Welcome to Werework
Yes, like werewolf.
Werework is not a conventional tech startup. It’s a laboratory for inventing new software products. Here’s what we’re doing differently:
Validation
Most new product ideas have a big weakness: it’s not clear if there’s a market for the product, or if there is, how to reach it.
Usually a tech startup sells its vision to investors, uses their funding to create a product, and only then takes it to customers. Much better to wait until you have proof of market fit before raising investment. Then the only financing you need is for scale-up: better for investors, better for inventors.
At Werework we’ll validate ideas before we seek external funding for them. If a product works, we’ll spin it out as a separate venture.
Modularity
We’ll build up a toolkit of reusable modules at the right level of granularity that makes it easier for us to develop and iterate products, or to spin them into adjacent markets. Not just for code and platform integrations, but for processes too (e.g. customer validation, route to market).
Ecosystem
We’ll design software that plays nicely with others – that connects and enhances existing platforms that our customers already use like Slack, Dropbox, and Google Docs. Plus we’ll provide bots, APIs, and hooks so that others can add integrations we haven’t thought of.
Art & storytelling
We’ll harness the unconscious insight of art to create better products, and uncover approaches that would never occur to us in a more conventional business environment. So we will collaborate with artists and writers to create original projects with no obvious utility other than delight (or despair, depending on the artist).
Interestingness
We don’t want to work on boring stuff. Life’s too short, and we know we make better products when we care about what we’re doing. What currently interests us? See our next post.
Collaboration
We don’t have a monopoly on good ideas. We’ll take on consultancy work to help others solve their problems.
Few plans survive contact with reality unchanged. Maybe this one won’t. But this is our direction of travel. We hope some of you will make the journey with us/come along for the ride.
One of the ways we aim to validate what we’re doing is by showing it to people early on. To that end, we’ll be running events every Full Moon, starting on Friday 22 April. It won’t just be talking heads; it won’t just be drinks; you may have to participate. It will be fun. Follow us one way or another to get an invite.
