History
Sofa was a small design-centered software company, founded by three guys who taught themselves how to code and make apps.
Next to building and selling products, Sofa fueled its growth through design contracting work and quickly became known as a world-class design studio and software company. As our team and product portfolio grew, we moved away from contracting and focused fully on our own Mac, iOS and web products.
Since 2011, our mission to create great experiences continues at Facebook – now for millions of people at a time.
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Apple Design Award 2009
Versions won an award in the Developer Showcase category. More info at Macworld.com -
Apple Design Award 2008
Checkout was rewarded runner-up for delivering a great user experience. More info at Macworld.com -
BusinessWeek Award
Madebysofa.com won a Best of the Web Award for bringing print design to the web. More info at BusinessWeek.com
Koen Bok
Koen started programming Python to enhance his video mixing sets. He has a keen eye for design and branding.
Dirk Stoop
Dirk is an interaction fanatic who likes to spit and polish. We also suspect he actually likes working on contracts.
Jasper Hauser
Jasper is allergic to ugly. He has a background in visual arts and can snap his left eye on the pixel while designing.
Hugo van Heuven
When Hugo's not coding, designing or 3D modeling, he probably discovered something else that needs to be done.
Jorn van Dijk
Jorn likes coming up with the big picture, then zooming in like there's no tomorrow. He'll push pixels 'til they're round.
Joy-Vincent Niemantsverdriet
Whenever a mockup is just perfect, we give it to Joy and get it back better, much better.
Klaas Pieter Annema
Klaas Pieter writes as many programming languages as possible while drumming on his desk with a pencil.
Jonathan Dann
Jon is a self–taught Cocoa developer. Luckily for us, he stumbled upon Sofa after a brief plunge into particle physics.
Mathieu Tozer
After traveling the world to help people create comic books, Mat joined Sofa to code in obscure flavors of Cocoa.
Jenneke Valdés
With patience, Jenneke answered our software's many questions about its users, or was it the other way around?
Laurens Bon
After balancing accounts, Laurens likes to unwind by playing the piano while doing some currency conversions.
Cathy Shive
When she's not building great apps or playing chess with ED-209, Cathy makes secret plans for lunch with Asimo.
Pieter de Bie
Pieter studied AI before joining Sofa as a developer. He likes his tea like he likes his version control: strong, a little sugar.
Floris Verloop
Floris first interned with Sofa to learn everything we could teach him about design. Then, he kept coming back.
Partnerships
In 2007, Sofa and Acclivity entered into a joint venture around Checkout. After Sofa was acquired by Facebook, Acclivity took over both Checkout and Enstore.
Sofa joined forces with Pico to create Versions. In 2010, shortly after Sofa developed Kaleidoscope, it acquired all of Versions. Both products are now further developed by Black Pixel.
Other Projects
Sofa supported Indie Fever, Michiel van Meeteren's research paper on the indie Mac developer community with a research grant. Get the paper here.
Sofa frequently hosted Amsterdam Cocoaheads meetups, was actively involved in Dutch startup collective STIKK and supported the Appsterdam movement.
Versions
Subversion Client for Mac
WWW.VERSIONSAPP.COM
Kaleidoscope
File Comparison for mac
WWW.KALEIDOSCOPEAPP.COM
Now owned and developed by Black Pixel
Checkout
Get a Mac. Start a Store.
WWW.CHECKOUTAPP.COM
Enstore
Your Store Online
WWW.ENSTORE.COM
Now owned and developed by Acclivity NYC
Facebook Acquires Sofa
Amsterdam, June 9, 2011
We're excited to announce today that Facebook
has acquired the Sofa team.
When we started Sofa in 2006, we set out to make friendly and useful 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 in the coming weeks – and we'll make sure to infuse our particular flavor of Dutch culture at Facebook.
Sofa's products, Kaleidoscope and Versions, are not a part of this acquisition. Both apps will remain available and we're committed to securing a great future for them outside Sofa. We're also working with our joint venture partner to provide the smoothest transition and best possible future for Checkout, Enstore and their collective customers. For more details see this page.
Finally, we want to express our deepest appreciation to our customers, partners, advisors and everyone else who helped us these past five years. Working with you all is the reason this adventure was so incredibly fun.
— The Sofa Team