From Rotterdam, and you notice it in everything.
CodeIQ began with a twelve-year-old who wanted to know how the internet worked, and with a sandwich shop around the corner that needed a website. Today there are platforms running on our work that hundreds of people sit in every day.
The core is in Rotterdam: Serge, Aaron and Anna. Around them we work with dozens of developers spread across the world, in different time zones, so there is nearly always someone working on your project. Whoever builds it, every line that goes to production has been read by one of us.
It started with a sandwich.
The first job came from the sandwich shop around the corner. They had no website, Serge wanted to build something people would actually use. The deal was short: he built it, they stood him a sandwich. That is still the most honest rate we have ever charged, and it has never tasted that good since.
Before that, the same twelve-year-old was sitting on the floor of a server room among the cables, because he wanted to see where the internet actually came from. That curiosity never wore off.
From a bedroom in Rotterdam it became a company, later Aaron joined and it became CodeIQ. You do not need more history than that from us. What changed since are the jobs; what stayed the same is that we pick up and build ourselves.
Because that sandwich led us to companies where everything is a few sizes bigger. Platforms wired into an ERP, with hundreds of people working in them at once, where an hour of downtime costs revenue directly and where a procurement department wants to see your data processing agreement and your security policy before anyone writes a line of code. We do that work just as well, and with the same people. The meeting tables got a bit bigger, that is all. What did not change: you call, we pick up, and then we sort it out.
Less talking, more building.
We have no method with a name and no certificate on the wall. What we do have is a handful of convictions we never lost over the years, because they kept turning out to be right. They sound simple, and they are, until you notice how many agencies do it differently.
-
Software is a tool
Not a goal in itself, but something for people who start at eight and want to go home at six. We are attached to our technology; the engineer in the van is not, and they are entirely right about that.
Read on Less
So we begin with the process and never with the technology, and we would rather spend a day on the warehouse floor than work through ten pages of requirements at a meeting table. The best compliment we get is that someone forgets they are working with software at all.
-
Starting small beats planning big
We do not believe in the grand plan you wait a year for. A plan is a pile of assumptions in tidy sentences, and only once someone actually works with it do you learn which of them held up.
Read on Less
So we build the smallest piece that already delivers something, put it into use and watch what happens. That is not a method we learned somewhere; it is what is left after you have seen a few times how expensive it is to be a year off.
-
We talk the way we build
No transformation, no synergy, no roadmap to the future. Just what it is, what it costs and when it is done, and when we do not know something we say so.
Read on Less
Jargon is usually a way to hide a hole in your story, and that does not get you far in this city. You can hear it in how we talk.
Four things you may hold us to.
Values on a website are usually words nobody could disagree with. These four are here because they cost us money the moment we stick to them. That is the only test that counts, and it is exactly why there are only four.
-
We say it when your plan is no good
Even when it costs us the job. Spending six months building something we already thought would not work is good for nobody, and being proved right afterwards is the most annoying way to be right. Some clients went and built it elsewhere because of it. More came back a year later for exactly that reason.
-
You get the builder on the line
No project manager checking internally and coming back three days later. Whoever built it also explains it, and still remembers why that solution was chosen at the time. That saves time, but mostly it saves misunderstanding. And it saves you the feeling of talking to an organisation instead of a person.
-
What we build belongs to you
The code, the servers, the documentation, the accounts, the keys. All in your name, from day one and not only once you ask. Want to continue with someone else tomorrow? You hand it over and we help them get going. We would rather hold on to clients with work than with contracts, and you can see that it works in how long most of them have been here.
-
We stay once it runs
Delivery is the beginning for us, not the end. The party that builds it is also the party that picks up when it falls over in the evening. That is exactly why most people walk in here: their previous builder was gone, or only reachable by email. Software nobody maintains is not an asset but a bill that has yet to arrive.
The people you get on the line.
Not a pool someone gets pulled from. This is the core in Rotterdam, and you will speak to all three at some point.
-
Serge Huijsen
Started as a twelve-year-old with an obsession and never stopped. Takes most of the first calls and still writes code himself, which means you get an answer on the spot instead of a follow-up. Picks up six, sometimes seven days a week.
-
Aaron Duran
First the best friend, then the partner. Looks at architecture and at whether something will still be maintainable in five years. Says when an idea is no good, even when everyone was already excited about it.
-
Anna Smink
Holds the planning, the agreements and the two of them together. If you call and something needs arranging, she is the one who makes sure it actually happens instead of landing on a list.
Around them dozens of developers and specialists work along, spread across several time zones. Whoever builds it, every line that goes live has been read by Serge or Aaron. And there is room for more: we are looking for people who can be just as difficult about how something is put together.
See our vacanciesWhat changes once we have been somewhere.
You stop noticing good work once it is there, which makes it hard to boast about. Still, this is what stays behind long after the project is delivered and the invoices are paid.
-
Hours nobody has to spend anymore
Behind every platform we build are people who no longer put a report together on a Friday afternoon, and warehouse staff who no longer chase a scanner with a clipboard in hand. Added up, that is easily a working week a month coming back per client.
-
Data that stays in Rotterdam
Our servers are here, and that is not sentiment. It means your customers' data stays in the Netherlands, under Dutch law, and that someone can get in the car when something needs hands. In a time when almost everything sits somewhere else, we think that is worth holding on to.
-
Young developers who get a chance
Part of the network we work with is just starting out. With us they get work that matters, with someone looking over their shoulder who explains it. Not because it is cheap, but because someone once gave us that chance when we were still sitting on the floor with a laptop.
-
The projects we turn down
We say no to software that does not need building, to a package that would have done the job, to an idea you would be better off keeping your money for. That is the least visible kind of impact there is, and the cheapest one for you.
Rotterdam is in the way we talk.
This city has a motto everyone here knows: no words but deeds. That is not a plaque on a wall, it is how people behave. In Rotterdam you do not hear that something is going to be fantastic, you hear when it will be finished. We write our quotes and our email exactly like that.
We sit here, we work here and our servers are here. Clients drop by for a coffee, and when something needs a person on site, someone gets in the car. If we do not know something, we say so. In the end that is cheaper for both of us than a good story.
What you can expect from us is not complicated: you call, we pick up, and then we work at it until it runs. Or, as they say in Rotterdam: we fix your mess.
We do not need to become an agency of a hundred. We do want someone to still pick up in ten years who knows how your platform fits together, and for people to still walk in here with an idea and a tight budget. Today's entrepreneur is the factory of ten years from now.
Until then the coffee is on. Drop by any time; we are on this side of the Maas.