Khaled Javdan

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The journey?

My name is Khaled Javdan, and I’m a 27-year-old Software Engineer specializing in Frontend Development.
Originally from Iran, I pursued my goal of building a career in software by moving to Dubai after college, where my journey began.

2017: First Year - College Freshman

I started my software engineering journey in October 2017. From the first day, I was fascinated by the world of technology and eager to learn more. I was honored to be recognized as the Top Student of the Year, which fueled my passion and motivated me to work even harder throughout college.

2018: Second Year - Finding My Way

The second year was all about exploration. I was coding a lot but honestly didn’t fully understand what I was building yet. It took time for me to get comfortable with the programming world and start seeing how everything connected.

2019: Third Year - Deepening My Knowledge

This year things got serious. I started learning about Data Structures and Algorithms, and had a lot of "aha" moments. After this, I was excited to start building my own projects.

🎓 2020: Graduation Year

In my final year, we tackled advanced topics such as software development methods, testing, and why structured processes matter as projects grow. I built my first full-stack e-commerce site using HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL — featuring authentication, product pages, a cart, and user profiles. It wasn't fancy, but I was proud of it.

2021: Building Foundations Post-Graduation

After graduating, I focused on improving my English skills and deepening my knowledge of Data Structures and Algorithms. During this time, I built various projects using HTML, CSS, Vanilla JavaScript, and React.
Portfolio: View Portfolio

2022: First Job in Dubai - CEIT Web Game Startup

I moved to Dubai and joined CEIT, a web game startup. This was a huge leap — I had no prior game development experience. I quickly adapted, working with technologies like HTML Canvas, Three.js, Pixi.js, React, Styled Components, MUI, SCSS, and more. I built admin dashboards, authentication systems, payment gateways, and worked closely with Postman, Swagger, and Figma.

Unfortunately, after a year, the company couldn't sustain operations. However, I helped deliver:

  • 4 small web games
  • 1 web app (a hub integrating the games, payments, user accounts, and admin dashboard)

I was the sole Frontend Developer on a team of 5, building all frontend components.

During this time, I also built an interactive portfolio using React, Next.js, HTML Canvas, Three.js, and Sound Effects.
Portfolio: View Interactive Portfolio

2023: Growing with Utopia - Digital Marketing Agency

In 2023, I joined Utopia, a digital marketing agency startup. Here, I transitioned from React to Vue.js. Early on, I was tasked with integrating a 24/7 livestream feature for the main website using Agora SDK. Later, we switched to Tencent Cloud to optimize costs.

After the success of this project, I was promoted to Lead Frontend Engineer where I:

  • Integrated real-time communication with WebSockets.
  • Helped the platform grow to over 100K visitors.
  • Built a custom CMS dashboard for Admins.
  • Set up a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions, cutting deployment time by 40%.
  • Took initiative managing production environments (Linux, Nginx, Redis, MySQL, AWS EC2, S3, Cloudflare).
  • Developed modern, SEO-optimized web pages for company clients using Next.js, improving site performance and visual appeal.
  • Built a reusable component library to speed up development and maintain a consistent design system across projects.
  • Refactored and rewrote the existing codebase for better maintainability, readability, and scalability.
  • Expanded into backend development by learning MongoDB, Mongoose, Node.js, Express, and RESTful APIs.
  • Designed and developed a custom e-commerce website from scratch, including: A fully functional admin dashboard with a highly customized clean UI.
  • Secure user authentication, product management, and order management features.
  • Applied best practices in frontend and backend architecture, improving project quality and development efficiency.
  • Project Showcase: View My E-commerce Website This project was built from scratch using React, Node.js, Express, MongoDB, and a fully customized Material-UI (MUI) design system. It also incorporates Progressive Web App (PWA) features, SWR for data fetching, i18next for internationalization, react-map-gl for interactive maps, Yup and Zod for validation, React Hook Form for form handling, and Framer Motion for animations. Throughout this project, I also deepened my knowledge of design systems, application architecture, and full-stack development workflows.

Our tech stack included Vue 2 & 3, Vuex, Pinia, TailwindCSS, UnoCSS, SCSS, Element UI, Vuetify, and tools like ESLint, Prettier, Vite, and Vitest.

In my free time, I built Chikrice, a smart meal planner powered by Vue 3, Pinia, Vite, TypeScript, UnoCSS and Element Plus.

The motivation behind this project came from a recurring challenge—many of my friends would often ask for my help with dieting. Since I have a decent amount of experience with fitness and nutrition, I’d get questions like: “What should I eat? How much? When? How many calories should I consume? How long will it take to reach my goal?” At first, I used to write meal plans by hand, but it was time-consuming and hard to maintain. That’s when Chikrice was born.

Originally, I started building this idea back in June 2022 under the name IronBrothers, when I had just begun learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Naturally, my skills were still growing, so the project didn’t turn out as I envisioned.

