Small, on purpose.
We'd like to stay small. Most agencies our size are forty people by now and full of project managers; we'd rather use Claude than hire another layer.
Nermin Šehić · founder
Sarajevo
BetaStudio didn't start with a plan. In 2017 I was freelancing out of a flat in Sarajevo and clients kept asking if I had a team. I said yes a few times before it was true, then went and built one.
Nine years later we're still small, on purpose. Every studio I've watched grow past about fifteen people turned into something I wouldn't want to work at — half the people become managers, and the engineering goes to whoever just graduated. We use Claude instead. Same crew, about three times the output, and nobody's title changed.
We've shipped around fifty products — for Lufthansa, World Mobile, a couple of banks, and a few startups that didn't make it. Lately more of the work is our own: Vincu runs inside ProCredit Bank, tersOS runs the coworking space we own, betaflow runs this studio. Client work happens on a monthly subscription, with every hour visible before the invoice.
None of it is complicated to describe. If something we built breaks at midnight, one of us picks up. If that sounds like the kind of team you’d want around, write back.
— Nermin
AI does the typing. We do the thinking.
Claude writes a lot of our first drafts. It does not make the architecture calls, the security calls, or the ones that wake someone up at 2am. Those still belong to a person.
A live preview beats a Notion doc
We'd rather have something rough running on staging by Friday than a 12-page spec. You can't click a spec. You can click a preview URL and tell us what's wrong.
Your board, not ours
Linear lives in your workspace, not ours. You see the tickets, the hours logged, the PRs. If we're slow one week, you'll know before we tell you.
We answer our own pages
When something breaks at 2am on a product we built, one of us picks up. That sets a quality floor — you don't cut corners on code you have to maintain yourself.
Started in a Sarajevo apartment
Two of us, freelancing under one name. Mostly mobile work for early-stage startups.
First flights with Lufthansa
Picked up enterprise work. Built internal tools for Lufthansa and a mobile network app for World Mobile. Realised we could compete with London agencies on quality, not just price.
Grew to ten, then stopped
Hit ten people and decided to stay there. Bigger meant managers, and we didn't want managers.
Claude changed the math
Got serious about AI in the pipeline. Same team, roughly three times the output. Started shipping in-house products to test the new pace.
Stopped doing fixed-bid
Moved to subscription. Easier for clients, easier for us, and it lets us stay on a product instead of ducking out after launch.
Founder. Writes code most days. Started this in 2017.
Frontend. React, TypeScript. Cares about layouts that don't fall apart on a cheap Android.
Backend. Node and Postgres. Notices the slow queries before the users do.
Frontend. Better at CSS than most engineers admit to being.
Mobile. Mostly React Native. Has been through enough App Store rejections to have a sense of humour about it.
Mobile. Native iOS where it matters, RN where it doesn't.
Backend. APIs and integrations — the bit where everything has to talk to everything else.
Product design. Figma in the morning, the same screens in the codebase by afternoon.
Product design. Spends as long on the empty states as the happy path.
Backend. Spends as long on the error paths as the happy ones.
Brand and marketing design. Joined to do one logo. Stayed.
If this sounds like the kind of team you'd want around, write back.