Building with Purpose: My experience working on PitchUp
Over the past few months, I had the opportunity to work on PitchUp, a government-certified sports venue booking platform, and it has been a truly valuable learning experience.
What I liked the most is that I was not only working on tickets. I also had the chance to understand real product problems, look into the data, ask questions, and think about why we were building certain features.
One project I am really proud of began with a simple question: why were many venues in our database not turning into bookings? To investigate, I explored production data, ran my own queries, and tried to understand how the venue information was being collected and used in the platform. From that, I learned a lot about the connection between data, product decisions, and what users actually need. I also had the opportunity to work with AI-powered features, which was something I had not worked with much before. It was not perfect, but that was also what made it interesting. I could see how powerful AI can be, but at the same time, I also started to understand its limitations and how important it is to use it in the right way.
Seeing AI being used inside a real product made me more curious about this area and made me want to learn more about how AI can support users in a useful and practical way. During my time working on PitchUp, I had the chance to work with:
- React, Next.js and TypeScript
- Python, FastAPI, Supabase and PostgreSQL
- Production data and real product problems
- AI-powered features
- Frontend, backend and database work
- Product and business thinking together with engineering
One of the most important lessons I took away from this experience was the value of asking “Why?” before building. Why does a feature need to exist? What does the data tell us? What problem are we actually trying to solve?
I also learned to break a large feature into smaller and more reachable steps, from understanding the requirement and designing the data flow, to building, testing, refactoring, and reviewing. This is a way of working that I will definitely carry into my future projects.
A big thank you to Michael MacDougall, Tom Clark for giving me the opportunity and trust to contribute and work on real problems, and to Patrick O'Connor for the technical guidance, reviews and feedback along the way.
I also want to thank Alannah Grech AACS from ACS for her advice and encouragement. Our conversations helped me reflect more on the work I have done and how much I have grown as a developer.
I am really proud of what I have worked on, and I am also grateful for how much I have learned from this experience.
Meet Thu Nguyen
I’m a software developer based in Sydney with a curious mind and a strong interest in understanding the purpose behind what I build. I care about creating products that are useful, practical, and able to support real business growth, not just writing code for the sake of it.
Most of my experience has been across full-stack development using React, Next.js, TypeScript, Python, FastAPI, Supabase and PostgreSQL.
I’m also becoming more interested in AI and how it can be used in a practical way inside real products. I’m always learning, adapting, and looking for ways to improve both technically and in how I approach product problems. I’m currently open to graduate or junior software engineering opportunities where I can keep growing, contribute to real products, and learn from an experienced team.
Connect with Thu Nguyen on LinkedIn here.
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