What we build
SaaS and software product development
Building software that earns money from strangers is a different job from building software that saves time for people you employ. It changes what gets built first, and it changes what has to be right before launch.
What it is
A product has to be signed up for by somebody who owes you nothing, understood without a training session, paid for on a card, and supported afterwards. Internal software has to do none of those things, which is why an internal tool rarely becomes a product by accident.
The first version is not a smaller version of the finished idea. It is the one loop that has to work for anybody to pay: sign up, do the valuable thing, come back. Everything else can wait for people who are actually using it.
When a business needs one
- You have built something internally and customers keep asking whether they can use it
- You are paying a platform a percentage to do something you could own outright
- The idea has been explained to enough people that you are confident somebody would pay
- You need something real in front of users before committing to the full build
- You want to know what it costs to run a product, not just to launch one
What we can build
Capability, not a claim about work already delivered. What we have actually built and run is further down the page.
- Sign up, accounts, plans and the billing that goes with them
- A first release scoped to one loop, so it can be tested by real users rather than described
- Multi sided products where two groups have to find each other and both have to stay
- Product analytics, so you can see which features are used rather than guessing
- Onboarding that gets somebody to the valuable part before they lose interest
- The admin side: support, moderation, refunds and the ability to shut something down
- The legal plumbing a product needs: consent, data export, deletion and unsubscribes that work
How we approach it
We run GrowthSync, our own product, which means we have paid for our own mistakes on app store review, on the cold start problem, and on features that looked essential and were used by nobody.
We will push back on the feature list before the build starts. The most expensive thing in a first version is the part that was built because it was obvious rather than because a user needed it.
Things we have already built
Live in software we have delivered, and part of the 123 things we have built.
Knowing which features people actually use
You stop guessing which parts earn their keep, and the next thing you pay to build is the thing the numbers point at.
A matcher built to tell you when you are NOT a good fit
You find out a match is weak before you spend an hour on the call, which is the opposite of every network that flatters you into wasting your time.
Being able to shut a conversation down
People stay open and reachable, because they know they can end a conversation whenever they want.
Your contacts are yours to take with you
You build on something you can walk away from, which is the only kind worth building on.
Bringing the people you already trust in with you
You start with the people who already know you, and everything you build sits on top of that.
Filling an event without an audience to invite
People who care about your subject find your event by searching for that subject, so a host with no following fills a room on the strength of the idea instead of the audience.
Work in this shape
Related to this
Tell us what you are trying to fix
Describe the job in your own words and we will tell you what we would build, roughly what it would cost, and whether something you can already buy would do it cheaper.