Speed Without Chaos: A Mobile Architect on Scaling Startups Safely

Artemii Shlesberg, a seasoned mobile architect on keeping startup growth fast and stable

For many startups, speed is everything—until it breaks everything. It’s easy to ship fast in the early days, but as the user base grows and features stack up, rushed code turns into technical debt, and momentum stalls.

That’s not just anecdotal. According to a 2024 McKinsey study, companies that invest early in developer experience and infrastructure cut product launch times by up to 40% and see customer satisfaction rise by 60%. In short: thoughtful engineering pays off. But how exactly do startups achieve this balance of speed and stability?

To explore how startups can maintain both speed and stability, we turned to mobile systems architect Artemii Shlesberg. His work spans fintech and streaming platforms, where rapid growth meets strict reliability demands. Beyond hands‑on product launches, he contributes to the developer community through SEPHEO and has proven his engineering approach by winning national hackathons like VKHack, Mentorhack, and Sber Hack—competitions where hundreds of engineers solve real‑world challenges for top tech firms.

Build Like You’ll Grow Tomorrow

One of the most common traps for startups is chasing speed at any cost. Shipping fast feels like winning in the early days, but every shortcut in architecture becomes tomorrow’s technical debt—bugs, delays, and messy rewrites. Artemii considers: “Teams that treat engineering as a sprint often find themselves stuck the moment their user base grows or investors demand new features.”

The smarter approach is to build for tomorrow from the start. Modular, testable architecture acts like insurance for the business: it allows a small team to move quickly without creating a fragile product. This mindset is especially critical for sectors like fintech and B2B services, where reliability and security are non‑negotiable.

Artemii Shlesberg applied this principle while launching Tochka XS, a mobile banking product in Russia. Instead of rushing to market, he built the app on MVVM+C with RxSwift, creating a flexible architecture that supported weekly updates without breaking core features. The result was a product that could evolve like a startup while meeting the strict standards of a licensed bank, contributing to Tochka’s consistent #1 position in both web and mobile business banking categories in Russia, according to the Markswebb Business Internet & Mobile Banking Rankings.

Such an example means that speed only works when it rests on a solid foundation. Startups that invest in architecture early gain the freedom to scale, pivot, and release faster without paying for past shortcuts.

Secure by Design, Not as an Afterthought

When Artemii Shlesberg built Tochka XS, he refused to leave security for later. From the first sprint, he developed a client‑side encryption and data‑packaging layer using AES‑256 and Protocol Buffers, working closely with the project’s CTO and security team. This upfront investment meant the app could release weekly without compliance delays and later became a benchmark for the bank’s mobile integrations.

“Security wasn’t a blocker for us because it was never an afterthought,” Artemii recalls. “We couldn’t afford data breaches or delays. So we designed it to be invisible to the user but airtight for the bank.”

Many fintech startups only learn this lesson the hard way. Baking security into the architecture from day one not only prevents breaches and regulatory headaches but also unlocks speed, because the team can scale confidently without fear of technical debt or compliance bottlenecks.

Engineering Real-Time at Scale

If fintech is about trust, live streaming is about performance under pressure. It is unforgiving: even a brief frame drop can make users leave, and mobile devices with limited CPU and GPU power make the challenge tougher. Successful teams combine low‑latency media delivery with optimized rendering pipelines to maintain smooth, real‑time performance. At Voices, Artemii Shlesberg achieved this by building the iOS architecture from scratch in Swift, utilizing Combine and MVVM, and integrating WebSockets and the Agora SDK to maintain stable streams. “I needed a stack that gave us both speed and flexibility,” he explains. “Combine and MVVM kept the code modular and testable, while WebSockets and Agora let us focus on user experience instead of infrastructure battles.”

By splitting the rendering load between CPU and GPU, the app maintained a stable 60 FPS, cut startup time by 40%, and reduced battery use by 22%, helping Voices reach 10,000 monthly active users and double its revenue in six months.

For startups, this example means that raw speed is only half the story—users reward consistency and reliability. A flashy feature may attract downloads, but long‑term growth comes from seamless experiences that work under real‑world conditions. Live video, gaming, or any real‑time interaction demands that engineering teams think like product strategists: every millisecond of latency or extra battery drain is a potential churn point.

Another takeaway is that performance engineering is a business decision, not just a technical task. Voices didn’t grow because of a marketing push alone—it grew because users could trust the experience. Investors notice that too: smooth, reliable performance translates directly into higher retention, better monetization, and ultimately, market credibility.

Turning Engineering into Revenue

Even the best-performing app needs a business model. For social and streaming startups, monetization can be a make‑or‑break moment: users expect free access, but investors expect growth. Many teams leave payments as an afterthought—often bolting them on too late, in ways that disrupt the user experience.“The best monetization is invisible,” Artemii says. “When payments feel natural, users focus on the experience—and that’s what drives growth.”

At Voices, Artemii approached this challenge like an engineer. Instead of a single payment option, he built a flexible, multi‑channel payment system together with the CTO. The app seamlessly supported Apple Pay, Stripe acquiring, and even crypto wallets for NFT tokens, giving creators multiple ways to earn and the platform multiple revenue streams—without complicating the interface. As a result, the revenue grew, user engagement stayed high thanks to frictionless payments, and the strong early traction helped the startup secure venture funding.

In the race to scale, many startups treat engineering as a sprint, only to trip over their own code later. But there is another path: by combining modular architecture, built‑in security, and performance‑driven design, a small team can move fast without breaking. The principles of thoughtful engineering, such as planning for growth, protecting trust, and keeping the user experience seamless, are the real accelerators of sustainable success. For startups, the message is simple: speed gets you to launch, but smart engineering is what keeps you in the game.