Show HN: HCB Mobile – financial app built by 17 y/o, processing $6M/month
8 days ago
- #Nonprofit Technology
- #Youth Empowerment
- #Mobile Development
- Mohamad, a 17-year-old from the SF Bay Area, developed the official mobile app for HCB.
- HCB supports over 6,500 teenager-led nonprofits, clubs, and hackathons by providing financial services like nonprofit status, bank accounts, donation platforms, and debit cards.
- HCB processes an average of $6 million monthly, totaling over $80M lifetime.
- The mobile app, HCB Mobile, allows teenagers to manage their organization's finances conveniently from their phones.
- Initially considering native development (SwiftUI for iOS, Kotlin/Jetpack Compose for Android), Mohamad opted for Expo (React Native) to streamline development across platforms.
- Mohamad learned advanced techniques like creating Expo Modules for native code integration and optimizing performance with memoization and component recycling.
- The app required navigating complex processes with Apple and Google for restricted entitlements, such as mobile tap-to-pay and push provisioning, taking several months.
- After 250+ hours of development, HCB Mobile is a proud achievement, built by teenagers for teenagers, also supporting adult-led organizations like mutual aid groups and open-source projects.
- The entire project is open-source on GitHub.