Creator community platform
A creator community platform with communities, courses, chat, a feed and live streams, rebuilt after its first developer left. Automated creator payouts with a payout ledger and a referral system.
$10K+ a month in payouts
Payouts that stopped going missing.
A creator community with 1,000+ paying members, rebuilt after its first developer left with a half-built Stripe Connect integration.
| My role | Lead full-stack engineer |
|---|---|
| Timeline | December 2025 to now |
| Domain | Payments, creator economy |
| Stack | React, Node.js, MongoDB, Stripe Connect, Authentication and access control |
The problem
Payout state lived only in Stripe’s webhooks. One dropped webhook meant one missed creator payout. Money was coming in, but creators were not reliably paid.
The decision
I moved payout state into the platform’s own database, with Stripe as the rail, not the record.
| Creator | Amount | Stripe webhook | Ledger |
|---|---|---|---|
| Example Studio A | $1,240.00 | ✓ received | ✓ paid |
| Example Studio B | $860.00 | ✕ dropped | ✓ paid on retry |
| Example Studio C | $415.50 | ✓ received | ✓ paid |
- $10K+paid out automatically each month
- 1,000+active members
- +25%organic sign-ups from the referral system
- 0missed payouts since the ledger shipped
What I did
Audit
Mapped every Stripe Connect event and traced where money and status got stuck.
Webhooks
A listener verifies every payout event. A failed transfer is flagged, retried with exponential backoff, and the ops team is told if it fails twice.
Owned state
The database owns onboarding and payout status; it is never inferred from Stripe at request time.
Gated payouts
Payouts fire only when an account is fully verified.
Dunning
Retry windows and email nudges for failed onboarding and failed subscription charges.
What it does
- Communities with member referral links
- Academy courses with progress tracking
- Channels, direct messages and member roles
- Feed with posts and comments
- Live streams
- Role-based access across 20+ community tiers
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