Small product companies
For small companies whose product is software, or is about to be: a founder whose idea is past the notes app, or a team whose product works and now needs to work properly, on more than one screen.
What we hear
Stuck between demo and product.
It works on the laptop it was built on. Accounts, sharing, deleting and getting things back were never in the plan.
Customers want it on every screen.
The web app came first. Now people ask for the Mac app and the phone app, and they expect all three to open the same thing.
Security written up last.
A customer asks how their data is handled, and there is no page that says.
A product only its builder can run.
The person who built it moves on and takes the deployment with them.
We build and run our own products
Sera is live cloud storage for people who work with large files, at usesera.io. We built the web application, the accounts, and share links that carry a password and an expiry. Sera Drive is a Mac app that mounts your folders as a drive, and Sera for iPhone is on the App Store, opening the same library. A page of its own sets out plainly how it handles data: encrypted connections, passwords hashed rather than kept, sessions that are short-lived and can be revoked, and where the files actually sit.
Bhala, our markbook platform for schools, is finished and working, with 836 tests passing. Mark entry works offline, marks can never be overwritten, and each school's data is kept apart by the database itself. It is waiting for its first school.
What that means for yours
Running our own products keeps us honest about the parts between "it works" and "people use it": accounts, sharing, restoring what was deleted, working offline, the page that explains your data handling, and getting an app onto the App Store. We build those as part of the job, not after it.
When we hand over, you get the source code, every account it runs on, the deployment, and plain-English instructions somebody who did not build it can follow. If you never speak to us again, it carries on working.
The work behind this page
- Case studySeraCloud storage for creative professionals. Files too big for everything else go up whole, and preview in place. Share links expire, and deleted files can be restored. Live at usesera.io.Read the case study
- Case studyBhalaA markbook platform for South African schools. Marks are append-only and the database enforces it, absences are never scored, and mark entry works offline. Live since October 2026.Read the case study
How we usually help
Tell us the job that still gets done by hand. We will tell you on the first call whether it is worth building.