Istanbul, remote only
The studio is in Istanbul, which is UTC+3 all year with no daylight saving. Nobody from BBR will be in your office, and there is no US address to put on a vendor form.
Working with BBR from the United StatesA remote product studio
A remote product studio
for US founders.
BBR Studio Labs is based in Istanbul, Türkiye, and works remotely in English. We have no US office, entity or staff. This page explains what that means in practice for a US company: when we can talk live, how contracts and payment work, and what we account for when the product launches to American users.
The arrangement in plain termsA foreign supplier,
A foreign supplier,
working in your language.
Before the details, three facts that shape everything else on this page. If any of them is a problem for your company, it is better to find out now.
Written first
With seven to eleven hours between us, the project runs on a written scope, written updates and a staging link you can open at any time. Calls support that record. They do not replace it.
You hold the assets
Code ownership transfers to you under the project contract, and hosting, stores and third-party accounts are set up in your company’s name so that nothing depends on us after handover.
Working hours
What overlaps, zone by zone.
Istanbul does not change its clocks, so the gap only moves when yours do. The table shows where a 09:00–18:00 Istanbul working day lands on your clock, and how much of it falls inside a 09:00–17:00 local day.
| Your zone | Hours behind Istanbul | Istanbul 09:00–18:00 on your clock | Overlap with your 09:00–17:00 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern, daylight time (New York, Boston, Atlanta, Miami) | 7 | 02:00–11:00 | 09:00–11:00, two hours |
| Eastern, standard time | 8 | 01:00–10:00 | 09:00–10:00, one hour |
| Central, daylight time (Chicago, Austin, Dallas) | 8 | 01:00–10:00 | 09:00–10:00, one hour |
| Central, standard time | 9 | 00:00–09:00 | None. An 08:00 call is 17:00 in Istanbul |
| Mountain, daylight time (Denver, Salt Lake City) | 9 | 00:00–09:00 | None. An 08:00 call is 17:00 in Istanbul |
| Mountain, standard time | 10 | 23:00 (previous day)–08:00 | None. 08:00 is 18:00 in Istanbul |
| Pacific, daylight time (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle) | 10 | 23:00 (previous day)–08:00 | None. 08:00 is 18:00 in Istanbul |
| Pacific, standard time | 11 | 22:00 (previous day)–07:00 | None. 08:00 is 19:00 in Istanbul |
Most of Arizona stays on Mountain Standard Time all year, so it is 10 hours behind Istanbul in every season.
What this means in practice
- East Coast. Your morning is our late afternoon. A standing call between 09:00 and 11:00 Eastern works all year, and starting at 08:00 adds an hour. Questions you send after lunch are answered before you are back at your desk the next day.
- Central. The same pattern with one hour less. In winter the live window needs an 08:00 start on your side.
- Mountain and Pacific. There is no overlap inside normal hours on both sides. Calls are agreed in advance at around 08:00 your time, which is the end of our day or shortly after it. Plan on one or two scheduled calls a week, not daily stand-ups.
How the rest of the day is covered
The work itself does not need overlap. It needs a clear record. Each milestone has written acceptance criteria, progress is reported in writing on an agreed cadence, and the current build lives on a staging URL. The time difference has one useful side effect: feedback you write in your afternoon is picked up at the start of the next Istanbul day, so changes are often on staging by the time you open your laptop. The process, including how change requests are priced, is described on the how we work page.
Why look abroad at all
The same engineering effort, a different cost base.
A software quote is effort multiplied by a rate. The effort to build a given product is roughly the same wherever the team sits. The rate is not. US agency rates reflect US salaries, and a studio in Istanbul has a lower cost base for engineers of comparable seniority. Our MVP cost guide shows the arithmetic with typical regional rate bands, so you can estimate the difference for your own scope instead of taking anyone’s word for it.
For a pre-seed or seed-stage company, that difference usually decides whether the first release includes the admin panel and the second platform, or whether the runway covers three months of iteration after launch. It is also an alternative to spending a quarter recruiting before any code is written, a trade-off covered in in-house vs outsourced development.
What you give up
- Presence. No whiteboard sessions, no meeting your customers in person, no one at your demo day.
- Spontaneity. You cannot tap someone on the shoulder at 3 pm. If your product decisions are made in unplanned conversations, a remote team seven or more hours away will feel slow.
- Familiar legal ground. Enforcing a contract against a foreign supplier is harder than against one in your state. Milestone-based payment, repositories in your own organisation from the first commit, and accounts in your name reduce how much you ever rely on enforcement.
- Writing discipline, on both sides. Someone on your team needs to answer written questions within a working day. When that does not happen, the time difference turns a one-hour delay into a two-day one.
A reasonable test. If you have worked well with a remote contractor or a distributed team before, the model will feel familiar. If this is your first remote engagement, start with a paid discovery phase. It produces a scope document you own, and it shows both sides how the communication works before the larger commitment.
Contracts and payment
Paperwork a US finance team will recognise.
This section describes common practice. It is not legal or tax advice, and your attorney and accountant should confirm what applies to your company.
- English-language contract with a written scope, milestones, acceptance criteria and a change-request procedure.
- IP assignment to your company. Ownership of code and deliverables transfers to you under the contract. Open-source and third-party components keep their own licences, which we list. Investors ask about this during diligence, so keep the signed agreement and the licence list together.