Two years later, after gaining hands-on experience through professional projects and sharpening my skills, I revisited the idea and built Chikrice, v2—this time with a more modern tech stack and a better understanding of UI/UX. I deliberately skipped building a backend to keep development lean and to validate the idea first (inspired by the principles from The Lean Startup). Surprisingly, some of my friends started using it regularly, which gave me the confidence to take it even further.

This brings me to my upcoming chapter—Chikrice v3 in 2024—where I plan to rebuild the app as a full-fledged SaaS platform with a complete backend, AI integration, and a richer feature set.

2024: Freelancing, Building Chikrice v3, and Running a Business

2024 was the craziest and most challenging year of my life.

It was in May 2024 when Utopia closed its doors. I kind of saw it coming, even though I gave it my all—fighting with everything I had to deliver high-quality projects and help the company survive its first year.

In the startup world, the first year is always the hardest: you have no customers, and you're building a product that demands great marketing, strong networking, and a sharp focus on solving a real problem with minimal costs and friction.

If you asked me why both startups I worked for failed to survive past their first year, I'd say—based on experience—it was likely a mix of the following:

  1. No market need (the most common one)
  2. Ran out of cash
  3. Not the right team
  4. Poor marketing or positioning
  5. Ignoring customer feedback
  6. A product without a clear vision

I reflect on these experiences often. You pour your heart into a product, working day and night with your team to make it succeed—and then boom, a hard slap from reality. It hurts, deeply. I was tired of building products that would never see the light of day.

After Utopia shut down, I had had enough of following leaders who didn’t know what they were doing. I had the technical skills to build a real solution for diet and nutrition, something I could monetize, without going through the soul-crushing job search again—only to end up in another company where I'd give it my all, just to watch it fail.

I wanted control over my future. Enough was enough.

I had a stack of wins on my resume and sky-high confidence. My plan was simple: cover my expenses through freelancing and use the rest of my time to build Chikrice. I took all my savings from two years of work and made a bold move.

After two years in Dubai, I learned something important: office snacks, fancy dinners, and cool interior design are just unnecessary expenses. If we had invested everything in the product, we might have won. So that’s what I did.

I found the most affordable apartment in Khorfakkan, Sharjah, and I loved it. It had everything I needed: no people, no distractions, no family, no friends—just tunnel vision. I created the perfect environment, invested in productivity tools, and went all in.

This was the riskiest and biggest decision of my life. I was betting everything I had earned through relentless hard work—on myself. I felt a deep sense of pride. Finally, I was the master of my fate, the captain of my soul.

Motivation? Off the charts. The fire was real—you could feel it just by being near me.

This was my moment. Time to build the next big thing. Time to prove everyone wrong. Time to succeed so loudly that no one could ever doubt me again.

Day 1: I set up my Upwork profile, listed my projects, filled out every section, and started applying to gigs. I spent the entire day, from morning till night, submitting proposals—spending $5–$10 per day.

One month passed.

Guess what?

Not a single client.

Chikrice was on hold, and my precious savings were being drained by Upwork with zero results. I wasn’t happy. I changed my strategy a few times, but still no progress.

Still, my confidence remained high. I felt everything was under control—until life hit hard.

My mother was diagnosed with a serious eye condition and needed urgent surgery or she would lose her sight. I traveled to Iran to be by her side.

Even there, I continued applying to jobs on Upwork. After 20 days of persistence—finally! I got an interview.

Let’s gooooooooooo.

It was exactly what I had dreamed of:
$45/hour, working with modern tools like Next.js, ShadCN, Prisma, tRPC, and React Query. It felt perfect.

The interview went great, and I was confident the job was mine.

As my mother’s condition improved and my hopes were high, I booked a ticket back to Khorfakkan to get to work.

I sat in my chair, opened Upwork, and read the message from Michel:

"Hi! Just wanted to let you know we are pausing our hiring process. We found a candidate we want to proceed with. If that doesn't work out, or anything changes I will let you know."

It was a hard slap to the ego. After two months and over $100 spent, still no client.

Time for a new plan.

I had 10 months left. Chikrice was calling.

So I went all in—16 hours a day.

I built Chikrice v2, ready to show users. I talked to gym owners, restaurant owners, coaches, athletes—gathering feedback. Some days I was on fire, others I was crushed by rejection.

But at least this time, I had control. No boss. No freelance job that didn’t value my skills.

Most people liked the idea. They especially liked that it would be free.

I took all my experience and skills and designed the Figma prototype for Chikrice v2:
Figma v2

It was simple—but ugly. I didn’t want my work to be known for mediocrity.

So I redesigned it.

And created Chikrice v3.

Looking back now, I see my mistake—I spent too much time polishing things that weren’t the most important. That better design? It was mostly to satisfy my ego.

But hey, that’s part of the journey.

Mistake of Spreading Too Thin – What I Learned

Given my situation—with no manpower, limited resources, and limited time—I should have spent most of my time developing the core feature. In my opinion, that feature was a simple dashboard for coaches to generate meal plans for their clients.

This way, I would have developed something useful and potentially monetizable, instead of building fancy features just to show off my technical skills and design abilities.

It’s painful to point out your own mistakes, but that’s how we learn.

