Hi — I'm Jay, the founder of App & Design. Almost everything else on this site is written in studio voice ("we built," "our approach," "the team"), which is appropriate for most of what we publish. This post is the exception. A few people have asked who's actually behind the studio, and I'd rather answer it directly than dance around it.
Who I am
I'm based in New Jersey, where I've lived most of my life. I have Albanian heritage, a family I love, and a real reluctance to outsource anything I can do well myself. Outside of the studio, I also run a family business — four locations of CUPS Frozen Yogurt across New Jersey. The two lives feed each other more than you'd expect; running a small retail business taught me what small business owners actually need from technology, which is almost never what tech-industry people assume.
Why I started App & Design
I started building websites and small apps for friends and family before it was a business. A few of those projects turned into something real, and at some point I realized I'd been running a studio without calling it that.
The reason I formalized it: I kept watching other small business owners pay $5,000 for WordPress sites that took forever to load, ranked poorly, and broke every time a plugin updated itself. I knew the work could be done better. I decided to do that work, openly, and price it honestly.
That belief still drives every decision we make. We don't use page builders. We don't outsource. We don't take projects we can't ship well. And we tell prospects the truth about what their project actually needs, even when the truthful answer is "you don't need what you think you need."
What I care about building
The work I find most satisfying tends to share three traits:
- It solves a real problem for a real business. Not a hypothetical, not a tech demo. Something that visibly makes someone's day better when it ships.
- It rewards craftsmanship. Sites that load fast because someone cared. Apps that feel right because someone tested them on real devices. Tools that the people using them can describe in one sentence.
- It has compound returns. A landing page system that keeps generating leads. A piece of internal software that saves an hour a day, forever. Work that earns its keep for years, not weeks.
iOS apps fit this. Programmatic SEO systems fit this. Custom internal tools fit this. We do other things too, but these are the ones I personally light up about.
How I work with clients
I run every project directly. There are no account managers between me and the people I work with. If you hire App & Design, you're talking to me from the first email to the launch and well after. That's not a marketing position — it's how the studio is actually structured.
I respond to email within a day. I show drafts in progress, not just at milestones. I'll tell you when an idea isn't working before we spend a week on it. And I'll tell you when an idea is good, too — being honest about both is the whole job.
If you want to talk
Whether you have a specific project in mind, a vague idea you're trying to validate, or you just want a second opinion on something you're working on, drop me a line. I read every email.
— Jay
Want to work with us?
If something here resonated, let's talk about what you're building.