Frequently asked
questions.

Studio Groei is an AI-first venture studio based in Amsterdam, founded in 2024 by Joey Giljam (design) and Niels van der Werf (tech). We build complete digital products alongside founders — design and development — as a partner, not an agency.

An agency sells hours at a rate. A venture studio invests build capacity in products it believes in. For us that means: we build for equity (5–15%) or on retainer, but always with skin in the game and a focus on the product's long-term growth.

Ambitious founders and scale-ups with a validated idea who want to accelerate their product. We work best with people who bring deep domain knowledge and a strong vision but lack the technical building partner to realize it.

Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We mostly work with Dutch founders, but we run international projects in English as well.

A small, dedicated core team augmented with specialists per project (motion, 3D, illustration). Small enough to sit at the table with the founder, large enough to ship full products.

Fully bootstrapped. No external investors, no targets imposed from outside — that gives us the freedom to take on only projects we believe in.

Two models: (1) equity partnership — we invest design and development in exchange for 5–15% equity, suited for pre-seed and seed-stage founders; (2) retainer — fixed monthly fee for ongoing product development, suited for funded startups and scale-ups.

Between 5% and 15%, depending on scope, stage and how much build work is needed to reach MVP. We discuss it transparently in the first call and document it in a shareholders' agreement.

Retainers start from around €8,000 per month for a dedicated design + development team. Exact composition is tailored: more design-heavy, more development-heavy, or a full-stack mix.

Three months minimum. That gives us time to onboard, build rhythm and deliver real results. After that it's month-to-month.

Yes. Some engagements start as a retainer and grow into an equity partnership, or vice versa. We re-evaluate together at natural inflection points — after a funding round or a major milestone, for example.

Then the equity model is built for you. We ask a small startup fee to cover costs, and we invest the rest as build time in exchange for shares.

On a retainer you fully own all code, assets, and IP. On an equity partnership we document ownership in the shareholders' agreement, in line with the equity split. No lock-in, always transparent.

We document exit terms up front so we can have an honest conversation without surprises if things don't work out. No hidden clauses — transparency is the baseline.

Four phases: (1) discovery — 1 week, we sharpen the vision and validate scope; (2) design sprint — 1–2 weeks, wireframes and visual direction; (3) build — 3–5 weeks, iterative building with weekly demos; (4) launch & iterate — go-live, monitoring, and building further on real user data.

On average 4–8 weeks to a working MVP. AI in our workflow accelerates the build significantly without sacrificing quality.

Weekly demos with working software, a shared kanban board with live status, and a Slack channel for direct questions. No surprises at the end.

It happens — and it's often healthy. We work in two-week sprints so we can re-prioritize every two weeks without tearing up the whole plan.

Yes. If you already have an in-house developer, marketer or CTO we integrate with that team. We don't silo work — open sharing speeds everyone up.

We sort it out through capacity. Sometimes the existing team absorbs it, sometimes we scale up temporarily. We'll say 'no' if it would cost quality.

Web apps, SaaS platforms, marketplaces (Catawiki / Whatnot / Vinted-style), e-commerce (Shopify and headless), AI tools, consumer apps and developer tooling. No mobile-only native apps — everything we ship is web-first.

Default: TypeScript, Next.js (App Router), React, Tailwind CSS, Postgres (Supabase or Neon), and modern LLM integrations (Claude, OpenAI). For commerce, often Shopify or Stripe. For real-time: Liveblocks or our own WebSocket layer. We pick pragmatically, not for hype.

Branding and visual identity as standalone projects: yes. UI/UX design without development: we prefer not — design that isn't built is half the job and gets lost in handover.

Occasionally, for retainer clients with their own designer or design system. We're happy to step into existing designs — as long as the foundations are solid.

Yes — think CRM (HubSpot, Pipedrive), accounting (Moneybird, Exact), email (Resend, Postmark), payments (Mollie, Stripe), analytics (Plausible, PostHog, GA4) and custom APIs.

No pure iOS/Android apps. We do build Progressive Web Apps and mobile-first responsive web apps that feel native on a phone. For 95% of use cases that's more powerful and easier to maintain.

AI-first is literally our core. We integrate LLMs (Claude, GPT) into workflows, build RAG systems on proprietary data, agents and chat interfaces. Not as a marketing layer, but as the product's core.

Two things: (1) we use AI daily in our own work — design exploration, code generation, content, testing — which makes us faster and more precise; (2) AI is woven into the products we build wherever it makes sense.

No. AI tools generate code snippets, design iterations and boilerplate faster than handwork. Architecture, product decisions and quality control remain human craft — that's the difference between a prototype and a production product.

Default: Anthropic Claude (Opus/Sonnet/Haiku) and OpenAI (GPT-4 / o-series). We pick per use case: Claude for long context and reasoning, GPT for broad language understanding, smaller open models (Llama, Mistral) for on-prem or cost-sensitive workflows.

Default: EU hosting where possible, no training on customer data, and clear data flows documented in a DPA. For sensitive data we often recommend self-hosted models or inference in your own EU VPC.

Three layers: (1) grounding via RAG on proprietary data, (2) structured output (JSON Schema, tool-use) so the model stays within lines, (3) human-in-the-loop on critical decisions. No free pass, but clear guardrails.

No magical 10x. Realistically: 30–50% faster on the kind of work that suits it (CRUD, prototyping, content, refactoring). On architecture and product design the pace stays human — that's good, because that's where mistakes get expensive.

By default we host on modern, scalable platforms (Vercel, Cloud Run, Hetzner or AWS — depending on requirements). Hosting accounts are in the client's name so you're never locked in if we step away.

Yes, via a maintenance retainer: bug fixes, security updates, dependency upgrades, performance tuning and small feature changes. From around €1,500 per month depending on scope.

No problem. We transfer all code (GitHub), assets (Figma, Drive), domains and hosting accounts. Documentation is in place and a handover call is included. No hidden lock-ins.

Up to a certain size, yes — we've built products used by thousands of users per day. At some point an in-house team makes more sense; we'll proactively advise on that and help with hiring.

Default monitoring with alerts (Sentry, BetterStack, Uptime Robot). Clients on an SLA retainer get response within 1 hour for critical incidents, 24/7.

Dutch and English — both native. Documentation, code and design handovers can be in either.

Remote by default, with the option to work on-site or to schedule co-working sessions. For founders in the Randstad area: we're happy to spend a day per week or per sprint at your office.

Usually 2–4 weeks after the first introduction. We work with a rolling pipeline and deliberately keep capacity open for good matches.

Book a free intro call at groei.studio/appointment, or email [email protected] directly. We typically reply within 24 hours.

For a first conversation usually not needed — we don't evaluate ideas and we don't build anything quietly on the side. For deeper technical due diligence or access to product data we'll sign a mutual NDA.