Advertising platform and app for a UK network of wrapped cars. Brands advertise, ordinary drivers drive around. Two sides, both of which need serving: a dashboard for the advertisers, an app for the drivers and the backend feeding both. I was lead developer from the first line to what runs today: I brought in the other developers and directed the work.
Custom software. It starts with a working prototype.
I build custom software, from Antwerp. You see a working version before a large budget is on the table, and from there we build on until it runs in production.
Get in touchA twenty-minute call. After that you'll know whether it's worth doing.
Frontal Design BV · VAT BE0772891149 · Antwerp · since 2021
What I do
Five things. It usually starts with the first.
Working prototypes
From a sketch, a design or just a conversation to something that clicks, runs and works with your own data. Days, not months.
Digital products from scratch
Platform, dashboard, app. From the first conversation to something running in production and used daily.
A new front end on old software
The back end does its job, but the screen works like it is fifteen years old. I replace the front, not the system underneath.
Systems that talk to each other
POS, payments, accounting, stock, third-party platforms. The integrations that never exist because every vendor builds its own island.
Custom work where no product fits
If the way you work is what sets you apart, off-the-shelf software is a compromise. Sometimes fine. Sometimes the thing holding you back.
Prototypes
Week one already works. The rest builds on it.
The usual order is design, build for weeks, then find out whether it was right. I run it the other way around. What stands after that first week is real code, and the rest builds on it.
DAY 1
What it needs to do
An hour-long working session on day one. What should it do, for whom, and what's the core? If a design or a sketch already exists, we start there.
DAYS 2–4
Build
The design becomes a working prototype: real screens, your own data, real navigation. Not clickable images, but code that runs.
DAY 5
Walk through it
You click through it yourself. Whatever's wrong surfaces now. Usually something turns out to matter more than expected.
Why me
I have the conversation, I work out the shape, and I build it.
Seven years as product owner means I'm used to working out what actually needs to happen before a line of code gets written: what the problem is, who works with it, and what belongs in the first version.
Building it myself removes a handover. What we decide in a conversation doesn't have to be passed on to a team that has never seen your business. Less translation, less noise, and one person who stays responsible for the whole thing.
Work
What I built, and who for.
POS and ordering software for Belgian hospitality: branded ordering apps for restaurants, web ordering, kiosks and Order&Pay, feeding straight into the POS. Alongside that, internal tools for sales and partners.
A rating system that lets users score new products ahead of launch. So you know what works before anyone commits to it.
What people ask
What does custom software cost?
A one-week prototype costs €3,500 excl. VAT, fixed price. What comes after depends on the size. The smallest finished project starts around €6,500. A system your company runs on takes months and sits well above that. Those get planned in phases, with a fixed price per phase.
One person: is that enough?
For code: yes. When the work gets bigger or wider, I bring in people from my network: developers, designers, whoever the project needs. I put the team together, direct it, and stay the single point of contact.
Who you'll actually be dealing with
Matijs Van der Goten
I'm Matijs. Seven years as product owner on point-of-sale and ordering software for Belgian hospitality: every day between the operators working with it and the developers building it. Software hundreds of businesses use daily.
For five of those years I have been building myself as well, for my own clients: reservation systems, webshops, platforms and the integrations between them. PHP and Laravel on the back end, Vue or React on the front.
The name Frontal Studio comes from front end. Frontal stands for the front: the screens your customer or your staff sees every day. That is the side I like working on most. How many steps sit between a question and an answer, where someone clicks, what happens when something goes wrong: that gets called UX, but it comes down to whether someone can do their job without working around the software. A strong back end nobody likes using solves very little.
Tell me what you have in mind.
Send a short description of what you want to build, even if it's still vague. You'll hear from me within one working day.
Send a messageOr call +32 487 84 72 66