Sofa

We Were Sofa

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COLOFON:

Stories by:

Jasper

Hugo

Martina

Dirk and Koen

Jorn

Klaas Pieter

warning:

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Joy Vincent

Jonathan

Mathieu

Peter Frans

Words and pictures by:

Graphic book design by:

Ed Bok and Sofa

Ancel Riesener

Thanks for story editing: Alexandra Schwieso Amsterdam-Palo Alto | 22nd of July 2011 If your head is not on this page you are only allowed to read this book by a head of this page.

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We were Sofa

W

e’re excited to announce today that Facebook has acquired the Sofa team.

When we started Sofa in 2006, we set out to make friendly, useful and enjoyable products that matter to people. Over the years, we built an awesome team of designers and developers around this mission.

Together, we created great software that many people use and enjoy every day. That's something we'll always be proud of. We expected to keep working at Sofa forever. But after Facebook first made contact, we were quickly convinced to join forces.

Facebook is full of talent and has a great culture.

We feel challenged and at home at the same time, and can really get things done there. But equally important, we believe that at Facebook, we will be making a real difference to a lot of people's lives.

The Sofa team will be moving from Amsterdam to Palo Alto and we'll make sure to infuse some of our particular flavor of Dutch culture at Facebook.

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J

asper was born and raised in Amsterdam and has a background in visual arts.

He is allergic to anything ugly and able to snap his left eye on the pixel.

In fact my whole live is a large creative bathtub. Both parents were educated in professional arts and music. I have grown up with it. Art and creativity is absolutely normal to me. In fact I hardly know different environments. I am so used to think about making something new. To me it is important that the new thing is a complete thing. Something you could use and what has great looks. As I child I was always creating things. Even now my thing is the making of the whole meal with all four or five courses on the right table, the right plates and the right company.

At Art School I got intensively involved with design. I was asked for lots of jobs in the Apple environment. That bubble is worldwide not that big and if you are online in between other designers you start to know each other. You learn about the boys

Some day I make you the Poule Moutarde

with the product ideas, the program and code boys and the boys designing beautiful interfaces. I made good bread and butter in that time with freelance jobs. Most of the boys you know only online, I never met them. Many of these guys made startups later bought by Apple, Google or Yahoo or Facebook. So with most of our colleagues at Facebook I have been working online. Anyhow it was a kind of lonely existence all alone behind the screen.

It was 2005 when Koen and Dirk made a presentation about their work on Checkout in the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam. It is a Mac application for small

Father of Creativity: Jasper Hauser

business. In Holland nobody was working on this kind of product design and I got highly interested in these two nerds. We talked a lot and our skills matched perfectly.

Koen is quite commercially awake and Dirk always finds the right codes. It looks like a solid combination. It is my chance to get involved in product design and I can walk these two guys straight into the Apple bubble. We decided to make a start-up.

Sofa is founded to develop Checkout and Disco. There is no income yet therefore we all continued the freelance work. This work is growing and I decided to give the new clients a Sofa treat. These contracts offer Sofa financial possibilities. Jorn, Hugo and Joy join me as designers and we work for international clients and on our own product designs. Our first gig was an Apple WWDC Award for Checkout followed the next year with an Apple Award for Versions. Sofa got famous in San Francisco Apple land. For marketing and sales we made a joint venture with MYOB. This gave Checkout a worldwide distribution and Sofa all the needs to concentrate fully on the product design for Kaleidoscope and Enstore. The contracting work was then stopped.

Already two years ago I noticed that many freelancers were disappearing to the bigger companies. A year ago it was the turn for the start-ups. Mostly these were little companies in the States. By then I had a kind of feeling that this could happen to us one beautiful day. The world knew Sofa and I wouldn’t be surprised about a funny email: are you for sale? In Sofa nobody was thinking about a take over.

We were growing fast, we had lots of plans and we were busy with a relocation to a brand new building. But outside Sofa things were moving and I discussed this with my girlfriend Natasja.

This move with Facebook is absolutely fantastic for us and for Facebook.

