What it takes to run a business, seen from the inside.
We keep client names private out of respect for the people who trusted us, so each project is described by its context instead. Every one looks simple in a single line. In practice, helping a small company grow means getting the details right every day, across web, mobile, payments, and email.
Operations platform
One system for a facility services company of about fifty people.
The company schedules crews, tracks tasks, reviews time and payroll, hires, pays vendors, and needs proof that work was done. It had to be affordable at about fifty people and easy to use on a crew phone.
What we did
Built a web console, a task workspace, and a crew app over shared records, plus a public website with careers and subcontractor intake. Hiring, offboarding, time off, schedules, and payments share one approvals engine.
What was hard
Permissions that stay consistent across web, mobile, and API. Time clocks that the server controls, not the phone. Legacy records that still load after the design changes. Payroll that includes only approved shifts.
What stayed true
The owner changes workflows without a developer, and every manager follows the same steps.
Web, iOS, Android
Three languages
Geofenced time clock
Approvals in one inbox
Runs near the free tier at this size
Booking and online shop
Quote first booking for a mobile catering business.
The business serves weddings, corporate events, and gatherings across the region and sells coffee online. It needed to turn visitors into confirmed, paid events without a technical team or a hosting bill.
What we did
A story led website with thirteen location and service pages, online booking with live availability, Stripe deposits and later balance charges, and a dashboard where the owner changes packages, prices, and dates.
What was hard
After a real double booking we added a per date lock so two simultaneous requests cannot both pass. We moved to quote by email first, with a deposit once the customer accepts, and wrote clear rules for refunds.
What stayed true
Dashboards and the public site show only real bookings and real traffic. Placeholder numbers were removed.
Local search pages
Deposits and balance charges
Cancellation and refunds
Owner dashboard
Online shop with stock
Custom product storefront
A shop for personalized products that need a photo and details.
Parents choose a themed title or ask for a fully custom story, upload a photo of their child, and pay. The owners fulfill each order by hand and cannot afford to lose one.
What we did
A storefront with browsing by theme, a customize flow, checkout with signed payment confirmations, and an admin console for orders, the catalog, messages, and analytics.
What was hard
Keeping photos at full quality from upload to download, stored privately and not on a public network. Recovering orders when a payment finishes late.
What stayed true
The owner can try the whole flow with a test order that does not charge anyone.
Private photo storage
Live card checkout
First party analytics
No payment test order
Launch site and waitlist
A launch for a planned food delivery service, driven by demand.
The business wanted a credible public launch and a way to measure demand by ZIP code before it committed to delivery routes.
What we did
A responsive launch site in two languages with structured data, a waitlist with spam protection, and an admin where the owner filters sign ups by area and status.
What is next
A planned phase for orders, stock, and delivery routes. It is scoped and not yet built, and we say so plainly.
English and Amharic
ZIP code waitlist
Invite only admin
Phase two planned
Brand and capability materials
A website design and capability statement for a program management and staffing firm.
The firm serves businesses, nonprofits, and agencies and wanted a single, consistent story for procurement officers.
What we did
A services led site design covering core competencies, a government capabilities section, differentiators, and leadership, plus a matching one page capability statement.
Scope
Design and capability materials for the client's own use. A hosted application was not part of this work.
Site design
Logo options
Capability statement
AI platform and bid pipeline
An AI platform, then the pipeline around it, for a government IT contractor.
The client needed a production AI platform taken from build to live operation. Once it was live, it needed day to day ownership of a growing, multi agency bid pipeline.
What we did
As product and engineering lead: a multi tenant platform, a hybrid router that sends routine questions to rules and only ambiguous ones to a model (about 99.85 percent lower inference cost), document search, and a drafting system for solicitation responses. As pipeline lead: a qualification step for every opportunity, partner coordination, and portal navigation.
What was hard
Keeping retrieval inside the right tenant, keeping drafts inside the solicitation's rules, and making sure a person reviews anything before it is submitted.
AWS Bedrock
Retrieval and search
Human review gate
Jira tracked pipeline
What we noticed
The same lessons keep showing up.
01
Check on the server
Prices, stock, and booking conflicts are always checked on the server, never trusted from the browser.
02
Show real numbers
Placeholder metrics erode trust. We remove them so the owner decides from what actually happened.
03
Write the rules down
Who approves, who reviews, who owns each record. When the rules are written, the software is simple.
04
Plan for old data
Old records outlive new designs. Every read path expects them and every change is tested against them.
Next step
Working on something similar?
Tell us about it. We will share what we learned from comparable work, within what each client allows, and say honestly whether we are a fit.
