WezDev
Product platforms · Manchester
I design and ship multi-sided products. Listings, providers, events, permissions, reputation, one system. Not a brochure site. AfroFind is live.
The work
A platform only works when different people already share it. Buyers come to search and buy. Sellers publish what they sell and take bookings or orders. Admins verify before anything is allowed to scale. All of that has to rest on one identity and one set of records. Give each role its own login, or bolt tools on afterwards, and you are not building a platform. You are stacking products that will not hold when those people need the same data to agree.
A product platform is one product where buyers, sellers, and admins already share the same users, listings, bookings, payments, and reputation. A website only publishes content. A marketplace template mostly gives you a listing grid. Neither keeps those people on one set of records. When the model is shared, someone can find a business, place an order, leave a review, and an admin can govern it without stitching three tools together.
Plenty of teams ship a brochure that looks finished, then need customers to buy, sellers to run the day-to-day, and admins to keep things honest. That is a different problem from publishing pages. If those roles do not share the same data, you end up with handovers, spreadsheets, and a second build when the product has to grow. The work I take on starts before that rewrite becomes inevitable.
On a platform, different people need different jobs from the same records. Buyers search, buy, and leave reputation other people can trust. Sellers claim a listing, publish what they offer, and take bookings or orders. Admins verify accounts, hide abuse, and decide what commercial access looks like. Those journeys only work if they share one identity and one model of the world. Paint permissions on afterwards and you get broken handovers and a rewrite. Get them right early and growth is mostly more of the same product, not a second product for each role.
Search, listings, bookings, reviews, and payments look like a feature list. On a real platform they are parts of one loop: find something, trust it, transact, leave a trail other people can use. Split them into separate apps or vendor tools and the loop breaks the moment someone has to reconcile who bought what, from whom, and whether the listing is still honest. AfroFind keeps that loop in one model instead of shipping a new product every time a new kind of listing appears. That is the difference between a marketplace demo and a platform you can still own after the first year of real use.
Proof
A live UK discovery platform for African and Caribbean businesses, providers, and events. Listings, bookings, and reputation share one model. Tap a listing to see it on the platform.
Platform · marketplace
Live listing: Enish Brixton
Hard part: Listings, providers, events, and trust cannot each be a separate product.
Outcome: A live UK discovery platform with one shared object model for businesses, bookings, and reputation.
People
Pick a role. Same data, different job. That is the product, not four microsites.
Customers
Customers search businesses, providers, and events, then book and leave reputation other people can use. If discovery is a separate site from bookings, they bounce. On a platform they stay in one product.
Businesses
Businesses claim a listing, publish what they actually offer, and grow from being found into running the operation. They need a different permission set from a guest, not a second codebase.
Providers
Independent providers need a calendar and a public reputation without pretending to be a full organisation. The object model has to treat them as first-class, not a bolted-on category.
Admins
Admins verify, hide, resolve claims, and package commercial access. That governance layer has to exist before the marketplace is large. Trust is not a v2 feature.
Hard parts
These are the AfroFind problems that show up on every serious platform. They are also the conversation I want before a brief.
Listings, events, providers, and organisations cannot each be a separate product. One model for users, businesses, bookings, reviews, and payments. Categories activate engines rather than fork them.
Customers, businesses, providers, organisers, and admins need different permissions and flows. Map those journeys early or you will paint permissions on afterwards.
Verification, claims, visibility, and commercial packaging have to exist before the thing is large. A marketplace without governance is a directory that decays.
What you hire
01
Different people, different permissions, one product. AfroFind lists UK African and Caribbean businesses for the people trying to find them. MOMO Lens handles sales, mobile money, and reconciliation for merchants.
FAQ
Wez Kambele is a software engineer based in Manchester, working as WezDev. He designs and ships multi-sided product platforms, including AfroFind, a live UK discovery marketplace for African and Caribbean businesses, providers, and events.
Manchester, United Kingdom. Remote collaboration is normal. UK and Africa-facing product work is a natural fit.
No. A website publishes content. A marketplace or product platform has several kinds of users, shared data, permissions, and usually bookings or payments. AfroFind is a platform: listings, providers, events, and reputation share one object model instead of five disconnected tools.
No. Manchester is where I am based. Most platform work is remote. Being able to meet in the city is useful. It is not a requirement.
Read Work with me, then send a short brief on Get started: what you are building, who has to use it, and what has to work in production. A clear problem statement beats a long pitch deck. You can also email contact@wezdev.co.uk.
Not in the agency sense. This page is for teams who need a multi-sided product, not a WordPress brochure or a generic web-design engagement. If you need a marketing site, I am usually not the right hire.
Related: AWS infrastructure in Manchester · Work with me
Next
Tell me who has to use it and what has to hold in production. I will tell you whether I am the right engineer for it.
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