Code Works.
Our team has quietly been working on something special behind the scenes. Now is the time to bring it out into daylight.
Back before South Bend Code School was organized as a business, we theorized that people might come to us with development work. At the time, we thought that it would be best to focus on SBCS and tell those people no. However, as South Bend Code School grew, we also attracted quite a few talented individuals to our team. In fact, we had so many people wanting to help that we didn’t know how to engage with all of them.
Back in 2016 we got the opportunity to spin up a small team of developers for some precision work involving startups without in house tech talent. That small team of developers ended up being a launchpad for a new company, Code Works.
A few years later and after quite a few adventures, Code Works has become a digital product studio of badass tech and design talent that has worked with tech startups across the country as well as in our own backyard. We’ve worked with companies out of startup hubs like Tech Stars New York, 1871 in Chicago, and Raleigh-Durham. We’ve helped to design and build technologies and brands for companies in spaces like fintech, fashiontech, healthcare, childcare, government, law, manufacturing, and more. We’ve worked on projects ranging from “founder has an idea that needs tech but doesn’t have a cofounder with experience in tech”, to “company wants to develop a new product but doesn’t have bandwidth to build it”.
On top of working with great companies, we’ve also built some of our own, but that is a different story that we’ll save for a different time.
It took us a while to figure out what Code Works really is. The easy thing to say about Code Works is that we design, build, and launch tech solutions for all types of companies. Maybe that’s too broad of a definition. Maybe it’s just right.
Everything you hear or read about companies in this space warns against the broad and demands focus on the narrow. Documented advice would suggest that you need to “specialize”. We know what the book says. We’ve read it. Now it’s time to throw it away.
That being said, here is some of what we have learned about ourselves and our company over the last few years…
We find it difficult to want to live in one space. We have a team that not only celebrates, but demands the challenge of complex problems and craves adventure.
We don’t just want to build websites. We love building secure, scalable, launch ready platforms, but we also love telling stories through evergreen, lasting, reusable content. We have seen what happens when technology and digital presence walk hand-in-hand, and the results are powerful.
We want to be your partner. We’ve tried a lot of different relationships. Being a vendor doesn’t work for us. Frankly, the expectations from clients tend to be poor and the work environment is subpar. If you are contacting us, it is probably because you need help in a space where you know the business, but aren’t quite sure how to make technology work for business in that space.
We love to create, not check boxes. If you don’t know where to start or don’t have the internal resources ready to go, we want to be your partner. If you need an additional body on your dev team sucking up oxygen and hammering a keyboard, that’s not us.
We enjoy the feeling of pulling together a solution to a new or difficult problem. We enjoy building cool businesses with great people. We enjoy working with people who have seen the way you are “supposed to do things” and have come up with a better way to do things. We also enjoy helping businesses reach new audiences, especially when those audiences are underserved.
We are from the Rust Belt, and that means something to us. We think that Rust Belt cities (and other underdog cities) have much to contribute to a global economy that can be reached from almost anywhere in the world.
It’s been an exciting journey thus far and we couldn’t be more excited for what the future holds. Our team is happy to be sharing all of the hard work we’ve put in for the last two years and the coffee fueled, nose to the grindstone effort put forth deserves celebration.
If you want to take a look at a handful of the projects we’ve worked on in the past two years, check out sbcodeworks.com
If you are interested in connecting with us to talk about a project or learn more feel free to drop us a line at info@sbcodeworks.com
Until then, see you on the internet. 😉
Alex Sejdinaj is a cofounder of Code Works, South Bend Code School, and GiveGrove.