Chikrice v3 – The All-Over-the-Place Version

As I was designing Chikrice v3, I kept coming up with new ideas and features. And honestly, they felt really good. But the problem was clear:

I was spreading my focus and attention way too thin.

I was trying to build features for three different user types:

  • A healthy restaurant
  • A coach
  • An athlete

I’d jump from one idea to another: one day working on coach-related features, the next on the athlete’s needs.

The Result?

To support all this, I had to:

  • Talk with athletes
  • Build features based on their feedback
  • Engage in conversations, brainstorm, design, develop (frontend/backend), test, and deploy on servers

That’s a lot for one person to handle, especially when your focus is split in multiple directions.

The consequences:

  • The quality of work dropped across the board
  • The chance of bugs and issues increased
  • The quality of code decreased, even with best practices
  • The stress and anxiety increased due to time and money running out

After 6 months of back-and-forth, Chikrice v3 was ready for users.

I had around 30 users, but most didn’t use it for long. Once dieting was over, they didn’t need the app anymore, and I couldn’t force them to use it.

I was exhausted, like a soldier returning from war.

The Next 4 Months: Plan B

At this point, I couldn’t monetize Chikrice—I wasn’t even satisfied enough with it to ask friends for money for something they weren’t using regularly.

I had:

  • No money left
  • No time left
  • No motivation

It felt like I had lost all my weapons and soldiers in battle—but I still wasn’t ready to give up.

So I came up with a new plan:

Make some money to reinvest in the app and get help from other engineers.

Birth of EYB (Elevate Your Brand)

Upwork didn’t seem promising anymore.
That’s when EYB came to mind—a web agency idea.

I could build landing pages and e-commerce websites for small business owners and use the profit to fund Chikrice.

But how?

I was living in Khorfakkan, a small city of 40,000 people, with little economic activity. Still, I went store to store, asking if they needed a website.

Lots of rejection.

Eventually, I got a project through my old network in Dubai:
An e-commerce project for Aiyifen.

Why Shopify?

Even though I had no Shopify experience, I chose it over custom development to avoid satisfying my technical ego.
I had no time to build everything from scratch again.

I had issues setting up Stripe and editing Shopify themes, but the project was delivered successfully—and I was very happy about it.

Team Formation Begins

The owner of Aiyifen asked for help with marketing.

I saw an opportunity:

Form a team and offer marketing + web development services.

I didn’t know marketing. So I read about it, but I knew I couldn’t risk people’s money.
So I reached out to:

  • Faiz – a digital marketer
  • Sajad – a content creator

We decided to take a risk and offer our services on a profit-share model:

We take 5% of profits only — so the client had nothing to lose.

Month 1:

  • 10,000 website visitors
  • 4000 AED budget
  • 31 purchases
  • 6000 AED in sales
  • 0 AED in profit → we made 0

Month 2:

  • 3500 AED budget
  • 52 purchases
  • 8000 AED in sales
  • 2400 AED profit → 5% = 120 AED → 40 AED each 😅

This wasn’t enough to reinvest in Chikrice or motivate the team.

Final Month & Pausing EYB

We told the client we’d support for one more month.
Then we helped transition marketing responsibilities back to the Aiyifen team.

I knew this wasn’t a short-term strategy.
To keep the team motivated, we needed real income.

So we paused EYB to rethink our direction.

The Final Month

With 1 month left, I didn’t have time to grieve.

I had to figure something out, so I went back to the job market to earn and regroup financially.

Reflections After 12 Months

After 12 months:

  • I didn’t achieve the goal of making Chikrice successful
  • It hurts — a lot
  • One year of ruthless grind, loneliness, and no income

But…

I learned more than I could’ve imagined.

I have nothing to show for it except a story and scars. But I’ve made peace with that. Unlike my past attempts, this one didn’t get me what I wanted, but it gave me something deeper — growth. It was, without a doubt, the hardest chapter of my life so far.

What I Want Now

At this point, I don’t want to go through it all again, alone. I want to help someone else who’s on a mission. I want to give my full energy, experience, and skills to a meaningful project or team.

In return, I hope for:

  • Mentorship
  • Learning
  • A team that brings out the best in me

Addressing Concerns

I know I might seem like a risky hire. Some might think I’m not loyal or that I’m too independent.

But here’s the truth:

I give everything when I believe in the leader and the mission.

I’ve experienced this before — it was the best period of my career. When I trust the vision, I can fully focus on the work and give it my all.

What I Bring

  • Drive
  • Dedication
  • Discipline
  • Experience in startups, solo projects, and product building
  • A raw, real hunger to make something meaningful

This was my story so far — shared with honesty, no mask, no filters.
I know there’s a team or mission out there where I fit perfectly in this next chapter.

And I would be honored to be part of that team — and help make a difference.

🤝 Let’s Connect

If my story resonates with you and you’re building something meaningful,
I’d love to hear from you.
Let’s build something people actually use.

📫 Email: devkhaledjavdan@gmail.com 🌐 Website: khaled-javdan.com