Tilde Loop: Spring Tech Event
A fireside chat with Marija Ziterbart on building a VC-backed startup as CTO — investors, fundraising, and the microservices, React and Next.js behind The Lowdown.
The third meetup organized by Tilde Loop was held on 4 May at The Works Coworking in Split. This time, Marija Ziterbart talked about her experience as CTO at at The Lowdown, a startup whose story started in London in 2019. The Lowdown received a seed investment of 2.5 million dollars last summer and has been growing continuously since then. Forbes also reported on their success.
The night in numbers
3rd
Tilde Loop meetup in Split
May 4
Live at The Works Coworking
Full house
of Split’s developer community
At a glance
- Date
- 4 May
- Location
- The Works Coworking, Split
- Format
- Fireside chat & networking
- Topic
- Scaling a VC-backed startup
On the panel
Marija Ziterbart
Co-founder, Tilde Loop · CTO at The Lowdown
Nika Marin
ModeratorFireside chat moderator
From developer to CTO
Marija moved to London six years ago and has continued to achieve sucess, quickly rising from developer to CTO. She presented her full experience at a fireside chat titled “Development of a VC-backed startup from the perspective of the CTO”.
Nika Marin moderated the fireside chat.
Marija discussed the connection with investors, fundraising rounds, and product development in general, as well as everything The Lowdown intends to do until the next round of funding.
We have great relationships with our investors. Our success is as important to them as it is to us. They believe in us, the product, and the concept, and they help us at every stage of development.She focused on the technical side of The Lowdown, explaining why they picked microservice architecture and React and Next.js for platform development.
Balancing software development quality and speed
She also explained the decision-making processes, emphasizing the significance of involving developers in business operations. Everyone was particularly interested in how to achieve the expected expansion by balancing the quality and pace of software development.
We are constantly balancing quality and speed of development. It’s not always simple, but I make sure that the platform’s developers don’t have unrealistic timelines.– said Marija, noting that she has been in “their shoes” and understands their point of view. On the other hand, the entire team, including herself, wants to enhance the platform as soon as possible and adapt it to users and their demands, since this has been their key guiding thought since its inception. The entire platform is driven by the community of women and their experiences, and The Lowdown listens to their needs at all phases of life and produces new tools, products, and opportunities on the platform in conjunction with doctors based on user feedback.
The secret to their success is the collaboration of professionals from many sectors who respond to the needs of people. This is acknowledged by the 150,000 women who use The Lowdown each month. Marija mentioned that the majority of their site’s traffic originates from search engines. They expand naturally and build a successful business story that is being discovered by an increasing number of consumers thanks to high-quality, SEO-optimized content.
Motivated by the statistics, they decided to enter the American market, despite the fact that their first aim was to “stick” to Europe, specifically the United Kingdom and Germany.
Following the fireside talk, Marija fielded numerous questions from the eager crowd, who took advantage of the opportunity to find out everything they wanted to know firsthand.
Following the fireside chat, the networking continued in The Works Coworking’s casual and friendly atmosphere.
The organisers are pleased with the reaction and will soon offer the community a new meetup and an opportunity to gather developers.
From the night
