Work & Co Acquires Tendigi, a Mobile Design and Development Studio

Tendigi founder and CEO Jeff Soto will join Work & Co as a director, as will the company’s chief technology officer Nick Lee. The Tendigi team will move into Work & Co’s offices in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

According to Work & Co, the acquisition will enhance its native app development offering for clients.

Tendigi has worked with brands including Apple, Plated and Nickelodeon. According to Work & Co, Tendigi has launched 61 apps as a company and another 25 individually, and has experience delivering technical solutions across iOS, macOS and Android.

Soto served an audio quality assurance engineer at Apple before starting Tendigi, while Lee worked as a software engineer at New York University.

One of the firm’s most successful projects to date was for the World Wildlife Fund. Tendigi helped rebuild the nonprofit’s WWF Together app for iPad and iPhone, which the firm said helped raise more than $8 million for the organization.

“We’re now able to bring even more expertise to meet the needs of our clients—many who we expect to continue working with,” Soto said. “Joining Work & Co helps us be able to take on projects that are truly end-to-end. On a personal level, I’m also excited to collaborate on cross-functional teams with more designers and product leaders.”

Marcelo Eduardo, co-founder and partner of technology at 6-year-old Work & Co, said the acquisition of Tendigi is less about growth and more about adding specialized staff.

“Mobile engineers who have experience shipping really successful end-to-end services are still rare. While we have grown organically to over 325 people to date, we also believe that when you get the rare opportunity to add people at that level to your team, you should take it,” Eduardo said. “When it comes to being a digital product agency, we really are the first operating at scale—so a big part of our strategy is to always be opportunistic about talent, and this feels like just another example.”

Work & Co has offices in New York, Portland, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belgrade and Copenhagen. Its clients include Apple, Ikea, Epic Games, MailChimp and Mercedes.

Last month, Work & Co named Derek Fridman, formerly Huge’s chief design officer, as associate partner of design.