Building a company
Let’s get it off the ground.
You have an idea you want to turn into a business. We can help you shape the product, build the first version and make the early decisions that come with starting a technology company.
Hover or tap a step to see what happens there.
Six starting points pass through four stages, explore, build, learn and scale, and come together as a working company, producing impact, happier customers, stronger teams and sustainable growth. A return path from the company back to explore keeps the work iterating.
Use Tab to reach the diagram and the arrow keys to move between steps. Press Enter or Space to pin a step's route; Escape clears it.
Starting points
- Idea
- Founder
- Product
- Customer
- Hiring
- Operations
Explore
- Clarify
- Shape
- Prioritize
- Test
Build
- Design
- Develop
- Iterate
- Validate
Learn
- Talk to customers
- Measure
- Refine
- Find product-market fit
Scale
- Hire
- Organize
- Put systems in place
- Operationalize
A working company
- Impact
- Happier customers
- Stronger teams
- Sustainable growth
Return path
- Iterate to a brighter tomorrow
01
More than one piece of the beginning.
Early work can move from a customer conversation to a product decision to a working feature in the same day. We can work across those parts with you: testing the idea, deciding what belongs in the first version and building something people can use.
As the company develops, we can help with hiring, engineering practices, culture, product direction and the technology questions around marketing, growth and fundraising. We agree where we will lead, where we will contribute and where another specialist belongs.
02
A continuing technical partner.
This work usually fits an ongoing retainer. We can build alongside you, respond to what you learn from customers and help you assemble your own team when that becomes the right next step.
A funded project with room to build, learn and iterate is a particularly good fit. For selected opportunities, we are open to discussing a mixture of cash and equity. That is a separate conversation about the business and the working relationship.
03
Two complementary kinds of attention.
Juan leads discovery, customer conversations and the day-to-day relationship. Mike leads technical investigation and development. We work through product decisions together, and you work directly with the people doing the work.
The aim is to give you the help you need at this stage, with a clear way to change the arrangement as the company grows.
Mike
Engineering & technical investigation
Mike leads technical investigation and development. He built NoWait’s consumer iOS app and worked on engineering practices and developer tools for Uber’s self-driving car program. His work with startups spans product development, infrastructure, hiring and the practical decisions involved in getting a company off the ground.
Juan
Discovery & client partnerships
Juan brings experience across engineering, payments and business development, including more than five years at Visa working on technology risk, fraud-detection data and automation. At logic.fm, he leads discovery, customer conversations and the day-to-day relationship, working with Mike on product decisions.
04
The first conversation
Tell us who the product is for, what you have learned so far and what has made the next step difficult. Bring a prototype, a few notes or the idea itself. We can work out where our involvement would be useful.
Tell us about the company you want to build.
There is room for an unfinished idea here.