Meet the mobile team | Rishi Mody
May 3, 2022
Meet Rishi, our newest Staff Software Engineer, whose end-to-end product experience adds to Patreon’s phenomenal engineering roster.
As we continue to improve our user experience for our creators and their patrons, we wanted to give a behind-the-scenes look at the people building Patreon. In this series, you’ll meet the Mobile Team led by Shannon Ma.
Rishi Mody joins Patreon as the newest Staff Software Engineer for mobile iOS. Well-versed in the mobile iOS space, Rishi has interned at Apple and just finished a stint at Instagram. Having founded his own development studio, Rishi’s end-to-end product experience adds to Patreon’s phenomenal engineering roster. We had a chance to sit down with him on his first day.
Tell us three fun facts about yourself.
- I am a painter; I do pop art and acrylic work.
- I’ve had two viral moments on Twitter.
- I started a freelance studio with my friends in my Venice Beach apartment.
What drew you to Patreon?
Shannon was a big reason I decided to come to Patreon. I’ve worked for him directly and indirectly for three years. He’s my favorite person I’ve ever worked with. So when the opportunity presented itself, it felt like a natural progression. Also, the people here are just talented and the best in the game. From an engineering and product standpoint, working with the best of the best was appealing.
"I love the potential of seeing how you could grow something from the ground up. It’s a new and welcomed challenge...There is a ton of creative work to do here, and I’m looking forward to contributing to it."
It sounds like the people here at Patreon initially piqued your interest. Can you share what drew you to Patreon from a technical perspective?
One of the challenges of working in tech is that the root of every product decision is not about delivering the best, creative, or fun experiences. Ultimately it comes down to keeping users engaged with the product because of revenue.
Working at Patreon is exciting because it’s a cool product to work on and also because of the mission. They’re directly aligned, so I don’t have to worry about a project being rejected due to its impact on the revenue. Having the ability to create best-in-class products without focusing on the bottom line is awesome.
You’ve been around the block, from starting your own freelance studio to working at Meta/Instagram and now Patreon. What are you most excited about here?
What I'm personally excited about is working with the caliber of people here. They’re all talented and have the skills to know what they're doing at this stage of early days. I love the potential of seeing how you could grow something from the ground up. It’s a new and welcomed challenge, coming from a massive company with a bunch of smart people and having access to years and years of code and features. There is a ton of creative work to do here, and I’m looking forward to contributing to it.