5 mistakes startups make building their first app
Most founders learn these the hard way. Here are the pitfalls we see most often, and how to sidestep them from day one.
Read the postWhat we build
We stay deliberately narrow. Every project runs on the same stack we know cold, so the estimate you get is the one we hit.
Full-stack products built to scale — dashboards, marketplaces, and complex SaaS platforms. Typed end to end, tested where it counts, and deployed on infrastructure you own.
Cross-platform iOS and Android that feel native, built for offline-first use and a clean store review.
REST, GraphQL, or serverless services documented well enough to hand to your own team.
Not sure what to build yet? A discovery sprint gets you a defined scope, an architecture, and a roadmap priced week by week — so every dollar after it goes somewhere deliberate.
Selected work
Cross-platform desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux) for a fully private, on-device knowledge base. Import PDFs, Word docs, and WhatsApp exports and query them in natural language with local AI — no cloud, no API keys, your data never leaves your machine. Powered by Ollama with local embeddings and vector search.
React Native app (iOS + Android) for phone number intelligence — carrier lookup, line type detection, and OSINT enrichment via a coupon-gated premium tier. Full in-app purchase flow (App Store + Google Play), WordPress custom REST API backend, and a personal data filter layer to redact sensitive output before display.
End-to-end courier and postal management system for North Macedonia. Laravel 11 REST API + Vue 3 SPA. Viber OTP authentication, external courier webhook integrations, failed-delivery tracking, Excel control-report generation, real-time order status, and a regular-customer management module.
Learning Management System for the Italian corporate training market. Dual-role system (learner / instructor), company management, coupon-based enrollment, ECM/PIVA compliance for healthcare CPD credits, and full 2FA supporting both email and SMS verification. Deployed for multiple Italian enterprise clients.
Full-stack platform for Kosovo farmers in Albanian. Turborepo monorepo: React web dashboard, React Native + Expo mobile app (offline-first with sync queue), and Next.js REST API. Field management, daily activity logs, plant disease photo uploads (Cloudinary), and marketplace features. JWT auth across web and mobile.
Restaurant ordering system — customers scan a QR code at the table, browse the menu, place orders, and live-chat with the waiter, no app install needed. Staff dashboard for real-time order management, table assignment, and status updates. QR codes are unique per table and generated server-side.
Microservice deployed on Google Cloud Run that computes face similarity between two images, returning similarity score, match boolean, and confidence. Integrated into a WordPress API-key and credits system — WordPress validates the customer key, deducts a credit, then proxies the images to this service. Containerised with Docker.
Multi-endpoint facial recognition inference service (Node.js + Human.js): face detection, face comparison (ID verification), liveness detection from a single frame, and voice/speech emotion analysis. Credit-gated via WordPress dashboard. Includes a proxy-key architecture separating customer API keys from internal service calls.
RAG system that indexes Reddit CSV data with Chroma vector DB and serves AI responses via Ollama (llama2-uncensored + mxbai-embed-large embeddings). Includes an auto-indexing cron, a Python REST API, and a Docker Compose stack bundling Ollama and the RAG service. Built for niche Q&A over community data.
TRON-based token platform with custom Solidity smart contracts (TRC-20 / ERC-20 compatible): a USDT-replica TetherUSD contract and a proprietary token, both deployed via TronBox. React + TronWeb frontend for wallet connection, token transfers, and balance checks. Includes mint locking and owner-only controls.
Movies and TV shows browsing platform built with Next.js and Prisma. Admin panel for uploading MP4 files with automatic English caption generation using local faster-whisper (no API key required). Deployed at a VPS subpath behind Nginx. Zero cloud dependency for AI transcription — everything runs on the server.
Multi-account WhatsApp gateway built on whatsapp-web.js — scan QR codes per phone, manage sessions, send bulk and individual messages via REST API, and queue messages with retry logic. Node.js + Express backend with MySQL, JWT auth, and a React frontend. Flutter mobile companion app for on-the-go session management.
Corporate marketing site for an AI services company specializing in custom LLM development, model fine-tuning, and enterprise AI integration. Built with Next.js 15 App Router — optimized for Core Web Vitals, full SEO (meta, JSON-LD, Open Graph), MDX blog, dark/light themes, and smooth scroll-reveal animations.
Who you work with
Syntax LLC is small on purpose. The people you meet on the first call are the people writing your code — which means decisions get made in minutes, not in a status meeting two weeks out.
You get a weekly demo on a real staging environment, a repository you own from the first commit, and an honest answer when something is going to take longer than we said.
Talk to the teamQuestions
Still unsure whether we're the right fit? Ask us directly — we'll tell you if we aren't.
Ask a questionWeb apps, mobile apps, and backend systems for early-stage startups. Whether you need an MVP in two weeks or a production platform that has outgrown its first build, we can pick it up at any stage.
Most take 2–4 weeks depending on scope. We start with a discovery sprint to define the core feature set, then ship iteratively — so you're validating with real users as early as possible.
Often. We handle everything from architecture to deployment, explain decisions in plain English, and keep you current with weekly demos and async updates.
Two-week sprints, weekly demos, async standups, and continuous delivery to a staging environment. You see real progress throughout instead of one big reveal at the end.
You do — from the first commit. Your repositories, your cloud accounts, your infrastructure. We document handover so another team could pick it up tomorrow.
Send us the form below and we'll set up a 30-minute call. We'll learn about your project, answer your questions, and tell you honestly whether we're the right fit.
Writing
What we learn shipping products for founders, written down so you can skip a few of the expensive lessons.
Most founders learn these the hard way. Here are the pitfalls we see most often, and how to sidestep them from day one.
Read the postAn MVP exists to test your riskiest assumption, not to be complete. Here's the exact way we cut scope with founders.
Read the postPicking a stack can be paralyzing. This is the four-question framework we run with every new client to decide quickly.
Read the postStart here
Send the shape of the project and a rough timeline. You'll hear back from an engineer, not a sales pipeline.