Perhaps Natasja and I we were the first who were ready for it. On the 18th of July we will marry. Then she is passing her last exams on the University and at the end of this year she will join me in San Francisco. It is a nice perspective, isn’t it?

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J

on is a self taught Cocoa developer from the U.K. He stumbled upon Sofa after traveling around a bit. Better not mess with him because he can fly a MIG.

At Sofa with Cathy and Jasper responsible for the apps Kaleidoscope and Versions.

At the moment there are so many things to sort out. Finally all of our papers are complete, translated birth certificates, valid passports, diplomas, etc. The Americans want to know and see everything. For my girlfriend it was a total disaster.

She is Chinese, living in Beijing and she is Française by birth. Everything had to be translated up and down. According to an official translation she is now thirteen years old. Next week we are getting married. After that she can come with me to California on my visa. The Americans even ask for wedding pictures as proof that you are married.

We are getting married in New York next Tuesday. A friend and niece will join us

Some day I will make you my Beef Wellington

as witnesses as they live around there. Our parents will not be there. Today my girlfriend completes her last exams in Beijing and then she flies to New York. Finally we will meet just behind customs. We are living in crazy times.

My qualifications are ok for the US. That is no problem.

I was raised up in The Midlands, England. My parents divorced when I was five years old. Both worked in Christian youth care. Church was rather important to us.

Later my mother became a teacher. My father still takes care of housing the homeless on behalf of the YMCA. I no longer attend church regularly.

Mr Finicky: Jonathan Dann

Church is somewhere in the back of my mind and I have been looking around in Amsterdam for a church where I would feel at home. I didn’t succeed. Perhaps I will find something in The States.

Going to university was my very best time. I lived together with my best friend.

I enjoyed doing sound engineering for bands and church services.

I never did need odd jobs for extra money, there was just enough to stay afloat.

After my Bachelors a job was offered to me in a hospital. It was responsible work, technically interesting and good money during my Masters. But not a job for life.

During that time I bought my first Apple iMac computer. It was advice from my professor whom I had asked what would be a good choice. I hardly knew anything about Apple but I fell in love with it. It had some excellent speakers. That was very useful for my sound engineering with Garageband. And suddenly I was quite hip to my friends. During my studies I started programming for all kinds of simulations.

In Fortran 77 and later in C and C++. Then one day I got hit by the enormous sorrow that only love can bring. I totally immersed myself in programming.

I developed a Sudoko App in five weeks and showed it to my professor.

He said: look Jonathan at least you understand something about Object Oriented Programming, carry on with it.

For my Master Thesis I used LaTex, the program that handles the typesetting in the computer. I thought it was awful to work with so I decided to improve it with a new application. This amounted to weeks of work. I rewrote it three times. Still I got the source code but it never came to my mind to launch it. Who knows, perhaps one day.

In 2009 I met my new girlfriend Xiaoyu Fei in Paris. I worked there as a freelancer and through the internet I got in touch with Cathy, a programmer and wife of Dirk in Amsterdam. We exchanged know-how for frames and new applications as we still do.

These are nice discussions you can still follow with Google.

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Cathy invited me down to Amsterdam. We had never met before. Her husband Dirk encouraged me to start my own company just like he did some time ago with Sofa.

The next evening Dirk said to skip the company idea, I had better to join Sofa.

In the meantime he found out what I discussed with Cathy. Dirk offered me a job.

I had no clue where this would lead for me, but at Sofa I felt at home with the best specialists I’d ever met.

Sofa designers involve you with all of their problems and solutions. You want your input and reasons why. I worked with Jasper, Cathy and Peter, a great team. Jasper shows interests for the technical part and he keeps count with it in designing.

Besides of this we have tough discussions with everybody. There is a very open and direct spirit at Sofa.

