Nuvia started as a question I was curious about: can public data identify micro-markets where demand, protein supply and grocery supply all sit within walking distance of each other? So far the most useful thing I’ve produced is a clear account of what the available data cannot answer.
The question I had
My hypothesis was geographic: certain small areas should show demand, protein supply and grocery supply within walking distance, and those areas should be identifiable before anyone goes and looks at them.
That’s a data question long before it’s a product question, so I started with an audit rather than an implementation.
What I actually did
I went at the sources first: what public data exists, what it genuinely measures, how current it is, and where its coverage stops being real.
- Audited candidate data sources and their quality.
- Wrote down the market assumptions I was making, explicitly.
- Recorded the geographic and coverage constraints instead of assuming them away.
- Defined the scoring methodology before running any scoring.
Where it stands
What I have is a discovery and design record, plus a list of the gaps any honest version of this system would have to close. The next step is the smallest experiment that can produce measurable evidence — not a larger build on inputs I haven’t validated.
What I took from it
Availability isn’t usability. A source can exist, be public, look exactly relevant, and still fail to support the decision you wanted to make with it. Finding that out during an audit costs a few days. Finding it out after building the platform costs the platform.
- Nuvia is an experiment, not a production platform.
- There are no users, no production metrics and no commercial results to report.
The same discipline applies to anything built on external signals: audit the inputs and state the assumptions before committing engineering to them.
A new product, an internal tool, or the system behind an interface that already exists. If the problem isn’t pinned down yet, I can help shape the product and the architecture before anything is written. Tell me what it is, who it is for and when you need it. I answer with what I would build, in what order, and what I would decide first — and I say so when what I learn along the way contradicts the plan, including mine.