The Trango Tech Story: How a Broken “Beta” Made Me a Vibe Coder

I can tell you the moment my stomach dropped. It was a hot August afternoon, and my phone screen glowed with that unmistakable, electric promise: ThrillPay — available Now. My team cheered. Friends texted screenshots. We’d been told the beta was rolling out, gates on, guardrails tight. But as I clicked through the App Store listing that bore my brand, my vision — my name — I realized what had actually happened. This wasn’t a beta. This was a full public release. And it was broken.

My name is Sam Preston, CEO of ThrillPay. Four years ago, I jumped into tech with the clumsy grace of someone who wanted it badly enough to learn on the way down. I did what most first-time founders do: I looked for a “safe” partner. Trango Tech had the right address, the right accents on sales calls, and the right polish; Their headquarters located in San Jose, which is considered Silicon Valley. American faces plastered on the website. They sounded like a team that could steady my hands while I built my first ship.

In January 2024, we kicked off. New project manager, new jargon, new promises, and a clean brief. The early flags were quiet at first, and more atmospheric than obvious, with a Project Manager who disappeared for days in the middle of active milestones and answers that arrived in the form of questions. The kind that says “we’ll get back shortly” in emails that stretch into next Tuesday. You tell yourself it’s fine — that every project has drag — because the alternative is admitting you bet your company on the wrong horse.

Then came the arbitrary and unexpected swap: my original Project Manager was out; a new senior Project Manager was in — a woman named Rida. The confidence, the certainty, the air of “we’ve done this a million times,” that all too familiar energy. You know the type. I will be honest: Rida and I clashed. I asked for her to be replaced many times on my project, and I was always refused. Every founder knows that tension you get when you’re forced into a working marriage that you can’t annul, while your product ages on the vine.

By the summer of 2025, the runway was clear: a Houston tech conference was set to kick off in late October and we needed a true beta. I asked the basics: How are we gating access? What are we telling users? Where are the release notes? Trango Tech's reply landed with the kind of logic that sounds authoritative if you want it to: "If we call it beta, the stores won’t accept it," they'd say, but deep down I pushed back, and — against my instincts — deferred. That deference cost me.

The day that the app “launched,” the celebration lasted maybe fifteen minutes. Then the scroll of messages turned. Users couldn’t sign up. Vendors couldn’t register. Flows looped into dead ends. A slew of grammatical errors, a broken copy, and endless crash reports. What was pitched as a test balloon had been fired like a flare. And it carried my brand with it.

I escalated the situation. I asked for accountability, for a change in personnel, and for someone to own what had just been done. I got a man introduced as a superior — an “Elliot” — who sounded like a script more than a decision-maker. I sent screenshots. Emails. A LinkedIn profile where Trango Tech titles didn’t match. Their silence was the kind that isn’t empty, just intentional. In that silence, two things became true: I had a mess in public view, and the team who created it still had custody of my code and my timeline.

There’s a point where a founder has to choose between fixing and fighting, so I chose fixing. I told myself I could steer the ship back to shore so Trango Tech agreed on two key additions — a local vs. statewide toggle and multi-business management — the kind of touches that turn an MVP into something worthy of a demo stage, as I was assured they’d either be added gratis (without charge), or quoted “low” to make up for the damage.

Then the inbox would eventually return to static, lacking in movement and action and weeks would pass. The quote that finally arrived would’ve been offensive even if the launch had gone flawlessly. We haggled. We danced. Toes were stepped on. I asked for a clear breakdown of effort and cost units — not to nickel-and-dime, but to understand what I was buying and why, but doors closed. I tried to bring in an outside contractor for just those two features, as I needed access and context to do it cleanly. I was blocked by Trango Tech.

When you’ve been in this game for a while, you learn to measure reality using small, un-cheatable signals. For us, it was OTP codes. To work inside my developer accounts, the Trango Tech team needed time-sensitive verification that pinged my phone. In the past, those requests showed up whenever real work was happening. In the month that they promised to “finish everything” for the conference, my phone was silent. Not one code was ever sent. Not one attempt was ever made.

After two weeks out, I stopped expecting anything from them and I did what I should’ve done months earlier: I rebuilt.

I didn’t “learn to code” in the romantic, nighttime way that you tend to see in movies that you love. I learned to vibe code — while not a buzzword, or a posture, it meant building like a founder, getting closer to the problem, getting more ruthless about scope, and avoiding overhead. It meant using modern stacks, and no/low-code where it made sense. It meant scripts where speed matters, and taste where users feel it. It meant product decisions happening at the speed of thought, and not the speed of a queue. For me, vibe coding felt like grabbing the wheel and driving my own car again. I picked the one thing my users needed next, built just that, and shipped it in days. I used simple tools with tiny bits of custom code when I needed them. I put it in real people’s hands, listened, and fixed problems fast. I kept the keys the whole time: my logins, my code, my data. And when a hard problem popped up, I brought in a specialist for that one piece, then took the wheel back. That’s vibe coding: move fast, keep it simple, and stay in control.

Eventually, I stripped ThrillPay down to its beating heart: the thing that we actually are — which is a clean, unified hub for local vendors and customers to find each other, pay, send direct messages, and grow without the "Frankenstein" of random QR codes, changing numbers, and the instability of vendors saying, “DM us on this handle, not that one.” The entire system for Food trucks, Vendors & Mobile-Pop Ups was just pure chaos. In less than a week I had built a cheaper, faster, better product. The kind of better that you feel is actually in the palm of your hands.

