Two names, one team: how the Vii Studio software development studio has lasted since 2010
It opened in February 2010 as a small web studio called NiceWeb and took its current name in 2019. The Silicon Ledger looks at what changed along the way, what did not, and how the two brothers at the top divide the work.
Longevity is a rare credential in web services, a field where tools, platforms and client expectations turn over every few years. The Vii Studio software development studio, which calls itself an "independent design & development studio" established in 2010, counts 16 years of trading and more than 100 launched projects by its own tally. Two brothers run it as co-founders: Vidzhai Hukasian serves as CEO and Viru Gukasian holds the COO post. This profile follows the company through two names and asks what has kept it running.
A web studio called NiceWeb
The company dates its start to 15 February 2010, when it opened as a small web studio under the name NiceWeb. Building a website at that time, the studio recalls, meant a lot of manual work and very few ready-made solutions.
That scarcity shaped its next decision. Instead of waiting for the market to supply the tools it needed, the team began writing its own.
A product before a rebrand
In 2011, still trading as NiceWeb, the studio built a complete social-network engine, Vii Engine, at a time when almost nothing of that kind was available off the shelf. The business model was licensing: by the studio's count, 89 licences found buyers, and real communities with thousands of members ran on the software.
The company now describes the engine as part of its history, but credits it as the thing that taught the team to think in whole products instead of individual pages. For a services firm, that is a meaningful difference. A product has to be lived with after launch, which forces attention to performance, security, usability and growth.
Why the Vii Studio software development studio changed its name in 2019
By 2019 the old label no longer described the work. The studio says it had outgrown "websites only" and was doing branding, design, app development and its own products. The new name, Vii Studio, was not presented as a fresh start: in the company's account, it kept the same team and experience while taking on a wider ambition and full ownership of the result.
The Edison project from 2020 shows what that wider brief looked like in practice. Edison Pastry Shop, a Ukrainian pastry and coffee brand, received a corporate website with an online menu and an admin area for managing content, as well as iOS and Android apps that send push alerts and support a loyalty scheme.
How the co-founders divide the work
The leadership structure is compact. The studio has two co-founders, the brothers Vidzhai Hukasian and Viru Gukasian. Vidzhai Hukasian is CEO; the company's site presents him as the one with the complete picture of each product, stretching from the commercial idea down to pixel-level detail. Viru Gukasian is COO, with a remit to make deadlines, workflows and people run with clockwork precision.
That is a familiar split in small technology companies: one co-founder owns direction and product, the other owns delivery. It also maps neatly onto the two places client projects tend to go wrong, in whether the product makes sense and in whether it ships on schedule. Alexey Turabin, head of marketing, completes the public leadership line-up with a brief to turn good design into traffic, leads and sales.
What carried over, and what moved
Several things run through both names, according to the studio's public materials:
- A commercial focus: websites, apps and brands judged by the leads and sales they generate rather than by appearance alone.
- A four-stage method of research, design, build and launch, pitched as "a process without surprises".
- Early adoption of new tools; the studio says it was using AI in its everyday work well before the technology became mainstream.
- Staying in contact with clients after release instead of stopping at launch.
What did move is the office. The studio describes itself as "a team without borders": nearly the whole staff is remote, and its designers, developers and marketers work to a shared rhythm from wherever they happen to be. Its registered office is in Wrocław, Poland.
The case for staying small
"A small studio, big ambition" is how the company sums itself up, and its record suggests the size is a choice rather than a stage. The service list has grown to ten lines, from online stores, corporate websites and landing pages to mobile apps, Telegram Mini Apps, SEO and advertising, without the studio repositioning itself as a large agency.
Three details in the record help explain the staying power. The studio built a product early and sold licences for it, which pushed it to think beyond single launches. It renamed only once the work had already changed, keeping the team intact. And it has kept updating its methods, from the largely manual site building of 2010 to AI-assisted delivery that, by its own estimate, has roughly doubled or tripled its speed without costing quality.
None of that guarantees the next 16 years. For clients comparing a small independent studio with a larger agency, though, a continuous record back to 2010 is one of the few claims that can be checked. The studio's about page sets out the timeline, and its main website lists current services and case studies.
FAQ
When was Vii Studio founded?
The studio opened on 15 February 2010 as a small web studio named NiceWeb and adopted the name Vii Studio in 2019.
Who are the co-founders of Vii Studio?
The brothers Vidzhai Hukasian and Viru Gukasian are the studio's co-founders. Vidzhai Hukasian is CEO; Viru Gukasian is COO, responsible for timelines, processes and the team.
Why did NiceWeb become Vii Studio?
According to the studio, by 2019 its work had grown beyond websites into branding, design, app development and its own products, so it took a new name while keeping the same team.