Two weeks ago I was backpacking in China. I knew the boys were off to Facebook in Palo Alto. They were going for contracting work or so I thought. The day I came back from China they explained their visit to Facebook and they asked me to join them in Palo Alto‌

Why I asked, you wanted to stay independent. They convinced me that the culture at Facebook was very similar to Sofa and this could be a major step for all of our careers. Facebook wants us for design and new apps. I think the Facebook technique and design is a bit wobbly. You can make it more solid and intelligent.

That is the reason I never have been a big fan of Facebook.

There is a concern I had. What will happen with our apps Versions and Kaleidoscope?

I hope there is still a chance to perfect some aspects of it before leaving it or carry it over. These are beautiful and useful applications. We have been working on them with lots of pleasure with Cathy and Jasper. Who knows perhaps we carry on with it some day. I thought it could be an option for me if I did not join Facebook‌ I had to make up my mind myself because I was not allowed to talk about it.

So I decided to join the gang to Facebook. Those apps will be around for a while.

Jonathan only recognises a few names of colleagues at Facebook, not many.

The start-ups that Facebook acquired do ring some bells. I know the bands and the music they play but not the musicians. I always go for the music.

Is Facebook going to be an orchestra? I don’t know. To me it looks more like a collection of awesome bands. For that you need very good musicians. I am looking forward to California. We are going on the roller coaster.

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H

ugo's skills vary from creating 3D models to package design for Checkout or writing Python and HTML for Enstore. A man of many talents.

We had a couple of beers in De Bax yesterday before the rain came. A long time ago I was convicted but I don’t know the charge anymore, disorderly conduct or so when I was a schoolboy. I have to sort it out, otherwise the Americans won’t let me in. I have to sort out too if I can take my motorcycle with me, otherwise I have to get a bike overthere. Here at Sofa we are very busy with the documentation of our products for the big take over. When Koen gets back from Thailand there will be some meetings with the new owners.

Fresh from High School I went at seventeen to Art School. I was too young for

Some day I make you that pesto pasta you’ll never forget

Digital Media Design, had no clue and I left after a couple of months. Much later I understood what I had missed. I found a job as designer for a year and started with Communication Sciences in The Hague. I left again just before my last exams because of the work with Sofa and others, stupid me! At that time it all happened in De Pijp, where we took care of a big apartment with Koen and Dirk. Great times.

Here the Sofa idea started on a huge sofa where we all three could work on with our laptops. After a fantastic year we had to move to other places and finally we joined a breeding place for creative start-ups. It was a renewed building and it looked like a real accommodation. We were used to dark Amsterdam residences. We didn’t like that community for its different DNA and moved in steps to the Ten Kate market in 2008.

Mr Awesome: Hugo van Heuven I didn’t start as a partner in Sofa but entered later after a meeting in ‘The Barking Fish’ and I became shareholder in Sofa. Building the Checkout site was my main

business, but I took on anything that crossed my path. Packaging, coding, icons even designing and technical development. Mostly websites.

The Facebook people have seen it all and I am proud that they loved my share of the deal. There is no businessman in me like in Koen or Dirk, but I know my work did count. The website of Kaleidoscope made quite an impression to them. But of course it was a team effort and I am proud of the whole team.

Our products are not sexy but functional and with great looks. Designed to do your daily job better and easier. Sometime that is hard to explain to people. Working for Facebook doesn’t need an explanation.

When the Facebook people came over to check us out, I really was nervous. But with Julie Zhuo, their head of design, I had a match. We liked each other at first sight so we stayed a kind of together and had lots of talks. The interview with the other guy went well too. This checking out was a peace of cake for me. They liked my skills so I am curious what they have got in mind for me in Palo Alto

Hugo looks at a list of acquired companies by Facebook and the names of people that work there now. He doesn’t recognize the names except the ones he has met in Amsterdam. He doesn’t mind and he will see what happens later. He is a man that gets inspired on the moment that he has to work. He looks around or shuffles through internet to make new ideas. He presumes there is a lot to see around Palo Alto. See you later palls.

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M

eet Mathieu Tozer, the gentle coder from the Outback. However difficult it may be, no language is a bridge too far. ObjC, Python and fluent

Japanese just to name a few.

