TidyLinker
A two-sided marketplace for professional cleaners with training, certification, and career progression built in.
The Brief
Adele Furness runs Cambridge Group, a multi-award winning cleaning company in Cambridgeshire. She came to me with a vision: build an Uber-style marketplace for cleaners.
Not a new idea on its own, but her angle was different. Training and certification built right into the platform.
The cleaning industry isn't just domestic. There's post-construction, biohazard, trauma, mould remediation, carpet specialists. Adele wanted cleaners to sign up, get trained in these specialisms through the platform, earn certificates, and then charge more for that expertise.
Clients get verified, qualified cleaners. Cleaners get career progression. The platform takes a cut.
My Role
I came on as technical co-founder. Equity plus costs, not a day rate. That means I've got skin in the game and full control over technical decisions.
Infrastructure
I could have gone with enterprise-grade cloud hosting but that would be burning money at this stage. We can scale up when we need to, not before. The database is managed by a specialist provider so I'm not babysitting backups and uptime.
Payments
Stripe handles the money. Cleaners connect their bank accounts, clients pay through the platform, payouts happen automatically. We looked at other providers but Stripe just works and payments are too critical to take risks with.
Cleaner onboarding with ID verification
What Got Built
Full signup and onboarding for both cleaners and clients. Job posting and search. A quoting system. Messaging between parties. Payment processing and automatic payouts. Job completion workflow. Admin dashboard for managing verifications. Reviews and ratings. Notification system. Data export and deletion for GDPR compliance.
The way it's built matters too. When we get to the mobile app in phase three, we won't be starting from scratch. The core logic is already structured so we can plug an app into it without rewriting everything.
How We Work
Adele and her team aren't technical. They don't need project management software or daily standups. We do calls every couple of weeks where I demo progress. A shared board for visibility on what's done and what's next. Group chat for the day to day.
I test everything properly before it goes live. Automated checks that run through the whole user journey, making sure nothing's broken.
"My previous developer wasn't delivering. Stu took over, didn't waste time on the mess — just rebuilt what mattered. Within a few months I had payments working and a real path to launch. No drama, just progress."
Adele
Founder, TidyLinker
Results
Full marketplace delivered in four months. Complete feature set from signup through to payment and reviews. Built to scale when it needs to, without burning cash on infrastructure before there's traffic to justify it.
Built with Laravel, Inertia.js, React, Tailwind CSS, PostgreSQL, Stripe Connect
Let's build something
I build platforms that handle real complexity — payments, verification, multi-sided marketplaces. If you've got an idea, let's talk.