Meanwhile, the tech conference in Houston ended up looking like less of a fairy tale, as the big picture was rough — budgets were tight, the energy was low — and the crowd showed it. The foot traffic matched the mood, but I didn’t leave empty. I left with my product in my own hands and the certainty that comes from shipping something that works because you can see every stitch.

Back in California, my attorney and I took a breath once the tech conference was over. The sensible play was simple: draft a structured settlement for Trango Tech that reflected the reality of what happened, demand a refund for the project costs and related losses from the botched public release and return the source code and IP that my company was entitled to. My lawyer demanded that Trango Tech cover all fees and we’d even sign a mutual non-disparagement agreement and move on. But Trango Tech refused.

So we made a smaller ask, the kind that any reasonable partner would accommodate: just remove the broken public app from all digital stores that they had posted without proper testing, so that the brand I was rebuilding could breathe. Trango Tech's reply conditioned a personal takedown requiring my company to sign paperwork that, in my view, would force me to pretend the project was complete and satisfactory. I won’t put words into anyone’s mouth; I’ll just say I couldn’t sign something that didn’t reflect my experience. When “doing the right thing” becomes contingent on you saying the wrong thing, you’re not negotiating — you’re being managed. Let me be clear about the papers that Trango Tech slid across the table. Signing a “release,” or signing off on ThrillPay early, would’ve said that the job was done and fine — which, in plain terms, would've killed the right to sue, ask for a refund, or hold Trango Tech accountable. It would have locked me into their services, and any fix would've been billed as a change order” while they held my code, my listings, and my timeline. In my view, they tried to box me in: leaving a broken app up under my name, hurting my brand, and only taking it down if I signed papers that, as written, would waive my claims and clear them of any blame. That didn’t read like an equitable partnership; it read more like extortion, and a public execution of my company's name. I didn’t sign. Instead I documented everything, pulled my access back, and learned how to remove the app myself. Remember to always talk to a lawyer before you sign anything like that.

In my life, I'd always lived by a very simple rule: things don’t happen to us—they happen for us, so I rolled up my sleeves and figured it out myself. I learned how to remove the botched app from all digital stores and even though it was a small act of redemption, at the same time it also felt like standing up from a table I never should’ve sat at.

If you’ve continued reading thus far, let me give you the part that I wish someone would have given me: the story is in the actual lesson, which is the “beta” that wasn’t in terms of the vanishing Project Managers, the quotes without metrics, the IP held hostage by completion criteria that kept moving, the constant silence where accountability should have been; And when your overall deliverables begin to look anemic and your project starts to taste like a meal with nothing more than empty calories, you don’t bargain with a bad pattern masquerading as Tango Tech policy. You walk.

What I won’t do here is tell you to torch the world. I won’t tell you what to do with your money, your legal strategy, or your emotions. I will tell you what I did next which was documented everything, as I also filed formal complaints with the appropriate agencies. I redirected my energy into the only thing that mattered: the product, the customers, and the ultimate mission. And then I did something that I didn’t expect to do when I started this company: I built a strong playbook so other founders don’t have to learn this lesson the way that I did.

That playbook lives under a simple banner: vibe coding. Not cowboy coding. Not “DIY and pray.” Vibe coding is a founder-led product — the fastest path between what your customer needs and what your app does. It’s where you architect the core, keep your hands on your own tech stack, and pull in specialists when they add leverage — and on your terms. In my case, it meant a 90–95% reduction in production spend, days not months to ship, and control that doesn’t evaporate when someone else goes on vacation.

I’m opening a small, selective set of consulting slots for founders who see themselves in this story — whether pre-release, mid-rebuild, or post-breach triage. If you’re navigating vendor selection, contract traps, IP custody, or you need a vibe coding blueprint to get to market fast without burning cash, I’ll share exactly what I used to rebuild ThrillPay in a week and the operating cadences that keep it moving. This isn’t a course. It’s a seat at my table. Limited, focused, and real.

And if all you came for was the ThrillPay story, well, here it is: our version of the true beta still stands. It exists because I refused to let a software developer company's missteps define my product. ThrillPay exists because local vendors deserve one simplicity, convenience, and a clean platform to be discovered, paid, contacted, and grown — without the duct tape and crossed fingers. ThrillPay exists because the fastest way to fix fragmentation is to stop fragmenting yourself.

If you’re a founder, you’re going to have to decide who you trust with the soul of your product. I trusted the wrong partner for too long. That’s on me. But I won’t let that mistake go to waste. Not for me, and not for you.

If this story made your chest tighten with recognition, take that as your sign and audit your dependencies. Pull your access keys, and write your red lines down. And if you’re already in it, know this: you can take your power back faster than you think.

Support ThrillPay’s journey by joining us on this amazing journey. If you want the playbook that got me here, get on our future consulting list — I’ll share the due diligence language, the stack, and the operating moves that kept me from becoming a repeated cautionary tale.

One last note. This is my account — my records, my emails, my screenshots, my dates. Others may disagree. I encourage you to do your own diligence, talk to counsel, and decide for yourself. What I know is what I lived. And what I lived turned me from a customer into a builder, from a builder into an operator, and from an operator into someone who will never again hand the keys to a project without a plan to take them back.

The story of Trango Tech isn’t the end of ThrillPay. It’s the origin of something better. It’s why I vibe code now. And it’s why I’ll never wait for permission to release a completed app again. SCROLL DOWN!

Have you been wronged by Trango Tech—no matter how big or small the issue? We want to hear your story! If you're interested in joining a potential Class Action Lawsuit against Trango Tech, click the link below to fill out the form and share your experience. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeYRr4IS4BshoAXfH_4Xw-6YDOmU1gh3uy5wxljLeNpbPYvQg/viewform?usp=publish-editor