About

What we are

Kilo Moana UG (haftungsbeschränkt) is registered in Rellingen, a few kilometres north-west of Hamburg. It was founded to develop and publish its own digital products across three areas: web applications, games, and digital media.

We are not an agency. There is no client list, no day rate, and no sales team. Every product on this site was started because someone here wanted it to exist.

Why that matters

Client work rewards finishing. Own products reward being right. Those are different jobs, and they pull a company in different directions.

Because we carry the risk ourselves, we can take the slow option when the slow option is the correct one: rewriting a data model in the second month rather than the second year, or shelving a feature that demos well and helps nobody. It also means we only start what we are convinced by.

Where the name comes from

Kilo is Hawaiian for watching closely — the word used for observing the stars or the sea. Moana is the open ocean. Put together they describe an observer of the ocean, which is also why a research vessel at the University of Hawaiʻi carries the name.

We liked it for the obvious reason and for a less obvious one: most of the work that decides whether a product survives happens below the surface, where nobody is looking.

How we decide what to build

Three questions, in this order.

• Do we understand the problem from the inside? SailTo exists because organising a sailing trip across four chat groups and a spreadsheet is genuinely awful, and we had done it.
• Can it run for years without being babysat? If the answer needs a paragraph, the answer is no.
• Would we still want to work on it in the fourth month? This one eliminates more ideas than the other two combined.

Practical details

The company is registered at the local court under HRB 19590. The managing director is Alexander Siemer-Schmetzke. The full legal details are on the imprint page, and anything else is best asked by email.