We believe in entrepreneurship. We believe in people who are building new businesses that solve important problems. We believe in founders working outside of established tech hubs. We believe in founders from non-traditional backgrounds. We believe in you.

We believe in entrepreneurship so much that we’ve spent most of our careers building tech startups: mobile apps, web apps, blockchain networks, augmented reality experiences, and more. We know all too well that to successfully build and commercialize a new product, you need to surround yourself with startup professionals: designers who visualize, engineers who develop, PMs who manage, strategists who position, and data scientists who analyze.

We also know that it’s hard to build a world class startup team. Like, really, really hard. Recruiting. Hiring. Onboarding. We often felt like we were spinning our wheels in vain trying to build a team rather than focusing on our customers and their needs. So we outsourced parts of our businesses to contractors and agencies, both onshore and offshore. And we got screwed not once, not twice… Busted budgets. Sloppy deliverables. Missed deadlines. Litigation. Yes! LITIGATION. We have our share of nightmare stories. (Don’t worry, we were the plaintiffs and we eventually won.)

Through it all, we hated feeling like we were trapped in transactional relationships with vendors that were more interested in their invoices than in our entrepreneurial success. So we eventually embarked on a mission to build the type of organization that we, ourselves, would have wanted to work with: A true technical partner that was honest, reliable, and able to grow with us; a team that allowed us to get to market faster, cheaper, and with a higher quality product.

We created Amplified.

As a startup studio, Amplified partners with technology startups to provide professional design, development, and deployment services; amplifying startup teams by plugging personnel gaps and sharing professional processes. Additionally, Amplified incubates and launches its own web/mobile apps and internet businesses that solve problems for underserved markets without much operational overhead (because we can’t stop ourselves from building and launching new things).

Irrespective of the entrepreneurial approach, Amplified always operates according to its core values. When we started Amplified, we identified values that we all deeply believe in on a personal level, and to which we wanted our business to commit itself. Our three values are honesty, reliability, and growth. Amplified strives to be honest at all times, to be reliable no matter what, and to grow together with its partners.

Given our experiences, skills, and values, Amplified is uniquely capable to walk the startup journey alongside you — as an entrepreneurial peer. A true partnership won’t come from a vendor, after all, but from fellow founders who want you to succeed.

Okay, if you’ve made it this far, you might be wondering who/what is behind this mysterious third-person “we.” Since you asked, Amplified is an American company with a subsidiary in Romania. Amplified was founded at Stanford, while Ian, our CEO, was pursuing his MBA. Today, Amplified’s American office is in San Antonio, TX. The majority of the Amplified team lives in Romania, though.

(Fun fact: Ian and the Amplified team have been working together for nearly 10 years, going all the way back to Ian’s first startup, which launched a mobile app in 2011!)