01
Just Smash That
Software & Creative Lead
A rage room startup that needed everything. Reservations, staff ops, a brand identity, and an online presence. I joined a 4-person team pre-launch and built the software and creative infrastructure from the ground up. Handled all digital marketing and advertising, taking us from 15K monthly website visitors to over 300K. Created all the content, ran the campaigns, and managed the brand across every platform. We started as a single rage room and have since expanded to three additional activities in the same facility, grew from 4 to 40+ employees, and are now opening a second location.
The problem
The founders had a vision but no infrastructure. They were booking customers through a third-party, managing staff on paper schedules, and trying to build a brand with no design system or marketing strategy.
Business impact
The business grew from a single rage room to four activities under one roof, 40+ employees, and a second location on the way. Website traffic went from 15K to 300K monthly. Every employee works from the same system, from the front desk to the backend labor cleaners.
The problem
Xola owned availability data but not the cart, pricing, or bundle rules. Third-party APIs can't be called from the client, and business logic tied to an external service is brittle — it can't evolve on its own schedule. SEO had no technical foundation: no structured data, no programmatic targeting, no schema strategy.
How it was solved
Xola became read-only. Availability flowed in; our schema controlled everything after — cart state, pricing, bundles, upsells. Clean separation meant the checkout experience could evolve without touching the booking engine. The SEO system drove 15K to 300K monthly visitors. Paid campaigns used actual booking conversion data, not vanity metrics.
Applied principles
Build for the floorSimplicity over feature densityRestraint in designShip the whole thing