When my daughter turned one, the wifey gave me one job: book the backdrop vendor. I literally thought, how hard could this be? Turns out it meant doom-scrolling IG hashtags, DMing vendors one by one, and asking the same three questions every time. Where are you located? Are you available? How much? Then waiting hours, sometimes days, and starting over when they were booked or out of budget. When we finally found someone, it was a paper contract (or nothing) and a Venmo payment. That felt broken. We trust Airbnb for a place to stay, Uber for a ride, even DoorDash for dinner, but for some of life's biggest celebrations we're still Venmoing strangers. I'm not an engineer (my background is data), so I taught myself to code and design and started building it from scratch (pre-Claude Code/Codex era!). When Claude Code came out I was a super early adopter, and it took things to another level. Bloomberg even featured my story as a solo founder building with AI. Still lots of late nights after the kids were asleep, and lots of breaking things. The result is Backdrop, where families across the Bay Area can find, message, book and pay local event vendors in one place: soft play, photo booths, catering, photography, music, beauty, floral, decor and more. Vendors get one spot for pricing, cancellation policies and booking requests instead of an IG inbox. Organizers aren't charged until the vendor accepts. We're live across the Bay Area and have our first real bookings. Would love feedback on: Is it clear what this is within a few seconds of landing on the homepage? If you've planned a party, what was the most painful part? Anyone who's built a two-sided marketplace: how did you crack the chicken-and-egg problem? hellobackdrop.com   submitted by   /u/elaohk [link]   [comments]