INDUSTRY
Consultation Marketplace
TEAM
10 Members
PROJECT STATE
Ongoing
COUNTRY
United States
Connecting People with Creators Through 1:1 Video Calls
A social marketplace where people discover creators and experts by topic and talk with them one-on-one over instant or scheduled video calls — each one booked, paid, and hosted from a single shareable MIRL Page.
About a Project
MIRL is a social platform that connects people with creators, coaches, and domain experts for one-on-one video calls. A seeker finds an expert by topic and either calls them instantly or books a time for later, and every expert gets a shareable MIRL Page that holds their profile, call options, and payments behind a single link. Appening partnered with MIRL to design and engineer the full product across iOS, Android, and web — the real-time video calling, the in-app payments, a social discovery feed, and the platform that runs the marketplace behind it. The result is one place where people find the right person, talk face to face, and pay for it without ever leaving the app.
The creator economy gave millions of people an audience and real expertise — but the conversations that audience actually wants rarely happen. Knowledge lives on the feed as content, while its most valuable form — talking one to one, when it matters — has nowhere to go.
- The conversation worth having has nowhere to happen. Followers like posts and send the occasional DM, but good questions get buried, and hosting a real paid call means stitching together a link-in-bio, a scheduler, a payment page, and a video tool — enough friction to end most conversations before they start.
- Seekers have no trusted way to find the right person and simply talk. Without discovery by topic, ratings, and availability, reaching the right expert comes down to guesswork and unanswered messages.
- Left unsolved, the gap compounds on both sides. An expert's audience never converts into income or genuine connection, and the people who want a human answer stay stuck with generic content and conversations that never happen.
MIRL shipped as a complete two-sided marketplace across iOS, Android, and web — where someone can discover an expert, start a video call, and pay for it without ever leaving the app.
- One shareable page replaces a whole stack of tools. Every expert gets a MIRL Page that holds their profile, instant and scheduled calling, payments, and posts behind a single link — the one thing they share across Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube.
- Calls connect in one tap, like a real phone call. Native incoming-call screens on iOS and Android let a seeker reach an available expert instantly, or book a time for later — with no meeting links or extra apps to set up.
- Every conversation can be paid for, automatically. Pricing a call, taking payment, and paying the expert out all happen inside the app, so an expert's time turns into income without a separate payment tool.
- A discovery engine built for a real marketplace. Seekers browse two dozen expertise categories — from dating and fitness to business and travel — ranked by a tunable engine the team can adjust live.
- A social feed that turns scrolling into calls. Experts post Sparks — short photo and video updates — that help seekers find them and move from browsing to a live conversation.
- Ready for a global audience from day one. The full seeker and expert experience ships in four languages: English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Product Features
Appening helps you reach business goals by applying Agile methodologies.
Real-Time Video Stack
Seekers and experts connect through one-tap video sessions with native incoming-call UI on iOS and Android, speaker routing, and session recovery after app backgrounding. The call layer handles request/accept/decline flows, duration metering, and post-call feedback routing.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: Live video and audio run on Agora, with Socket keeping each call in sync, so an incoming call rings like a normal phone call on iPhone and Android and connects in a single tap.
Expert Ranking Engine
Operations teams tune how experts surface in discovery — weighting proximity, priority membership, recommendation status, rating score, review volume, account age, and controlled randomness through live percentage sliders.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: A ranking system the team can adjust live from the admin panel, changing how experts surface in discovery instantly — with no app update required.
Expert Discovery
Seekers browse curated category rails, popular expertise topics, rising experts, favorites, and past conversations from a personalized home feed — filtering by price, rating, experience, and gender preference.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: A fast discovery feed organized by category and topic that keeps a seeker's place as they move around the app, so finding the right person stays smooth and effortless.
Instant Consultations
Available experts accept on-demand call requests in real time — with haptic feedback, timeout handling at 5-minute intervals, and automatic payment capture on session completion.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: An instant-call flow that confirms payment is secured before the video connects, so the moment an expert accepts, the call is already paid for and ready to go.
Social Feed
Users publish Sparks — photo and video posts with comments, boosts, bookmarks, and reporting — building community engagement between paid consultations.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: Built-in video editing and cloud media handling let experts post Sparks — short photo and video updates — that feed a discovery feed and turn everyday posts into a reason to call.
Scheduled Booking
Experts set weekly availability windows; seekers select time slots, book appointments, and manage upcoming meets through a calendar interface with cancellation workflows.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: Time-zone-aware scheduling with bookable time slots and reminders through Firebase, so seekers book around an expert's real calendar and neither side misses the session.
Multi-Connect
Seekers initiate simultaneous consultation requests across multiple experts in a selected category — accelerating match time for urgent needs.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: A single request that reaches every available expert in a category at once and connects the seeker to whoever accepts first — cutting the wait when someone needs an answer now.
Stripe Payments
Seekers pay per session via saved cards; experts onboard Stripe Connect accounts for automated payouts with platform commission deducted at source.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: Payments and payouts run on Stripe — seekers pay with a saved card, experts are paid automatically after each session, and the platform fee is handled in the background, with no separate payment app.
MIRL Connect Referrals
Users share Branch.io deep links with exclusive invite codes — unlocking referral dashboards that track invited seekers and reward participation.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: Shareable invite links built on Branch track who each member brings in and unlock a referral dashboard — so the community grows as members share their own MIRL Page.
Operations Console
Administrators manage the full marketplace from a unified Angular dashboard — user registry, category taxonomy, CMS pages, support tickets, and platform defaults.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: A secure web platform that runs the whole marketplace — managing members, categories, content, and support from one place, with access controlled by role.
Refund Management
Finance and support teams process automatic Stripe refunds, manual admin reversals, and user-submitted refund requests — with full fee attribution and transaction cross-referencing.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: A refund system that handles automatic, manual, and user-requested refunds through Stripe, with each one linked back to its original call — so support resolves issues quickly and cleanly.
Call Audit Trail
Every consultation is logged with expert/seeker identity, session duration, and call ID — giving operations full visibility into platform usage and dispute resolution.
Agency Engineering Value-Add: A searchable record of every call — who spoke, for how long, and when — giving the team full visibility for support and dispute resolution.
Technology Stack
Mobile App
Flutter / Dart
Agora
Socket.IO
Backend
Node.js / Express
MongoDB
Frontend
Angular
Third-Party Integrations
Stripe
Branch.io
Cloud Infrastructure
AWS
