Venture
What building our own products teaches us
Apps is a consultancy and a venture studio. The second half is not a hedge — it is the only place our own advice gets tested at our own expense.
Apps has been a consultancy since 2008. For most of that time it has also been a company that ships products nobody asked us for.
The two halves are usually described as a hedge — client work pays the bills, ventures might pay off later. That is not why we do it. We do it because a venture is the only place where our own advice is tested at our own expense.
Nobody approves your scope
On a client project, scope is negotiated. Someone else signs it, and the argument ends when they do. In a venture there is no signature. You cut the scope yourself, and within weeks you find out whether you cut the right thing.
That changes what you value. A feature list stops looking like a plan and starts looking like a cost. The question is no longer what should this do, but what is the smallest version of this a stranger would use twice.
The market answers faster than a steering group
A steering group meets monthly. Users answer in days. When you own the product you can put a rough thing in front of real people before the next meeting would have happened — and what comes back is not an opinion about the idea, it is behaviour.
Most of what we know about validation came from being wrong this way: quickly, cheaply, on our own products.
Why clients get the benefit
We have already made the expensive mistakes. Shipping a second feature before the first had users. Building for one market segment that turned out to be two. Treating a single enthusiastic pilot customer as proof.
So when we say a pre-project should end in a decision rather than a document, that is not a methodology we read about. It is the shortest path we found after paying for the long one.
FAQ
- Do the ventures compete with client work for attention?
- They compete for the same people, which is why they run on the same rules: a fixed team, a fixed horizon and a written stop condition. A venture without a stop condition quietly eats the consultancy around it.
- Do you invest in other people's companies?
- Sometimes, and usually as part of a build rather than instead of one. We are better at helping a product exist than at holding a position in one.