It is a little town, sixty miles from Melbourne on the coast. It is a perfect place to grow up and for me to leave when I had grown up. I wanted to see the world.

Like my sisters did, spreading out their wings.

My family goes back to Northern Ireland generations ago. At High School we had an exchange program with Japan and my sister studied Japanese. So at sixteen I had myself exchanged for half a year and got my Japanese tongue as a second language.

At that age I was already fascinated by high-tech and games. Later I finished my

Some day you get the taste of my down under BBQ Mr Travelingman: Mathieu Tozer

studies in Computer Sciences and Arts in Melbourne to solve all those ideas about software I had in my head.

I got a job from Plasq, a software company with an award-winning app Comic Life.

I could work for Plasq, making Japanese interfaces, from any spot of this earth so I started spreading my wings. A scholarship at the Apple University Consortium, a partnership between Apple and an Australian University, brought me into the Apple bubble. Time to buy a ticket, give my stuff away to the Salvation Army, heading for Rio the Janeiro with a Plasq job on my laptop. Japan can wait. I wanted to stay a bit in the summer zone.

In 2007, attending the WWDC in SF I did a talk about an interface builder at the Apple store. The Sofa guys saw me talking and introduced themselfs to me.

The interface level is my piece of cake. I am not interested in writing database code.

I think they saw that and we stayed in touch with iChat and email and I went back to Brazil.

Later I made a Melbourne to Melbourne trip and passing Europe by bike I was looking up people I know. Of course, the Sofa boys and I called Koen. He said come along and hang out in the office and I crashed in one of those rooms upstairs.

I worked and stayed a couple of days and felt at home. But the time was over and I said whenever you got a place for me I’ll come back.

Beginning 2011 Koen mailed me if I knew somebody who was looking for a job at Sofa. I said yes, it’s me. Two weeks later I was on a plane to Amsterdam. I had to refresh Checkout.

Two months ago we got this group email from Dirk. It was rather vague, something to do with Facebook. And those guys started suddenly accounts on Facebook.

They went over there because Facebook wanted to outsource some work to Sofa I thought.

When they got back we had to sign a piece of paper: don’t talk about this to anybody, so things became more serious. But I never thought that Sofa would disappear.

Finally it came out: there is a big chance that Sofa will be acquired by Facebook.

In a moment I was shocked but I said boys: congratulations. They asked me to join them at Facebook and I was even more surprised! This meant a big shift for me as I committed myself to Amsterdam for at least a number of years. That was a big thing

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to me. I was looking forward to exploring Europe and to make new friends. This is only lasting for a couple of months. I have to pack my bags again.

A year ago I had a five hours interview with Apple. So I had the feeling that Facebook would ask me similar questions like: how do you implement the function A to I? They want to see you how you break the problem down. I felt quite prepared for it and I was. It tests your knowledge of computer science.

When we set off for Facebook and California I am looking forward to the mountains and skiing. Perhaps I find a nice spot to live just like I have in Amsterdam. I never look ahead too much as I don’t want to be disappointed. Let’s see and enjoy it.

M

artina came dancing from Germany and got into the Sofa gang because of

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an ad in the supermarket. It said: Company looks somebody for cleaning,

we only pay officially. You can start right now.

Besides my profession dramaturgy, I clean up the Sofa offices two mornings a week.

They can make a right mess but there is always a good atmosphere. On Tuesday morning it is time for ‘feet high’ so I can broom under the tables. The first day they asked me what I needed. I needed a vacuum cleaner, a couple of buckets, floorcloth, a broom and detergents. So I went off with Koen or Dirk to shop and bought the things needed. Very funny!

I felt it from the beginning, it was in the air. I felt the success with these boys.

I don’t know why. Always busy, always focused, always fun. My profession is dance.

I am an artist too so these kind of things I can feel.

When I started at Sofa the place was divided into two. On the left side there was the office and on the other side the kitchen and the two rooms where Koen and Hugo

colleagues. More cleaning work of course.

