subject, location), and a matching engine scores them against a verified database of US institutions.

  • Live at successway.app since October 2026 with Free, Premium and Premium+ tiers, paid through Stripe.
  • Mobile-first, with a PWA version: students add it to their home screen and it behaves like a native app.
  • A "Camino" that turns applying into a path with stages and achievements. Spanish and English.
  • A second product, SuccessWay Colegios, sold to schools in Colombia for their students, parents and counsellors.
  • 50+ students using it so far. Built and run part-time, alongside my job at Ezoic.
1,351US institutions verified
200+Releases, each previewed
4Repos: app, schools, data, matcher
Next.jsTypeScriptSupabasePythonStripeVercelClaude Code
Play it live Read the overview
successway.app
SuccessWay homepage in Spanish: Tu próximo gran capítulo, with a sample list of matched universities
SuccessWay Camino screen, a step-by-step path through the application process
SuccessWay matches screen showing a student's university options with costs
SuccessWay grades screen converting school grades to a US GPA
Level 02Launching

Regulars

Find your group of friends in Newcastle.

Founder · Product owner · Developer

Making friends as an adult is hard. Other apps put strangers in a restaurant once. Regulars does something smaller and more lasting: a short questionnaire, a match into a group of four, and the same pub or café on the same night, four weeks in a row.

  • Matching engine that builds groups, based on the same approach as SuccessWay's.
  • ID checks, Stripe payments, email and SMS reminders, group chat that opens 12 hours before the first meet.
  • Hourly jobs run the season on their own: reveals, reminders, votes, refunds.
  • Every outside service has a fake mode for testing, and it is blocked in production.
Next.jsSupabaseStripeDidit IDResendTwilioVercel Cron
Visit Regulars Read the overview
the-regulars.app
Regulars homepage: Find your group of friends in Newcastle
Regulars homepage on a phone
the-regulars.app/how-it-works
Regulars how it works page listing seven steps from questionnaire to meeting weekly
Level 03Internal tool

GAM Approval Copilot

Gets publisher websites approved by Google Ad Manager after a denial.

Built at Ezoic · Product owner · Developer · Used daily by the quality and sales teams

Google's denial reasons are vague, there are only two submissions, and checking a site by hand takes hours. I built one web app that runs the whole process, from the first denial to Google's final answer.

  • A crawler audits up to 500 pages with about 40 quality checks and gives a readiness score.
  • Claude judges what code can't (content quality, fake authors) and writes a short fix list in the publisher's language.
  • When the publisher says "done", it re-checks each fix on the live site.
  • Guardrails in code, not just prompts: every AI fix is scanned for risky advice and flagged for a person. Humans make every resubmission decision.
+32%Approval rate, early numbers
~40Automated quality checks
$0.30From, per AI review
Next.jsTypeScriptSupabase RLSNode crawlerHeadless ChromiumClaude API
How it works
approval-copilot · all sites
Approval Copilot dashboard listing sites by denial reason and stage, with private details redacted
approval-copilot · site detail
Approval Copilot site page showing the stage tracker and a prioritised list of fixes, with private details redacted
Bonus stages

Side quests

Smaller builds, experiments and the projects I learned on.

zorkgames.com
Zork Games homepage with a grid of featured browser games
Live

Zork Games

A free arcade of 300+ screened HTML5 games. A pipeline filters the feed hard (about one game in seventy makes it), and every game page gets hand-written copy. Fully static, on Cloudflare Pages.

Next.jsTailwindCloudflare
Play
vibeteer · demo
In the workshop

Vibeteer

"You ship, we post." An AI marketing teammate: give it a website and a goal, it reads the brand, researches with sources, lets you edit the brief, then generates three on-brand posts and a weekly calendar.

Next.jsClaudeOpenAI imagesPlaywright
apal · reflect
APAL chat screen guiding a user through step 1 of 11, describing a situation
Early stage

APAL

A digital CBT engine for social anxiety. It walks you through structured exercises before, during and after a hard situation. The project where I learned to code properly, in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

HTMLCSSJavaScript
~/pub-finder $ python main.py
Tool

Publisher Finder

A Python pipeline that analyses publisher sites with APIs, scraping and an LLM, then stores the leads in SQLite. Built to make my own prospecting faster.

PythonLLMSQLite
Source
Insert coin

Your app could be next

Gyms, cafés, clubs, studios, schools. If your members or customers would use an app, I can build it.

No app store. Still feels like an app.

I build progressive web apps (PWAs). Your members open a link, tap "Add to Home Screen", and your app sits next to their other apps with your logo on it. One app that works on iPhone, Android and desktop, without app store fees or a two-week review wait.

This site is one too. Try installing it.

