James Ide

Expo

I work on Expo, which I co-founded with Charlie Cheever when we wanted to make it easier to make and use universal mobile apps that run everywhere. Our technical backgrounds are in software engineering, specifically building infrastructure that addresses the needs of product developers. Combined with the rise of mobile, improving the infrastructure of the mobile app ecosystem is one of the most important problems we believe we are especially well-suited to solve.

At Expo, because we are working on universal application infrastructure, our engineering team is responsible for developing on Android, iOS, and the web. This requires a broad and deep cross-stack skill set, but it enables us to create more coherent APIs and services that help product developers; we do the hard work so everyone else doesn't have to.

Today, we extensively use JavaScript and React. Our mobile apps, developer tools, and server are written in JS, which allows us to reuse knowledge and unify the way we work on our projects. With expertise in JavaScript, Android, iOS, and the web, members of our company are able to fluidly move across projects according to their personal interests and the company's priorities. This kind of organizational liquidity helps us navigate risks and opportunities.

Check out our website at expo.dev.