One day you will taste my curry soup

I was absolutely free to organize my work. I could exchange mornings or afternoons

Mrs Clean-dance: Martina Bruns

slept. Yes I had to clean these two boys rooms too, it was no problem. Later they needed more space for more people. So the wall between the two rooms was kicked down by all of them. I cleaned and within no time four new people were at work there. Koen and Hugo moved upstairs. Soon more desks came in with new Sofa

but often I worked on Saturday mornings. Sometimes I had to clean upstairs; the place for lunch and there is a kitchen and a huge table made by Hugo.

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We all took lunch together, very happy moments for me.

One day they had forbidden me to work. There was an important football match and everybody went to the pub to watch. Koen said you cannot clean today because of the match and you have to join us at the pub. So I did and we all had a great time and the cleaning was left for next week.

Who is making the biggest mess at Sofa? That is changing but over all I think that Hugo is the champion followed closely by Jasper and Laurens. What does it matter.

I was in Germany when Hugo called me with the news about Facebook.

I felt very happy for everybody. I will stay until the end and look back at a special time with Sofa. Thank you and good luck guys.

J

oy-Vincent is a designer with an interest in icon and interface design.

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His Photoshop skills excel to great heights when he's bouncing his head to

dubstep tunes.

From childhood on I was always busy at home with pencil and paper, making little icons and drawings. Any ugly design I always will try to make it more beautiful.

I had no examples or heroes. Much later I saw work of designers online, that I liked.

Like the Danish designer Jonas Rask for example.

After finishing the Graphic School I took a year out. My plans pointed in the direction of Art school in The Hague. That year I did all kinds of DTP jobs but I didn’t like the repetitiveness of the work.

Sofa’s designer Jorn found my free work online. He sent me an email to drop by for a chat. Frequently I got these emails, mostly from abroad. But I did not fancy to go there at all. Anyhow Jorn and Sofa were in Amsterdam in Holland. Cool. But when I looked at their website, the black one with the sofas, I thought it disgusting and I decided not to go for a chat. But the way the words in the email were put it kept scratchy at me. Later on I thought a visit would not harm me and looking is free.

My parents are living in Zoetermeer, close to where I live. My father is a free guy.

He could be busy with autistic children or driving an armoured car to Bosnia.

Some day I make you my Suriname roti

He is often on the road and now he is a taxi driver in Rotterdam. My mother takes care of elderly Surinames people. I dreamt of being an artist one day. That appealed to me a lot.

Mr Beautifyer: Joy Vincent Niemantsverdriet

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The first step into Sofa gave me a good feeling. The atmosphere of the garage, the work, the fun were very unusual to me. The way they talked to each other I never heard before. I am always rather careful with my words and a bit reserved. At Sofa everything is very direct. Let’s go to a chateau in France they say to get inspired for new ideas. An off we were. Or we all jumped on a jetplane to the Apple World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco where Sofa got rewarded two times. I had never been that far from home and this was my first time to the States.

San Francisco really felt like a place where I could stay longer. What a city!

I heard about the boys going to Facebook. For a contracting job I thought, adjusting the website or so. Work for social media, interesting! As they came back the Facebook adventure was layed out in front of me. My first question: When… As they told me within two months I felt sick immediately. You don’t know what’s coming your way. Of course I can think about the kind of work at Facebook. Probably they want to become an all over platform for communication. There is enough work to do. But that Sofa would stop…I was terrified and almost paralyzed.

The stories about Facebook by Koen, Dirk, Jorn and Jasper were good and gave me a new perspective. I hope there is variety of work to do. If I can improve anything I would like to do it, that is the way I work. Until now Facebook didn’t do it for me.

Once I had an account but I never used it. Many of my friends think as well it’s to complicated. They don’t see the fun of it and they don’t use it. It is quite a big company Facebook and I know how it started. I saw the movie The Social Network.

The people of Facebook that I met here in Amsterdam are nice. Very special to me.

They came with six persons to have a look in the bag they intend to acquire.

