Strata

Strata is a peer-review marketplace where verified medical professionals discover, compare, and review financial and professional service products tailored to every stage of their careers. We delivered a production-ready, license-verified reviews marketplace in just 12 weeks on a sub-$35 k budget, giving a solo founder an extensible, sponsor-neutral platform that now serves hundreds of products and doctors.

"Andes Path took Strata from idea to production‑grade platform faster than I imagined—and left me with tooling I can actually run myself."

— Joseph Merrill, Founder of Strata

Product Capabilities

MarketplaceReviewsHealthcareSaaSStartupVerified Users

Engineering & Technology Capabilities

Next.jsServerlessPostgresPrismaVercelAuth.jsISR

The Challenge at Strata

Physicians lose valuable time hunting for trustworthy advice on banks, insurers, and practice‑management tools. Solo founder Joseph Merrill envisioned a neutral reviews hub but lacked in‑house engineering, budget, and time to beat larger competitors to market.

Resource Constraints: One founder, fixed budget under $35 k, and an aggressive 3‑month launch window.
Trust Requirements: Reviews had to be verified against state license boards to prevent spam and maintain legal compliance.
Neutrality Mandate: Sponsored listings could not bias search rankings, or doctors would lose confidence in the platform.

Engineering a Lean, Scalable Platform

Zero‑to‑One Build in 90 Days

We paired pragmatic product slicing with modern serverless tech to ship fast without sacrificing future scale:

MVP Scope: Search, write a review, and claim a listing—everything else behind feature flags.
Serverless + ISR: Next.js 13 on Vercel serves static pages from the edge, revalidating instantly when reviews are approved.
License Verification Service: A side‑car Node micro‑service pings NPI and state boards; Strata admins moderate via an approval queue.
Clean Data Model: Postgres + Prisma roles for doctor, vendor, and admin keep permissions crystal clear.
CI/CD & Observability: GitHub Actions, Playwright, Sentry, LogRocket, and PostHog baked in from day one.

Delivering Value to Strata's Users

Doctors, Vendors, and the Founder

The finished platform creates tangible wins for every stakeholder:

Doctors: Verified, clutter‑free reviews and sponsor‑neutral search results improve decision‑making.
Vendors: Claim pages in minutes, respond to reviews, and unlock premium analytics when ready.
Founder: One‑command deploys, migrations, and rollbacks let Joseph operate the site solo with infra bills under $50/month.

Key Outcomes

MVP live in 12 weeks with zero missed milestones.
300+ seeded listings and 40+ verified beta doctors within the first month of launch.
Infrastructure bill < $50/month until traffic scales.

About Andes Path

At Andes Path, we go beyond being just a development agency. Drawing from Clark and Steve's experience at Freedom Robotics, we act as an operating partner to your business, embedding our Chilean team and U.S.-based leadership to co-develop and optimize your product. Our goal is to drive real business outcomes by being deeply integrated with your team.

We specialize in delivering tailored, end-to-end software solutions that align with your business goals. Clark and Steve's combined expertise ensures that every project we take on is driven by innovation and backed by a commitment to delivering real results. At Andes Path, we're not just building software — we're your partners in success.