Music + audio + festivals
Festival apps (SXSW, ACL, Levitation), independent artist platforms, audio production tools, podcast companion apps. Frequently needs CarPlay and Android Auto integration plus offline content delivery for festival weekends.
A senior Native + React Native mobile team for Austin music, hardware companion, fintech, creator-economy, and food and CPG brands. iOS, Android, App Store + Play Store launch with CT coverage Mon-Fri 9-6.
Austin mobile app work runs across two distinct clusters: hardware companion apps tied to the Tesla-and-Oracle-driven hardware-DTC scene, and creator + music + fintech apps that come out of the city's startup density. We default to Native (Swift, SwiftUI, Kotlin, Jetpack Compose) when platform integration earns it — BLE pairing for hardware, ARKit for music or AR-led apps, secure enclave for fintech, deep background tasks. React Native via Expo when 80 percent of the codebase can ship cross-platform without losing UX. The choice gets justified at discovery, not assumed.
Festival apps (SXSW, ACL, Levitation), independent artist platforms, audio production tools, podcast companion apps. Frequently needs CarPlay and Android Auto integration plus offline content delivery for festival weekends.
Companion apps for connected hardware tied to the Tesla-Oracle-Indeed ecosystem moves. CoreBluetooth + Android BLE for pairing, OTA firmware update flows, telemetry ingestion, secure enclave for credentials.
Personal finance, payments, crypto-adjacent products (some Austin VC density here). Strong biometric auth, secure enclave for credentials, Plaid integration for bank linking, Stripe for payments. PCI scope minimized via tokenization.
Creator-economy apps tied to the wide ATX YouTube, Twitch, podcast, and Substack scene. Member-only gates, push notifications for drops, audience-platform sync, in-app subscriptions via RevenueCat.
Our Austin mobile team serves brands across Austin, the Round Rock + Cedar Park corridor, the Hill Country, and Central Texas. In-person discovery happens in East Austin, South Congress, downtown ATX, the Domain, or the East Side. Past Austin mobile engagements covered hardware companion apps for Tesla-ecosystem startups in the Domain, festival and music apps timed for SXSW and ACL, fintech-adjacent personal finance apps, and creator-economy member apps for podcast and Substack creators. CT coverage with same-CT Slack response Mon-Fri 9-6.
We pick Native (Swift for iOS, Kotlin for Android) when the app needs deep platform integration: BLE pairing for hardware, CarPlay and Android Auto for music apps, ARKit for AR-led experiences, secure enclave for fintech credentials. We pick React Native (or Flutter) when the app is mostly forms, lists, content, and standard auth flows where 80 percent of the codebase can ship to both platforms. The decision walks at discovery; we will not push React Native to save engineering hours if it costs the user a worse experience or a regulatory risk.
Yes. Austin's hardware-DTC density (Tesla, Oracle, Indeed, plus a deep YC-funded hardware startup base) means companion-app work comes up often. We handle the full mobile stack — CoreBluetooth or Android BLE for pairing, OTA firmware update infrastructure, telemetry ingestion to a backend on AWS or Supabase, secure enclave for device credentials. Native is usually the right call for the BLE and OTA layers; the surrounding UX can sometimes ship React Native if the BLE bridge is well-scoped.
Submission is part of the engagement, not a hand-off. We build the App Store Connect and Google Play Console listings, write App Store Optimization copy, prepare screenshot sets at every required size, configure privacy disclosures (App Store Privacy, Google Play Data Safety), and submit. First submission for either store typically takes 1-7 days; we plan launches with a 2-week buffer for resubmission cycles. Apple Developer + Google Play Developer accounts stay in the client's name; we operate as additional admins during the engagement.
Default stack: Firebase Analytics or PostHog for product analytics, Sentry for crash and error reporting, RevenueCat for subscription management, App Store Connect Analytics + Google Play Console Analytics for store-level metrics. For fintech apps we swap to PCI-aware analytics that scrub sensitive fields, and we maintain audit logs separate from product analytics. All analytics pipelines documented in the architectural decision record so the client can audit data flow at any time.
Yes — at least one in-person discovery workshop in Austin for any flagship engagement. Workshops typically run a half day to two days at your office or ours, frequently at neutral spaces in East Austin, the Domain, or the Capital Factory downtown. Day-to-day build runs remote with weekly Friday demos on Central Time, same-CT working hours, and quarterly in-person retainer reviews for ongoing engagements.