Just walking in the office I ask if they liked a glance on the screen. I could show them my work and what we do at Sofa. They did and were amused. Next day the individual interviews were held by the people of Facebook. The first thing they told me is that I had not to prove myself anymore. They were convinced about my work the day before. So they said, take your time to ask us everything you want to know about Facebook. That gave me the feeling that they wanted me. I did not have to sell myself. During those talks we got to know each other a bit more personally in the following two days. I am so glad we are doing this as a whole team. I don’t know if I would start this adventure on my own.

My girlfriend sometimes asked me how I would see my future after Sofa.

The idea only made me sick. Because in Holland you don’t find companies like Sofa.

There is so much talent and companionship, it’s like a lot bubbles. To me that is the base for success.

There were moments that jobs at Apple or Google had crossed my mind. Especially as Google can use some design power. But going abroad, I never liked the idea.

But ideas need to be ready for improvement as well. Facebook here we come.

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P

eter Frans learned the art of start-up, founding TomTom over twenty years ago. He has developed a fine nose for young start-ups and acquired a couple

of them since. He preferred to cherish the Sofa start-up. Now he hopes silently that he will be invited in Palo Alto for a couple of beers and in case of some solid advice.

Suddenly I remember the guy with the freckles. He sold me Mac things at the Mac House on the Rozengracht. Now he is helping TomTom building the interface for our new navigation iPhone app with his Sofa team. We didn’t have the skills in-house at TomTom. Ken McAlpine found Sofa, but before Ken started to work for us he worked many years for Apple. Ken is British and it was thought he would look in London for a team. But he turned up with Sofa the team of designers just around the corner.

Someday I will make you that Saltimbocca my way

Sofa’s Checkout had been awarded by Apple and Ken liked the guys and their work.

Sofa had put itself on the international radar. Our navigation app had to be a winner at once and I would love to show it to the world during a key note of Steve Jobs. But that was not easy as it looks. Finally Apple approved us to come over and I intended to fly in on the Saturday before the key note on Monday. You have to come a week before Apple replied otherwise there isn’t a show for TomTom.

I turned up in Cupertino and Apple wanted me to do a beauty parade with thirteen other potentials, although they had only places for eight partners i.e. for eight presentations of 3.5 minutes each. So there had to be done some work and like a school

Mr Godfounder: Peter Frans Pauwels

kid trying to pass the exams, TomTom had its 3.5 minutes showcasing to the world.

Not bad at all for us. During that WWD Conference Sofa got its second award. Not for the TomTom app but for Version, their own new application. I cannot pass any

Apple shop in the world without looking at the shelves for TomTom and Sofa.

That’s cool: you see them everywhere.

Some time later we met again during a start-up meet. Dirk and Koen invited me down to the office for a beer, perhaps they had some questions for me as they said. I like that. Entering ‘the office’ it made me think directly of the start-up for TomTom and how Steve and Bill had started up in those garages. It had that same vibe with enthusiastic people all around. We ended in a bar around the corner and I admired their sense for reality, their focus and their ambitions.

Until that email from Mark Zückerberg only one or two at Sofa had a Facebook account. They thought it as a waste of time, quite funny really. Later on their way to Facebook Dirk and Koen showed a very strong emotional commitment for Sofa.

The company that they had built up, with their friends, stood at a break through point to becoming something really big, in my opinion.

Before they went to Palo Alto for the deal with Facebook we had a talk about the ins and outs. As TomTom acquired companies five times I could show them what the thoughts would be at the Facebook end of the table. When they were in California I set up a teleconference to check the small details together. It struck me how far they came with the negotiations and how bright they are in their entrepreneurship.

They did extremely well. I feel very proud to be part of these guys and I believe that they will have big fun in Palo Alto. At the other hand, completely new things will happen to them. Things become bigger and more interesting. We should be hearing a lot more about these guys. Chapeau and congratulations to Facebook!

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K

laas Pieter (Klapie) writes as many programming languages as possible while drumming on his desk with a pencil. Extra credits for his four hour

commute, every day.

We are joking about the actors playing us in the Social Sofa Network movie.

