Behind the scenes

How This Investor Portal Was Built

A practical demonstration of what private-cloud infrastructure looks like when it's turned into a real product — built entirely on Simplyblock and Vela.

What You're Looking At

This is a production-grade investor data room: controlled access, document viewing, audit logging, and engagement analytics. It's not a demo environment — it runs on the same infrastructure stack we recommend to enterprise customers.

Every login, document view, and session is tracked and stored in a PostgreSQL database running on Simplyblock storage, managed through Vela. The application itself is a Node.js/TypeScript server with no dependency on any public cloud provider.

The Stack

Four layers, all running on private infrastructure.

Storage

Simplyblock

High-performance block storage backing the entire data layer — databases, volumes, and persistent state.

Database & Platform

Vela

Managed PostgreSQL, schema visualisation, and developer platform tooling — all on top of Simplyblock.

Application

Node.js + TypeScript

Express server with EJS templates. No framework overhead — just a clean, typed codebase that's easy to audit.

Email

AWS SES

Transactional email for magic-link authentication and investor invitations — the only external cloud dependency.

Investor Authentication Flow

A two-step flow that avoids storing plain-text passwords while keeping the experience simple for investors.

1

Share link The owner creates a unique share link per investor. The token is a 32-byte random value stored as a URL-safe string.

2

Email + password The investor opens the link and enters their email and a short password. Passwords are hashed with bcrypt (12 rounds) and never stored in plain text.

3

Magic link via email A one-time link is generated and sent via AWS SES. The raw token is emailed; only its SHA-256 hash is stored in the database. The link expires in 15 minutes.

4

Session cookie Clicking the link creates a session token, hashed and stored in investor_sessions. The raw token is set as an httpOnly cookie valid for 24 hours.

Database Schema

A single PostgreSQL database managed through Vela — schema visualisation, table browsing, and automated backups, all backed by Simplyblock storage.

Click either screenshot to enlarge.

Vela schema visualiser showing table relationships — Schema visualiser — table relationships and foreign keys

Vela tables view listing all 12 database tables with row counts — Tables view — names, row counts, and sizes

Cloud-Like Experience on Private Infrastructure

Many companies want the speed and simplicity of the public cloud, but cannot move sensitive investor data off their own infrastructure. This portal is a lightweight proof that you don't have to choose. Simplyblock and Vela deliver the same managed-service ergonomics — schema visualisation, automated backups, one-command deployments — without handing your data to a third-party cloud provider.

The result is a product that feels familiar and modern to the end user, while running on infrastructure you fully control.

We Use Our Own Products

We built this portal on our own platform because we genuinely enjoy using what we are building. It is an important part of how we work: we care about turning deep infrastructure into something people actually want to use. Simple, intuitive, reliable, and ready for real workflows.

If our stack is not good enough for our own investor relations workflow, it is not good enough to sell.