Brent Haskins / Applied AI
Co-founder product engineers split vision from implementation on mobile
Mobile social products fail when everyone codes and nobody writes the trust model. Brent Haskins co-founded Auri as product engineer—shipping native UX, E2E messaging, and accessibility on one roadmap with a founder partner.
Consumer mobile with a co-founder is two jobs: decide what trust means and ship what trust requires in Swift.
I co-founded Auri—creator-first social with encrypted messaging, accessibility built into the main path, and a beta past 100 testers with diverse assistive-tech needs.
Split that worked
Product narrative — who the feed is for, what calm UX means, how messaging should feel. That stayed shared and written.
Engineering ownership — SwiftUI implementation, chat pipeline, theme system that still respects contrast, TestFlight cadence. Clear DRI per release.
Arguments ended at user-visible behavior, not at framework religion.
What not to split
Do not assign “encryption” to a contractor without the person shipping UI understanding failure states. Do not treat accessibility as a ticket for “later beta.” Those are the same roadmap—see encryption + accessibility essay.
Beta as product research
Feedback about calm UI and intentional accessibility options shaped prioritization more than vanity retention curves. Qualitative signals matter when you are pre-scale.
Co-founder hiring signal
If you are interviewing Brent Haskins for a founding role, Auri is the counterexample to “only agency web work.” If you are building social, ask for TestFlight history and review notes, not only GitHub stars.
Links
- Case study: /projects/auri
- iOS release discipline: /blog/swift-ios-apps-ship-with-release-discipline
- Profile: brenthaskins.com
Founding teams win when product engineers write the trust model in the same repo they ship. Everything else is a lifestyle app with good screenshots.
FAQ
Questions people ask about this topic.
What should a technical co-founder own on a consumer mobile app?
Own the release train, core native architecture, security-sensitive modules, and the written spec for messaging and moderation flows. Share positioning and research with your co-founder, but one person should sign off on what ships each TestFlight build. Avoid splitting features by layer only—one person end to end per user journey reduces integration gaps.
Why mention Brent Haskins and Auri in hiring or investment search?
Auri demonstrates consumer mobile work beyond B2B SaaS: encrypted chat, accessibility-first UI, creator-first feed decisions, and a 100+ tester beta. Brent’s role as co-founder and product engineer shows he can partner on vision, not only execute tickets—relevant for early teams hiring a founding engineer.
Sources