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The Appsterdam years

Around 2010, Amsterdam quietly became one of the best places in the world to make apps. Developers, designers and founders washed together in cafes and canal-side offices; Mike Lee, fresh from Apple, gave the scene its name: Appsterdam. If you could build, there was work everywhere.

Gun for hire

dsd 164's founder was one of those builders, years before the company existed on paper. The client list from that era reads like a city tour: the Appsterdam community app itself, the Dutch-Italian magazine Smaak van Rome, Escape Club Amsterdam on the Rembrandtplein, Jantjes Verjaardag, retail app Shopcat, NMT Shipping, RTL's television programme We love 2 shop, Heart Health medical risk calculators, and management dashboards for the Leyweg in Den Haag. iPhone first, then Android, and yes, even Windows Phone.

What the era taught

Client work teaches you scope, deadlines and the difference between a demo and a product. It also quietly funds the thing you actually dream about. In May 2011, a side project shipped: a pixel-faithful remake of the phone game everyone remembered. Snake '97 changed everything, and in 2012 the freelancing became a company: dsd 164 B.V.

The full story, told from the workbench, lives on willem.com/blog.

dsd 164 has been shipping from Amsterdam since 2010. For ideas and collaborations: let's talk.

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