Designer-engineer · Amsterdam
I bring first products to market. Wrote the first Headspace app. Built the first Rekki app (iOS and Android). Refined at IDEO. 17 years deep on Apple platforms. Now shipping my own products and working with teams that need someone who can ship and shape.
Shipped product with
The short version
Most iOS developers can ship what you ask for. Far fewer have brought a first product to market — before the team, before the investors, before there's even a category. I refined product thinking at IDEO, wrote the first Headspace app, built the first Rekki app (iOS and Android), and have spent 17 years getting deep on Apple platforms since.
Now I pair that depth with modern AI-assisted development — one person, working like a small team, deciding what's worth building and then building it. For my own products and for the teams I work with.
Product thinking refined at the world's most influential design firm
Wrote the first Headspace app and the first Rekki app — before either had investors or a category
On Apple platforms since iPhone OS 3. SwiftUI, UIKit, Metal — plus Android when the need is there.
Shipping my own products solo — small team output, one operator
Products
My own IP. Small, opinionated software built solo. The experience of shipping these informs everything else I do.
Music Discovery · qija.nl · in TestFlight
A local-first music player and social discovery network — your files and every streaming service in one library, with the next album coming from a friend. iOS, macOS, watchOS, a Swift backend and a Python enrichment worker. Built solo and bootstrapped. → qija.nl
TBA · Shipping after Qija
Two products = a pattern. One = a lucky break. Next thing already in motion — the build-in-public log will live on the writing page.
Client work
17 years of working with teams that needed someone who could ship and shape. A selection — the full list is longer.
EV Discovery · Los Angeles
iOS development for an electric vehicle discovery platform helping drivers find and compare EVs.
Health Wearable · Amsterdam · $8.7M raised
iOS development for the companion app to the NOWATCH stress and nervous system tracking wearable.
Kitchen Planner
Canopy
Urban World
Portal
Restaurant Ordering
Spirit
Anonymous Camera
Worklens
Hotel Experience
Game / Learning Platform
Cycling App
Beyond the Screen
Million Pound Drop
Artpop App
Lyon AR
About
My time at IDEO refined how I think about products — the kind of place where you spend as much time deciding what's worth building as you do building it. That stuck. A few years later I wrote the first iOS app for Headspace, back before meditation apps were a category and before the first investor was in the room. I did the same for Rekki — first iOS and first Android app, taking the restaurant ordering product from zero to a real thing in the world. Bringing first products to market is the thread that runs through most of what I do.
Since then: 17 years on Apple platforms. iOS, watchOS, tvOS, macOS. SwiftUI, UIKit, Metal. I've lost count of the Xcode betas. Android too — not my home turf, but I've shipped plenty of it, and with modern tooling the barrier is lower than ever. If the need is there, I do Android. I've shipped product with NOWATCH (stress-tracking wearable, Amsterdam), Pangea.inc (EV discovery, LA), IKEA, Ford, McKinsey, Facebook, NBC Universal, a handful of startups, and yes, Lady Gaga.
Right now I'm building my own products — Qija (music discovery, live on the App Store) and Fiets (offline cycling navigation, in TestFlight) — while working with product teams. The same product depth that shipped the first Headspace app, now moving faster because the tooling is better. The plan is to keep shipping, and to keep bringing that experience to the teams I work with.
I'm humble about most things and not very loud, which means I let the work speak. If you've read this far, that's probably already working.
Writing
Autonomous agent pipelines with pi — ticket-plan, feature-plan, work-feature, and work-queue let my coding agent work the night shift. Complexity-based model routing, the judge guardrail, and why Deepseek V4 Flash gives 95% of the result for 1% of the cost. Knoop case study: a whole watchOS feature in 5 steps for $0.44.
01.06.2026qija.nl is live and the app is in TestFlight. Fifty-plus features across five platforms, built solo and bootstrapped — how agentic coding made it possible, why experience is the multiplier, and the Circle paywall that builds a network as it earns.
28.05.2026Agentic coding has flipped the economics of bespoke code. With the TanStack npm attack as a backdrop — and the pi agent process that makes a lighter, composable architecture viable to own outright.
16.05.2026What I've found so far exploring the BMAD framework — structured agent roles, slash commands, multi-model routing, and the OpenCode integration.
30.04.2026How I moved from hand-holding an AI agent through Redux features to a structured pipeline where tests act as the contract between planning and implementation.
12.04.2026Claude, Ollama, OpenRouter, Perplexity — a €200/month breakdown of the subscriptions that actually make me productive, and where each one falls short.
02.04.2026How I built a multi-agent orchestrator inside pi agent — with research, planning, and implementation sub-agents wired into a single pipeline.
Contact
Got a project, a vague idea, or just want to nerd out about Swift? I'm always happy to chat.