Oliiki is a parenting app focused on supporting early childhood development during the first thousand days of a child's life, which are scientifically proven to be critical for the future mental and physical health of an infant. The product combines developmental guidance, structured learning and evidence-backed parenting support into a mobile experience designed for new and expecting parents.
The {Challenge}
The business was founded by a solo founder who had left their job to pursue the product full time. The app already had users, positive reviews and genuine value behind it, but commercially, the business was under pressure. The product was generating revenue, but not enough to properly sustain the company. Alongside this, technical issues were building in the background - creating growing operational risks.
For Oliiki's founder, the app was the business. If it disappeared from the app stores, everything stopped.
When we were called in, the platform had gone a long period without any meaningful technical maintenance. Apple and Google were beginning to issue warnings around deprecated libraries, policy compliance changes and upcoming compatibility requirements. Technical notices were arriving regularly, explaining that parts of the app would soon fall outside app store requirements.
This wasn't a failing on the part of the founder, but they were non-technical. They understood there was a problem, but couldn't understand how severe it was, what needed fixing first, or how close the product was to becoming unstable. They were working with a limited budget, so a full rebuild wasn't a viable option. The app needed stabilising quickly, but realistically.
The <Solution/>
Our full app audit came first. This involved recovering platform access, reviewing the codebase, identifying deprecated dependencies, assessing policy compliance risks and understanding which issues carried the highest likelihood of app store removal.
Part of this challenge was operational, as well as technical. We had to coordinate with the original external developer to recover information, credentials and system access wherever possible. Once that support tapered off, our team had to independently piece together parts of the platform directly from the underlying code.
We then moved into prioritisation. Categorising each issue based on two factors: the likelihood of app store enforcement, and the urgency of the platform deadlines being imposed by Apple and Google. This allowed us to work through the problems methodically rather than reactively.
Some fixes involved replacing outdated libraries, while others required compliance updates around changing platform policies. In several places, we had to work creatively around limitations in the existing backend architecture because rebuilding the entire platform simply was not commercially realistic for the business at that stage.
Alongside stabilising the platform technically, we also modernised the customer-facing experience. We reshaped the frontend, updated the branding implementation, redesigned the app store presentation and improved the visual quality of the product overall. With these improvements, we were able to ensure the quality of the experience properly reflected the value of the product behind it.
The app ultimately took around four months to fully stabilise. Longer than originally expected, largely because of the number of unknowns involved, the fragmented documentation and the amount of investigation required to fully understand the platform's dependencies and behaviours. But, we were able to reach a much improved and stable end result.
Throughout the process, we remained pragmatic. A full rebuild may have been the ideal technical solution in theory, but it wouldn't have been the right commercial decision for the founder at that point in the business's lifecycle. Instead, we focused on reducing immediate risk, improving stability and creating enough breathing room for future strategic decisions.
The :[Results]
This project was one with many positive outcomes, but the immediate win for Oliiki was stability. With our support, the app remained live in the app stores, became compliant with evolving platform requirements and was no longer operating under immediate risk of removal. The frontend refresh gave the product a more modern and credible presence, helping the app better reflect the quality of the underlying research and developmental expertise behind it.
Operationally, the business became far easier to manage. Native subscriptions reduced manual administration, onboarding became simpler and the commercial experience became significantly more professional for users.
The second result for Oliiki, but arguably the one with the greatest returns long term, was the improved strategy. Before the project, the founder was trapped in reactive decision-making, constantly dealing with technical uncertainty, app store warnings and operational pressure. Once the platform had stabilised, they were finally able to step back and think about the longer-term future of the business. None of those decisions would have been realistically possible while the product remained unstable.
The {Why}
Projects like Oliiki are a good example of why technical consultancy is just as much about strategy and advisory support as it is development and implementation. The right solution isn't always the most technically ambitious one. Sometimes the real value comes from understanding the commercial reality of the business and making pragmatic decisions within those constraints.
For Oliiki, the goal was never to rebuild from scratch. It was reducing pressure, protecting the business and giving the founder enough stability to make better long-term decisions. That's what we achieved together.