About Galaxen

The studio founders keep recommending.

We started Galaxen in 2019 with a simple thesis: most founders waste their first six months building the wrong thing in the wrong way. We fix that.

Galaxen was founded by Daniel Hartley and Sofia Andersen after watching dozens of talented founders lose critical runway to agencies that over-promised, under-scoped, and disappeared after handover. Daniel had lived it himself — spending $120K on an MVP that took 9 months and never found a single paying customer. Sofia had seen it from the engineering side, inheriting three separate codebases at her next role that were essentially throwaway.

The studio was built around a conviction: the best thing you can do for a founder is tell them the truth. That means being honest when an idea won't work, honest when the timeline is tight, and honest when scope needs to be cut. We're not here to take your money — we're here to get you to product- market fit as fast as the idea allows.

Six years later, we've shipped over 60 products, worked with founders across 12 countries, and helped our clients collectively raise more than $180M. We're still a focused studio — deliberately. We don't scale for scale's sake. Every active project has a named lead, a direct Slack line to the build team, and a founding partner who's read the brief.

If you want an agency that treats your product like a contract deliverable, we're not the right fit. If you want a team that argues with you when you're wrong, ships fast, and picks up the phone on launch day — let's talk.

60+
MVPs Shipped
$180M
Raised by Our Clients
4.8★
Clutch Rating
12
Countries Served
40
Team Members

What we believe

Four principles we don't negotiate on.

Say the hard thing

We tell clients when an idea won't work, even if it costs us the project. Our job is to get you to product-market fit, not to take your money.

Ship to learn

A live product with 50 real users teaches you more in a week than 3 months of spec documents. We build to ship, not to polish indefinitely.

Own the outcome

We measure ourselves by the results our clients achieve — funding rounds, user growth, revenue — not by deliverables handed over.

Code you'd be proud to inherit

Every codebase we hand over is documented, tested, and structured so your next developer can hit the ground running.

Leadership

Built by people who have shipped.

The founding team and the leads you'll work with directly.

Daniel Hartley

Daniel Hartley

Co-founder & CEO

Previously founder of two SaaS companies (one acquired in 2018). Led product at a Series B fintech before starting Galaxen to build the studio he wished he'd had access to.

LinkedIn
Sofia Andersen

Sofia Andersen

Co-founder & CTO

Former principal engineer at Monzo and Revolut. Specialises in distributed systems, fintech architecture, and developer tooling. Writes publicly about engineering culture.

LinkedIn
James Okonkwo

James Okonkwo

Head of Design

10 years designing B2B SaaS products. Previously at Figma's design team and Intercom. Leads Galaxen's UX approach and all design system work.

LinkedIn
Lena Fischer

Lena Fischer

Head of Product

Ex-product manager at Zalando and N26. Runs all product discovery engagements and oversees sprint delivery across every active project.

LinkedIn

Life at Galaxen

Remote-first. Founder-run. Genuinely async.

Distributed across Europe, with a London HQ for when being in the same room actually matters.

London HQ
Galaxen London office
Team offsite 2024
Galaxen team offsite
Build week
Team during a build week
Client demo day
Client demo presentation

Want to work with us?

Whether you're a founder with an idea or a company needing a dedicated team — let's have an honest conversation about what you need.