- Mutual NDA before detailed discussions if you want one, on your template or ours.
- Invoices in USD, paid by international bank transfer against milestones. Your bank may charge a wire fee, and transfers typically take a few business days.
- Form W-8BEN-E. US businesses commonly request this from a foreign contractor entity to document its foreign status. Ask your accountant whether you need it and what, if anything, it changes for you.
- Governing law and dispute venue are negotiated in the contract. Have your attorney review that clause in particular.
For a broader walk-through of contract structure, milestones and the usual risks, see how outsourcing an app build works in practice.
Privacy and regulated data
No single federal law, so the product decides which rules apply.
The United States has no general federal privacy statute. What applies depends on who your users are and what you collect. California’s CCPA, as amended by the CPRA, gives residents rights to know, delete and opt out of the sale or sharing of their data, and a growing number of other states have passed their own consumer privacy laws. Sector laws sit on top: HIPAA for protected health information, COPPA for services directed at children under 13, and financial privacy rules for certain financial products.
For a build, this turns into concrete engineering decisions that are cheap early and expensive later:
- A data inventory, so you know which fields are personal data and where they are stored
- Working account deletion and data export flows, which the app stores also expect
- Consent and opt-out handling for analytics and advertising SDKs
- Hosting in a US cloud region, in an account your company owns
- Development and testing on synthetic data, so that production data does not need to leave your environment
BBR does not hold HIPAA, SOC 2 or similar certifications. Products in health, children’s services or finance need that discussed at scoping, and your counsel decides what compliance requires. We implement it.
Launching to US users
Market details that change the build.
iOS quality matters on day one
The iPhone has a particularly strong position among US smartphone users, stronger than in most other markets. A consumer app aimed at Americans should treat iOS as a first-class target at launch, with real-device testing and time allowed for App Store review. We build iOS and Android apps from a single React Native codebase, which keeps both platforms in step without doubling the budget.
Sales tax on software is a state-by-state question
Whether a SaaS subscription is taxable, and at what point you must register, varies by state. Early-stage companies commonly handle this by selling through a merchant-of-record provider or by adding tax calculation tooling to their payment provider, not by building tax logic themselves. We integrate whichever route your accountant recommends as part of a SaaS build.
Accessibility carries legal weight
Accessibility complaints against websites and apps are common in the US. Building to the WCAG guidelines from the first screen costs far less than retrofitting: semantic markup, keyboard navigation, sufficient contrast and labelled controls.
Which services US founders usually start with
- A fixed-scope MVP, when the goal is a first release to show users or investors
- LLM features and AI-assisted products built on hosted models
- An ongoing product engineering team, when there is a live product and no wish to hire in-house yet
Our overview of software development for startups explains how these fit the stages of an early company.
FitWhere this works from the US,
Good fit Not a fit
Where this works from the US,
and where it does not.
The model suits some American companies well and others badly. The dividing line is rarely the technology.
Likely to work well if
- You are in the Eastern or Central time zone, or your team already works asynchronously
- You can describe the first release in writing and want a fixed price against it
- One person on your side owns product decisions and answers questions within a day
- You want repositories, cloud accounts and store listings in your company’s name from the start
Look for a domestic team if
- A customer, grant or government contract requires US-based or US-citizen developers
- You need people on-site, even occasionally
- The product requires a vendor with an existing HIPAA, SOC 2 or FedRAMP attestation
- You are on Pacific time and expect several live conversations every day
QuestionsFrequently asked
Frequently asked
questions.
Does BBR have a US office or a US legal entity?
No. BBR is an independent studio based in Istanbul, Türkiye, and all work is done remotely. You would be contracting with a foreign supplier. If your investors, customers or procurement rules require a US-based vendor, we are not the right choice.
We are on the West Coast. Is the time difference workable?
It is workable, but it is the hardest US case and you should go in knowing that. Los Angeles is 10 hours behind Istanbul in summer and 11 in winter, so standard office hours do not overlap at all. Live calls happen at around 08:00 Pacific, which is the end of the Istanbul day or just after it, and are agreed in advance rather than ad hoc. Everything else runs on written updates, recorded walkthroughs and a staging link. Teams that already work asynchronously find this comfortable. Teams that rely on frequent unscheduled calls do not.
Will you fill in a Form W-8BEN-E?
US businesses commonly ask a foreign contractor entity for a W-8BEN-E so they can document the supplier’s foreign status in their records. We can provide the form your finance team asks for. How the payments are treated for US tax purposes is a question for your accountant, not something we can advise on.
Can you build a product that handles health data under HIPAA?
BBR holds no HIPAA certification or attestation and does not claim one. A product that touches protected health information needs explicit scoping before any estimate: which party is the covered entity or business associate, which vendors will sign a business associate agreement, where data is hosted, and who on the project can see real data. In many cases development can proceed entirely on synthetic data. If that scoping shows we are the wrong team, we will say so.
How do we pay, and in which currency?
Invoices for US clients are normally issued in USD and paid by international bank transfer, against the milestones written into the contract. If your company prefers a different currency, that is agreed before the contract is signed.
Your next moveBuilding for the US market?
Building for the US market?
Tell us what and when.
Send a short description of the product, your time zone and your deadline. We reply in writing with questions, a suggested scope and a proposed meeting window.
Contact BBR ↗