Where we came from, where we're at.

Born out of a desire to create better software, faster, with less hassle and more time for what we love - building digital products.

Hey there -

I'm Dragos Dobrean, one of the founders. I've been running appssemble since its beginning in 2016.

A little bit of history

We started as a mobile development agency. Initially, we worked as contractors and on team augmentation agreements on big projects then we moved into developing full products (web and mobile) for startups. We're currently focusing on scale-ups and small and medium companies.

During this time, we've become contrarian to the way software is developed and how software outsourcing is done.

Software development agencies that work on a time and resources approach (price/hour/developer) or sell headcounts work don't have the client's interests at heart and are especially bad for small and medium-sized companies.

Those types of companies make money by selling time and resources, it is in their interest to increase the headcount, deliver slower, and create overly complex systems so they can justify the headcount increase and increase the workload. The team management is passed to the client, so they are in no way accountable for the success of the project.

Additionally, it is also bad for the people they hire, talent is wasted, lots of developers sit "on the bench" waiting for the next project, and team morale and especially accountability are low.

Where are we at?

Seeing all this, and experiencing it firsthand, we've decided to do better.

Instead of selling headcounts and hours, we've decided to sell digital solutions and take full responsibility for everything we deliver. We focus on creating digital solutions that are resilient, scalable, and as simple as possible (technically), we don't add complexity for the sake of it (the best code written is no code at all).

We're a small team that delivers good work, fast. 

We're not super-humans nor do we work long hours or weekends, we're simply good at what we do and follow a set of rules:

  • Uninterrupted time
  • No meetings (almost)
  • Own the solution after we ship
  • Developers test their code
  • Developers / Designers / QAs write their tasks
  • We only hire good people

We have almost no meetings, we work in small, self-sufficient teams that contain all the required layers for implementing a certain feature or solution (design, frontend, backend), and we are accountable for everything we develop. If we mess up, we own our mistake and we fix it, as it should be.

By transferring the accountability for the solution from the customer to our team, we need to create technically sound products and increase our expertise.

Working on small teams creates better cohesion between our team members, improves communication, increases accountability, and helps us deliver software much faster than our competitors. Our rules and slimmed-down processes allow us to focus on the things that truly matter and that we love to do -- building good digital products.

Since we're not making money by selling headcounts, our goal is not to increase the team size. We don't micro-manage, and we only hire good people, people who are passionate about their work, about their skills, who treat people right, and who have no interest in office politics, or bullshit jobs. They have a passion for delivering exceptionally good products, products they would use.

This allows us to deliver solutions that are in sync with our customer's needs and the product roadmap.

Our services and ways of working are not suited for everyone. If you're looking for a team that delivers good digital solutions fast and takes full responsibility for what they deliver, we'd love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading! You can always contact me directly at dragos@appssemble.com if you have any questions. I look forward to hearing from you.

Dragos

Dragos Dobrean

Co-founder & CEO

office@appssemble.com

New York

1740 Broadway, 15th Floor, 10019

London

Kemp House, 160 City, Road, EC1V 2NX

Cluj-Napoca

Blvd. 21 Decembrie 1989, 95-97 400603

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