From Bots to Mini Apps: My First Real Build in a Tokyo Startup

こんにちは、Timothyです。
This is my second post — and it’s about the first project I picked up after joining a startup in Tokyo.

I’m not sure what comes to mind when you think of “startups in Japan.”
Something international? Scrappy and fast-moving? Or maybe more traditional, just with hoodies?

In my case, it was somewhere in between.

While exploring Web3 use cases for the team, I stumbled on something in a product backlog:

Telegram Mini App — let’s try one.

No docs. No handover. But I’d built Telegram bots before — back when that was all there was.
So I picked it up, asked for a deadline, and got full freedom to run.

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That’s just the beginning.
The full write-up is now live — with all the messy, fun details of building and shipping something real in Tokyo:

👉 Full post here

🧩 If you’re into Telegram bots, fast-moving projects, or curious about what engineering looks like inside a Tokyo startup — take a look.

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And if you’re someone who works with developers — PM, founder, hiring

I think you’ll get a sense of how I work just by reading it.
Let’s stay connected.

Comments

[Haskell Thurber]

Really cool to hear about TMA development inside a startup context! I went the solo route building a Telegram Mini App (anonymous messaging platform) and found the experience surprisingly different from regular web dev.

The biggest thing that tripped me up was initData validation — Telegram's docs make it look simple but there are edge cases around hash comparison that can silently fail. Also, if you haven't tried Telegram Stars for payments yet, it's a game changer. No Stripe integration, no payment provider setup — just createInvoiceLink() and you're accepting micropayments.

Curious what your TMA stack looks like and if the Tokyo startup environment gave you more creative freedom vs. typical corporate constraints. The "no docs, no handover, full freedom" approach sounds like the best way to learn fast.