In 2020, I built disbots.gg, a platform for discovering and promoting Discord bots. At the time, existing listings were slow, cluttered, and relied on manual verification and static upvote systems that were easy to exploit. However, these same sites were generating over $100,000 a month in revenue from advertisement auctions. There was no efficient way for new developers to gain visibility or for server owners to search for bots based on actual functionality or reliability.

Without much experience at the time, I designed and built the platform from scratch— initially opting for a Vue+Express stack. It featured OAuth2-based bot submission, automated uptime and statistics tracking, categorized search, user reviews, and a modern dashboard for developers to manage and update their listings. I also set up custom moderation tooling that allowed us to review all new bot submissions within an hour, a scalable PostgreSQL database structure for storing analytics and bot information, and a Discord community server for support and feedback. Funding from an early mentor covered hosting, domain costs, and basic infrastructure, allowing me to run the platform independently.

Within a month of launch, disbots.gg became the preferred platform for over 100 bot developers and was used by more than 10,000 server owners to find bots for their communities. The site grew to a 250-member community, with a small volunteer team handling bot approvals and reporting. Although I eventually moved on to other projects, disbots.gg was my first time designing a full web product used at scale— handling real traffic, user authentication, security, database design, and community management at age 13.