  • Class timetables and bookings
  • Memberships and payments with Stripe
  • Check-ins and attendance streaks
  • Reminders by email, SMS or push
  • An admin view for your staff
  • Works offline for the basics
1 · Chat

We talk about your members and what they need. Free.

2 · Prototype

A clickable version you can hold in your hand.

3 · Ship

Small releases, each tested on a preview before going live.

Let's build yours
Your GymPWA

Morning, Sam · Tuesday

07:00 HIIT4 spots left
12:30 Spin9 spots left
18:00 BoxingFull · waitlist
19:15 Yoga2 spots left
Streak

Example app. Go on, book a class.

World 2

The arcade

A tiny game I made for this site. Jump the bugs, grab the coffee, ship as many releases as you can before production goes down.

Ship It!Hi-score: 0
Ship It needs JavaScript and a canvas.
Space Up or tap · jump Coffee · +10 Bugs · game over
Character select

About Juan

Hi, I'm Juan. I started companies before I could code. Now I can do both, and that's where I want to stay.

I co-founded my first company, SuccessWay, in Bogotá in 2017, helping students apply to universities abroad. Since then I've managed accounts for a team of 20 in London, co-founded a hospitality tech startup, and spent four years at Ezoic as the technical escalation point between enterprise publishers and engineering. When an integration fails or revenue drops, I'm the one who traces it through JavaScript, ad tags, APIs and identity setups, decides what's safe to change on a live site, and turns repeat issues into product fixes.

That work made me want to build the systems, not just fix them. So I learned to code (Python with Georgia Tech, and a lot of building) and started shipping my own products. I direct AI to do the first pass and apply the judgement it can't: I decide what gets built, write the acceptance criteria, check every release and keep a written decision log so the rules don't drift. And I can explain what went wrong to an engineer or a CFO.

ProductLv 8

Requirements, acceptance criteria, user research, roadmaps, decision logs.

BuildLv 6

Next.js, TypeScript, Python, Supabase and Postgres, Stripe, Vercel, Cloudflare, Claude API, MCP.

IntegrationsLv 9

700+ publisher implementations, 92% of them raising programmatic revenue by 30 to 178%.

DebuggingLv 7

The person called when things break: ad tags, pixels, REST APIs, identity providers, DNS, SQL.

How I work

  • Need from a user
  • Requirement + criteria
  • Build
  • Preview + sign-off
  • Ship

Needs come from students, parents, publishers and colleagues. At Ezoic I spot patterns across publisher issues and turn them into scoped requirements for product and engineering; that's how I helped build the sales team's CRM. Releases stay small so nothing big breaks at once.

Save file

Quest log

Full CV Download PDF
  1. 2026 – now

    Founder, product owner & developer SuccessWay, Regulars

    Rebuilt SuccessWay as software and launched it with paid tiers in October 2026: 50+ users and 200+ releases, built part-time alongside Ezoic. Built Regulars for Newcastle. Both end to end with Claude Code: requirements, build, release.

  2. 2022 – now

    Senior Partnerships Manager Ezoic, Newcastle · from Jul 2025, before that Business Development Manager

    Senior technical contact for enterprise publishers on a SaaS ad tech platform. Implemented and optimised it for 700+ publishers, with 92% raising programmatic revenue by 30 to 178%. Built GAM Approval Copilot (approval rates up 32% in early results), ran workshops for 100+ publishers, and turned recurring issues into requirements for product and engineering.

  3. 2025 – 2026

    Co-founder Your Own Circle, Newcastle

    Employee engagement platform for hospitality. Designed product workflows and system logic, coordinated the move from WordPress to Next.js, led commercial partnerships.

  4. 2018 – 2021

    Account Manager Alpha Gamma Solutions, London

    Managed key accounts with a team of 20. Over $600,000 in revenue, coaching frameworks for the team, weekly data analysis to lift conversion.

  5. 2017 – 2019

    Co-founder & GM Success Way, Bogotá

    Education consultancy for international university applications. Co-built the web platform, automated forms and emails, managed deployments.

Education

  • BA Business Entrepreneurship & InnovationDe Montfort University, 2022
  • Computing in PythonGeorgia Tech via edX, 2026
  • Learn Python 3Codecademy
  • LanguagesEnglish, Spanish

Toolbox

  • Next.js · TypeScript · JavaScript · Python · SQL
  • Supabase · Postgres · Stripe · Vercel · Cloudflare
  • Claude API · Claude Code · MCP · Playwright · Git
  • Ad tags · pixels · REST APIs · identity solutions

Continue?

Let's build something

Hiring for a developer or product role, or want an app for your business? Send me a message. I reply to everything.

hello@therealjuan.com LinkedIn GitHub