nightwoods Bartosz Szczepański

NightWoods is a Warsaw-based software development studio founded by Bartosz Szczepański. The core team consists of two senior engineers and one product strategist, supplemented by designers, compliance specialists, and DevOps engineers as needed per project. They focus on custom software and fixed-price experiments for fintech, marketplaces, IoT, and creator platforms—companies with real traction that need to ship fast and validate hypotheses early.

The studio operates around four principles they call "Waypoints": Clarity (plain-language success criteria before code), Certainty (fixed-price offers with fixed timelines), Velocity (AI-assisted scaffolding and proven building blocks), and Visibility (weekly demos and published metrics). They anchor every engagement to business outcomes—revenue, activation, cost saved—rather than lines of code.

Services and capabilities

NightWoods offers four packaged offerings that scale with project scope. The Launch Blueprint ($3k, 1 week) validates demand through solution modeling, delivery planning, and a decision memo. The Traction Experiment ($15k, 2 weeks) runs a time-boxed demand test with design, build, traffic acquisition, and metrics to reach a yes/no decision. Foundation Build ($35k, 4–6 weeks) ships an operational v1 with AI-assisted scaffolding, CI/CD, and weekly demos. Custom Software is value-priced based on year-1 outcomes (typically 10–30% of outcomes).

Their technical approach relies on event modeling and event sourcing to surface issues early and create immutable audit trails. They use AI for scaffolding, tests, docs, and migrations—but humans gate security, payments, auth, and data. Published acceptance criteria (ACs), tracked metrics (AC closure %, TTFP, change lead time, rollback rate), and weekly progress memos are standard. They disclose all AI-assisted work and publish an artifact trail of every commit, test run, and deployment.

Across case studies, NightWoods has delivered systems for creator commerce (music platforms with drops and merch sales), educational platforms with live sessions and cohort management, B2B marketplaces, crypto peer-to-peer trading, options trading tools, budgeting apps with AI chat, solar panel monitoring, and HVAC predictive maintenance. They work across React, Next.js, Node.js, TypeScript, Python, Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis, event stores, Stripe, Zoom, Plaid, and cloud platforms.

Notable work

A music streaming and drops platform for independent artists launched in 6 weeks with 120 artists onboarded and €45k GMV in the first 90 days. Event-sourced order flow handled refund compliance. An educational platform with live sessions and student cohorts went live in 8 weeks with 15 courses and 1,200 enrolled students in Q1. An automotive B2B marketplace reached €1.2M GMV in 6 months with 250 verified dealers onboarded; fraud detection hooks reduced chargebacks by 40%. A peer-to-peer crypto trading app launched in 10 weeks, processed 800 trades in Q1, and maintained a rollback rate under 2% via automated testing. An options trading platform for retail traders hit 1,500 active users in 3 months with AI-powered insights increasing engagement by 30%. A personal finance app with AI chat reached 5,000 downloads in Q1, with the chatbot handling 70% of user queries without escalation. For industrial IoT, they deployed solar monitoring across 1,200 devices with real-time alerting reducing downtime by 25%, and HVAC monitoring across 300 units that reduced service calls by 30% through predictive maintenance.

Named clients include Viessmann (IoT troubleshooting tool for installers), Sauber (edge AI for street sweepers), Neko Solutions (automated options trading), Getakey.pl (collectible car marketplace), Livesport (internal marketing and sales applications), and Naturaily. Victor Fischer (CEO, Sauber) cited their versatility across mobile, web, and cloud. Radek Žikeš (Team Lead, Livesport) noted effective communication and willingness to explore alternative solutions.

How they work

Engagements start with a 30-minute scoping call where you share your success metric, top 3 user journeys, and budget band. NightWoods returns a value-anchored quote within 24 hours. They deliver weekly demos of working software, publish metrics (AC closure %, TTFP, change lead time, rollback rate), and maintain an immutable artifact trail. Their "Anti-Overemployment Pledge" pledges declared availability (published windows for every team member on critical path), single critical engagement during launch phases (no juggling multiple jobs), and full disclosure of AI usage. All software and artifacts remain your IP; no non-competes, exclusivity clauses, or IP grabs.

Team and credentials

Core team is 2 senior engineers and 1 product strategist, with an extended network of specialists brought in per project. Based in Wrocław, Poland. No major certifications, partner status, or published Clutch/G2 ratings mentioned. Their differentiator is their transparent methodology (published metrics, disclosed AI work, immutable audit trails) and value-based pricing anchored to outcomes rather than hours.