Why we build from Amsterdam and Prishtina
On the boring, durable advantage of two offices — one near the customer, one near the talent — and how we actually run it.
Blocify has a Dutch parent and a Kosovan engineering office. People ask us why; the honest answer is that one is near our customers and the other is near a generation of extremely good, extremely under-priced engineers.
Amsterdam is where the contracts get signed, the partnerships happen, and the regulatory conversations stay short. Prishtina is where the code gets written, the design happens, and the team actually grows.
Two timezones away is not a problem; two cultures away would be. We invest heavily in shared rituals: weekly demos, paired on-call, two onsites a year. The whole company shows up in one room four weeks per year, no exceptions.
If you are a European founder reading this and thinking about offshoring engineering, do not. Build a real second office, hire senior people there, give them ownership, and visit often.