No I am not going to Facebook I am not a part of the deal. That was tough to hear but this switch is causing new possibilities for me too. I was at Café Royale on Poststreet San Francisco when Koen put the blog post on line he tweeted that I was no part of the deal with Facebook. I put a tweet too and within a couple of hours I had over twenty job offers in San Francisco. The next few days, two or three offers followed each day. There were a couple of nice opportunities, that I am still busy with.

I have no clue why Facebook didn’t want me! Perhaps they were only looking for

Some day you will eat my apple crumble pie

design talent and I am more on the technical side. I know what they are up to at Facebook and in fact they need design power now. The engineering Facebook it can handle, it has got enough skills around for that.

I am also dealing now with the party in New York that takes over Checkout and Enstore. That’s quite interesting because I have worked a lot on these products. I could become a technical director in the new company. It is a nice chance to finish these products and to start something new in New York. They wanted me to be part of the new set up of that company. I like that, finding the right people and put

Mr Silverlining: Klaas Pieter Annema

them on the right spot. Next week we know more. In the meantime I will have also an interview with Twitter.

At Sofa I have learned a lot, business wise too. To be honest, I wouldn’t start a company on my own. I need co-founders for marketing, selling and telling the story well behind it. I have been thinking about to do it but this combination with the American party looks like a perfect match. I am a free man so I can go to New York and I fancy the vibe overthere.

I learned a lot here at Sofa and I didn’t mind traveling four hours on a train every day to come here. Now the daily trip is more difficult as you know that it ends.

But at the other side I like to finish all the projects we have got in hand now.

Or continue them from a different position. My future is open now and I have learned that your life can be changed completely within a week. So I don’t make plans too far ahead.

We were Sofa… that’s a fact. For sure.

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orn tweaks pixels until they budge. He likes to dig into our apps and sites until their entire visual style is redefined, polished and perfected.

Jorn looks at a list of Facebook people. These are his new mates. That name I know, I have been talking with him: Sam Lessin from Drop.io, acquired by Facebook too.

We never talked at Sofa about to whom we would sell. The Apple bubble is not that big, we know the nerds quite well but the internet business is much larger.

Those two names from Mozilla we should know, we worked for them.

I am from a food and beverage background as a family business. My father managed a restaurant in Heusden that was obtained by my grandfather. My mother was helping there a lot. In fact my father wanted to become a lawyer but the time

Some day I make you again my Risotto Ten Katemarkt Mr Actionman: Jorn van Dijk

was not there and he died too early.

It lasted quite some time before somebody kicked my ass on to the creative path.

They sent me one day to the Graphic School. It was the first time that I was put behind a screen, discovering Illustrator and Quark. There we had a start with this designer. After four years I finished on multi media and made my next step to Art School Willem de Kooning in Rotterdam. In my practical year I stumbled over Sofa, that just had started in De Zwijger in Amsterdam, a kind of breeding place for creative start-ups. Interesting, because I could find out more about the Apple environment.

That practical time was one big shit! Our mutual expectations did not match at all.

Hugo was my trainer and they wanted me to work for Checkout. But I had zero practical experience with the design programs they used.

After finishing my studies I wanted to start freelance work. I put some of my designs online and guess who called… Sofa! The gentlemen noticed some progress in my work and I could start next day on a freelance job working for Jasper.

Soon after they offered me a contract. Lots of nice jobs were granted to Sofa by Mozilla, Nike, Tomtom, 280north, Disco. Nice and noticeable clients that provided the money that Sofa needed to work on its own projects.

The work that we produced at that time was awesome and I wanted to be the best man that focused on web design. Hugo is very talented on a much wider scale and Jasper is focused on the total application including techniques. But this combination worked very well. What do you think about clients? Sometimes I do attend meetings but I don’t care for the politics. I rather leave that to the others.

I prefer to spend my time more in making something.

November last year I stopped my Facebook account after three years. I didn’t care for it as the data that passed by was always the same. The design and layouts were very dull too and I had the opinion that social networks were meant to be for real friends not for colleagues or acquaintances.

