A product development studio, not a body-shop agency
16.04.18 is a product development studio based in Tallinn, Estonia, operated by 160418 OÜ. We take products from a written scope to a working release: product discovery, UX and interface design, web and mobile engineering, backend and infrastructure, launch and iteration. One senior team owns the whole path, so founders do not have to coordinate a designer, a freelancer and an outsourcing vendor who have never worked together.
We also build and run our own products — VoltyShare, DuetNest, Aveliva, Balnceo, Recycle and MyDoktor.ai among them. That matters for clients: the architecture, tooling and trade-offs we recommend are the ones we maintain in production ourselves, with real users, real app store reviews and real support tickets.
What we build
Most engagements fall into five shapes. Each has its own risks, and we plan the build around those risks rather than around a generic template.
- MVP development — the smallest production-grade version of an idea that real users can use and pay for, built to answer the riskiest business question first.
- SaaS development — multi-tenant web platforms with accounts, roles, billing, admin tooling and the analytics needed to understand retention.
- Mobile app development — iOS and Android apps with store publishing, push notifications, offline behaviour and release management handled for you.
- Marketplace development — two-sided products with onboarding for both sides, search, booking or matching, payments and trust mechanics.
- AI product development — features built on language models and automation where they remove real work, with evaluation and cost control from day one.
How an engagement works
Every project starts with a scope. We agree in writing what is in, what is out and what still needs to be learned, and we estimate the build against that document before engineering begins. That keeps the budget conversation at the start of the project instead of turning it into a stream of change requests.
During the build you see working software every week, not slide decks. Demos run on real environments, decisions are recorded, and priorities can move as you learn from users. When the first version ships, we stay for iteration: fixing what users struggle with, measuring what they actually do and planning the next release.
You own everything from the first commit
Code repositories, cloud accounts, domains, analytics and app store listings are created in your name from day one. There is no lock-in and no hand-over ceremony at the end: if you decide to hire an in-house team later, they inherit a codebase they can read, documentation they can follow and infrastructure they already control.
Selectively, we also partner with founders for equity on a small number of products. That model is separate from paid product development and is described on the Ventures page.
Working with founders worldwide
We work remotely with startups and companies across Europe and beyond, in English and several other languages. Send a short description of your product through the brief form — we reply within 24 hours with questions, a suggested next step and, when there is enough detail, a first view of scope.
