Moments.
A few chapters from a 13‑year journey shipping apps.
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Aug 2013 First freelance project
Where my freelance career began.
My first-ever freelance gig. I built the first version of Kitchen Stories on iOS entirely on my own: every view, every animation, every line. The app went on to win an Apple Design Award, get featured by Apple countless times, and become a household name in cooking, translated into more than a dozen languages along the way.
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Feb 2014 First solo release
My name on the App Store.
After a year shipping Kitchen Stories for someone else, I wanted to see my own name listed as the developer on an App Store page. So I built Find My Car: a small, focused utility that drops a pin where you parked and guides you back. Designed, coded, marketed and supported on my own. The first time "Dennis Donner" sat under an app icon. A feeling I've never quite got over.
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Jan 2017 First full‑time role
A new chapter.
After three years of freelancing (building Kitchen Stories for AJNS, shipping my own apps on the side, taking contracts where they came), I joined Asana Rebel in Berlin as my first full‑time employee role. A whole team to learn from, a real product to look after, and a new kind of focus. The chapter that, a few years later, would turn into leading the iOS team.
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Oct 2018 A career moment
When Tim stopped by.
Tim Cook visited the Asana Rebel team in Berlin during his European tour, talking shop about HealthKit, Watch, and the future of fitness on iOS. Of all the perks of building for Apple's platforms, sharing your work with the people who shaped them is hard to beat.
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2025 Back to shipping solo
The itch, again.
Years into leading the iOS team at Asana Rebel, the itch came back. The same one that first put my name on the App Store in 2014. So I picked a problem I run into every week (figuring out what's actually in the fridge before groceries) and built FridgeLoop end‑to‑end on the side. Still at my desk at night. Still every view, every animation, every line. Some things don't change.
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2025 A full rewrite
Old apps, new bones.
Find My Car, Fuel Log, and PinPoints had been quietly serving users since 2014, still running on the Objective‑C I'd written over a decade ago. So I gave each one a full second life: redesigned from scratch, rewritten in SwiftUI, and shipped back to the App Store to the same people who'd been using them all those years. Same apps, same muscle memory. Completely new foundations.