At Facebook I met fantastic designers and programmers and I saw how they used Facebook. I got a complete different perception of it now and lots of real data is passing by now on my iPhone. To me Facebook is a technical platform with many possibilities. They could pay more attention to product design in order to make things more personal by questioning who is going to use it, what, when and how.

That’s the way we do it at Sofa. From starting point, one style and handling, this is important to us. After that we check in every stage if things still are according to out

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objectives. We do a lot on our gutfeeling. If things are looking good to us we always try them out. That’s the Sofa culture and the way we work.

It would be great if we could implement a bit of this in Palo Alto.

Anyhow it matches with their interests for Sofa: our culture, our design and the way we think outside the box.

Last summer we attended SXSW in Austin Texas with Koen and Joy. There we spent a nice evening together with some guys from Facebook. They knew the Sofa work and we had good fun. After all I think that it has helped with this new contact between Facebook and Sofa.

I think it is going to be a great time for me at Facebook. For all of us. Probably we will be split up over different departments but that does not matter.

Sofa was our first big thing. We have grown together in the recent past years.

I think everyone can carry forward in this new environment doing the work we do like most. Some of us will stay together, others go in different directions. That’s live.

To me it is very relaxing and refreshing for all of us. Probably for all the talent that will be attracted by Facebook. I am looking forward to it.

D

irk is an ‘interaction fanatic’ who enjoys perfecting the smallest detail.

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We also suspect he actually likes reviewing and writing contracts, but

he'd probably never admit to that. Koen started programming Python to enhance his video mixing sets, next to being a coder, he has a keen eye for design and branding, rumour has it he was raised by marketing boffs.

We have learned more about doing business in de last three months than in the last five years. If the Facebook due diligence framework would have been there the moment we started Sofa, we would have organized Sofa slightly differently.

Now we can give a yes or a no to eighty percent of all the start-up questions.

However, there are absolutely no nasty feelings in hindsight about our setup.

We had the luck of excellent legal support for IP cases, tax and business. It helped us a lot later with our international joint ventures and now with the Facebook negotiations.

In Palo Alto within no time we had excellent support. That was very special and it kept the negotiations going in a constructive way for both parties.

How we met? It was during a meeting at the Mac House in Woerden, an Apple dealer in the province that wanted to start an Apple shop in Amsterdam. Dirk had finished his studies in The Hague ‘Art and Sound’, but was ready for a change to work with computers instead of musical instruments. Koen studied Communication Sciences in Amsterdam and was fed up with freelance web design work.

Some day we will make you a home made ravioli or would you prefer a spaghetti aglio olio....?

Working with Apple appealed to them both, Dirk got a job in the service and hardware department, and Koen started with sales on the shop floor, but they soon got together and talked about product design. In fact they both identified

The Founding Bross: Dirk Stoop and Koen Bok

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and agreed what was wrong with the shop, it was the point of sale system, basically it was a disaster. So they both decided on making a better solution, one that would work for Apple computers. Apple had hardly any software for small businesses at this time so they realised that this might be something worth doing, and did it.

We generally agree on eighty percent of business matters, but the twenty percent left is a bit of a struggle. Koen is often more focused on the big picture and tends to simplify complex issues, whereas, Dirk keeps his eye on the detail. Dirk hates inferior design from a user perspective. He empathises with users that spend hours tying to get things working and have to return to the shop for assistance, better product design avoids these kinds of issues and saves a lot of time and money. This is clearly seen on the bug tracking list, on Koen’s list you may find six items compared to Dirk’s nine thousand and eighty six bugs clearly defined on the same list and he will not rest before he has identified all outstanding issues.

These two guys have different approaches to problems but they share the same passion and ambition for reaching the stars. Dirk is a vegetarian, Koen goes for a T-bone steak. They probably know each other better than their own partners and friends. They are well aware of what they’ve achieved, but they also realise that there are many new horizons that can be reached. They will succeed without rocket science.

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