Hi, I'm Nico.

What I did before this

A studio of one sounds like someone at the start of their career. I'm not — I've built the bigger version, and this is a deliberate choice. The short history:

Why a studio of one

I've seen how software gets made at scale, from the inside and near the top. Roadmaps decided by committee. Features nobody asked for, shipped because a number needed to move. Support queues where a person with a problem becomes a ticket. Some of that is genuinely unavoidable once a company has to grow — but I don't want to build that way any more.

So SwellShaper is the opposite bet: products small enough that one person can build them properly and stay responsible for them afterwards. Each one does a single job well, costs what it's worth, and lets you leave whenever you like. Because it's just me, you're never more than one email away from the person who makes the decisions. If you write in, I read it. If something's broken, I'm the one fixing it.

The name is a nod to surfing — a swell is the raw energy rolling in from far away; shaping is the patient craft of turning it into something you can actually ride. That's how I think about building software: take a real need, and shape it, calmly, into something useful.

How I like to work

I make sure something is genuinely wanted before I build it. Before writing a line of product code, I talk to the people who have the problem and check it's real and worth solving. If it isn't, I say so and move on — your time matters as much as mine. When something does earn its place, I build it small, ship it honestly, and improve it based on what you actually tell me.

Fifteen years of shipping taught me the boring lessons the hard way: migrations that took longer than promised, features that looked obvious and weren't, and how much of good software is just maintenance done conscientiously over a long time. I'd rather run three small products well than one big one badly.

Where I am, and who you're talking to

I'm French, I live and work in Mallorca, and I'm self-employed in Spain. I work in English and French — write to me in either. SwellShaper is self-funded: no investors, no board, no pressure to chase scale for its own sake. That independence is the whole point. It means I can build for the people using the software rather than for a number on someone else's spreadsheet.

Outside work I make generative art and electronic music — visuals built out of code, mostly. It's been the constant through all of the above, and it's where the patience comes from.