Syracuse,

This August, two of our partners, Ben Redfield and Andrew Farah, will move from Syracuse, NY to San Francisco, CA to open our team’s second office.

We’re excited but we will be leaving with a heavy heart. Ben has been in Syracuse for a quarter century; Andrew for a decade. Syracuse is home.

Rounded

In May, Rounded turned three. When we started this company, we were kids with too much ambition. Today, however, Rounded is independently-owned, bootstrapped, profitable, and very much a career to nine full-time employees and partners.

Rounded is a software design agency that works with large enterprise and startups. We help our clients imagine, design, and create beautiful, custom software applications for all different types of devices. As a business, we believe in the pragmatism and clarity of great design, the importance of outsized ambition, and the power of being helpful. We’re fortunate to work with clients who share these principles.

An environment without fear of capital constraints, the pressure of investor return, or the disbandment of our team

Laboratory

What is lesser known about our company is that Rounded was designed to be a software laboratory. We didn’t raise capital. Instead, we have reinvested our profits into experimental product development.

Anyone in our company can participate so long as they achieve Rounded’s directive — Build something difficult. Learn something you can teach the team. Repeat.

This reinvestment is the environment that attracts top talent and our business model is the engine that buys us time to experiment. As a result, we get to design and market-test products without the fear of capital constraints, the pressure of investor return, or worse, the disbandment of Rounded’s team.

Over the years we’ve invested heavily in this type of product development. Past projects include:

• Gesture-based interfaces
• Passive CRM
• Hospitality software
• Productivity tools
• Drone applications
• and several others…

Density

Many of our internal products are playful. A smaller segment might have market potential. But sometimes, we conduct a software experiment worth every ounce of focus we can reasonably commit. Those projects are rare. So when one began to take shape six months ago, we isolated a portion of our team, advanced the prototype, announced the product publicly, and organized efforts to formally raise outside capital.

We are pleased to announce here, today, the launch of Density, Inc. — Rounded’s first successful new venture.

Installed in local businesses, Density is a set of sensors that measures movement to and from local merchants. Businesses use this data to predict and plan for future busy-ness. Patrons use Density to pick their desired atmosphere, see how busy it is in real-time, and (when curious) even take a peek at how busy it will be in the future. Our goal is to effectively measure the heartbeat of a city.

Product development is cool. But it comes with heavy choices.

Move your startup to California

Investment

Density’s promise resonated with investors. About a month ago, Density was offered investment from a set of Detroit, NYC, and Silicon Valley investors. The offer’s caveat was — move your Syracuse-based startup to California.

We told them that moving our company wasn’t an option. We argued that a big technology startup can be built anywhere. They agreed but insisted that a presence of some sort operate out of San Francisco — in order to better ensure follow-on rounds of funding.

We took some time to consider the offer, debated its consequences, weighed its virtues, and outlined a plan. We would be willing to send 2 of our 9-person team to open an office in San Francisco. With the majority of our people to remain in Syracuse full-time.

They agreed and we took the deal.