A small studio,
by choice.
Ikena is owner-operated by John Thomas.
You work with the person responsible for every decision made in your product.
Founder and operator. Designs, builds, and ships every product in this portfolio. Reachable at [email protected].
Cold trades, finish carpentry, and now code.
Joinery that holds through a winter.
Timber-frame homebuilding — mortise and tenon, the old way. Then building engineering and project management at Alyeska Resort. Then snowcat operations manager for Chugach Powder Guides, running mountain terrain in the dark.
Inch-by-inch finish work.
Specialty flooring and home refinishing on Oahu — the older homes, the ones with histories. Learning what it takes to restore a space without rushing it. Finish work is where craft lives. The same standard applies to software.
The next turn.
A studio that builds software the way the best trades build buildings: slowly, with care, without cutting. Two engagements at a time. Paid discovery first. No shortcuts. Native code, AI-fluent, owned end-to-end.
AI and what it’s opening up, captaining in the Pacific, and the spoils of the western zones.
Ikena Design & Build, LLC Hawaii · S-Corp elected
Two active engagements at a time
Honolulu, Hawaii
Next.js · FastAPI · Postgres · Claude
A web product is not a deliverable. It is a place where work gets done.
Good code takes the time it takes. Rushed software announces itself for ten years.
The client who hires us for attention deserves to receive it. That is why we keep the studio small.