Entrepreneur · Various Business Domains
MONSIEUR JOSE DA COSTA
French auto-entreprise (micro-entreprise), a simplified legal status that allows running a commercial activity as a sole proprietor. In France, this regime is often used as a side business or an entrepreneurial stepping stone. In my case, it became a versatile structure that let me invoice very diverse services as opportunities came: web development one day, tent rental the next weekend, Airbnb property management in between. APE code 62.01Z (Computer programming), based in Bordeaux then Merignac.
250
Clients (over 4 years)
3
Business areas
1
Person
33
Gironde
I ran this business solo, handling the full chain: from commercial outreach to physical delivery, through technical tool development, invoicing and after-sales service. Each activity - IT, events, real estate - required juggling very different skills within the same day: coding a scraper in the morning, delivering and assembling a 137 kg tent in the afternoon, responding to an Airbnb prospect in the evening. This total versatility built my adaptability and gave me an end-to-end understanding of a commercial activity's lifecycle.
Business areas
Custom IT services for professional clients and internal projects. Web application development, large-scale data extraction and processing (web scraping), showcase website design, business process automation and technical consulting.
- Advanced web scraping and market analysis (Python, Node.js, PHP, Symfony, Elasticsearch)
- Custom web application and showcase website development (PHP, Symfony, TypeScript)
- Business process automation: quotes, invoices, data pipelines (Docker, Nginx)
Rental of professional reception tents, inflatable marquees and inflatable bounce castles for children (PVC 500g/sqm, galvanized steel) for weddings, christenings, birthdays and private events. Catalog of 6 sizes (3x6m to 5x12m, 18 to 80 guests). Delivery, assembly/disassembly services, and personalized configuration advice.
- 250+ clients across 4 seasons (individuals, associations, businesses)
- Professional tents, PVC 500g/sqm
- Laminated assembly guides, color-coded parts system
- Deposit system, detailed contracts, photo promotions
Two types of rental activity: seasonal vacation rental (short-term via Airbnb) and long-term furnished rental under LMNP status (Loueur Meuble Non Professionnel). Apartments and houses in Bordeaux and Arcachon Bay.
- Airbnb management with contracts, inventories, promotional photos
- Full administrative follow-up (utilities, insurance, co-ownership)
IT services
- Scraping and automations for the real estate sector: LeBonCoin data extraction with Symfony, Docker, MySQL and the ELK stack for market volume and pricing analysis
- Prototyping a web-based tent configurator in TypeScript (Syncfusion EJ2)
- Building a custom quote generator for a client, with automated PDF export
Event equipment rental
- Sourcing and managing professional tent inventory from European suppliers
- Drafting rental contracts, managing deposits and client follow-up
- Commercial outreach: LeBonCoin ads, Facebook, identifying partner reception venues
- End-to-end logistics: storage, delivery (up to 188 kg per tent), assembly, disassembly, cleaning, repairs
- Competitive intelligence and diversification research (inflatable castles, EN14960 standards)
Seasonal property rental
- Airbnb property management: promotion, seasonal contracts, inventories, administrative follow-up
Through my freelance missions and personal projects, I developed deep expertise in web scraping and large-scale data extraction. I completed dozens of missions ranging from simple sites (static HTML, open REST APIs, standard pagination) to far more complex targets protected by WAFs (Web Application Firewalls) and advanced anti-bot solutions: Cloudflare, DataDome, PerimeterX, and Akamai Bot Manager. Against these protections, I learned to analyze detection mechanisms (TLS/JA3 fingerprinting, browser fingerprinting, JavaScript challenges, dynamic rate limiting) and to develop reliable bypass strategies: residential proxy rotation, session and cookie management, human behavior simulation, CAPTCHA challenge solving, and headless browser instrumentation. Whether for one-off scraping jobs or continuous extraction pipelines, I master the full technical chain: target site analysis, protection reverse engineering, scraper development (Python, Node.js, PHP), structured data storage, and pipeline reliability monitoring. Some extractions reached several hundred million items, requiring heavy server infrastructure: database clusters, distributed message queues, parallel worker orchestration and real-time load monitoring. This is a domain where I have an excellent skill level, built through years of hands-on practice across varied real-world cases.
- Simple sites: static HTML, REST APIs, pagination, JavaScript-rendered (SPA/SSR)
- WAFs bypassed: Cloudflare, DataDome, PerimeterX, Akamai Bot Manager
- Advanced techniques: residential proxy rotation, TLS/JA3 fingerprinting, browser automation
- Languages: Python (Scrapy, BeautifulSoup, httpx), Node.js (Cheerio, Playwright), PHP (Symfony, Goutte)
- Full pipelines: extraction, transformation, storage (PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, CSV/JSON), monitoring
- Scale: extractions up to several hundred million items, heavy server infrastructure (DB clusters, parallel workers, message queues)
- Built and managed a fleet of 6 professional reception tents (18 to 200 sqm total surface), serving 250+ clients across 4 seasons
- Developed a LeBonCoin scraper (Symfony + Docker + ELK) for real-time market and competitor analysis
- Created a complete system of automated HTML quotes, rental contracts and invoicing
- Managed seasonal apartment rentals in Bordeaux (Airbnb) and the Arcachon Bay
- Professional photography, marketing materials and website for commercial promotion of the business
- Delivered IT services: custom web development, data extraction, website design
IT services
The IT side was built on client missions: real estate professionals who hired me for custom development, and companies that commissioned me for large-scale data extraction. This is where I sharpened my scraping and automation expertise, delivering on concrete and varied business needs.
Event equipment rental
The time-to-profit ratio for the tent activity was challenging (about 6 hours of work per rental for roughly 10% net margin), which led me to wind down that activity in 2024. But the hands-on experience - managing clients, logistics, weather surprises, equipment damage - gave me a practical understanding of business operations that shapes my engineering perspective daily.
3 Technical Skill · 5 Soft Skill
Technical Skill
LeBonCoin scraper (Symfony, ELK), tent configurator (TypeScript), custom quote generator, business automation tools.
Large-scale web scraping, WAF bypassing (Cloudflare, DataDome, Akamai), extraction pipelines up to several hundred million items.
MySQL and Elasticsearch for real estate market analysis, ELK stack for competitive intelligence and price monitoring.
Soft Skill
Identifying opportunities across 3 distinct markets, commercial positioning, pivoting activities based on profitability.
Running 3 business lines simultaneously in full autonomy: IT services, event rental, property management.
Juggling daily between coding, field logistics and property management across very different industries.
Invoicing, quotes, margin tracking, profitability analysis per activity - including the decision to shut down tent rental at 10% net margin.
Diverse challenges: technical bugs, logistics surprises, equipment damage, client dispute resolution.
