About
A studio that builds products, including its own.
ZL Studio designs and builds software. We take products from an idea to something people have installed, and we run our own products so we are making these decisions with our own money as well as yours.
What we are not
We are not an IT services company and we do not sell seats. We do not have a practice area, a transformation offering, or a partner tier. We build products, and the reason to hire us is that we have built and shipped one of our own end to end rather than that we have a large enough bench.
Why we run our own products
Client work teaches you how to build to a brief. Running your own product teaches you what happens after launch, which is where most of the actual decisions are. Store review. A crash on a device you do not own. The support email at eleven at night. A feature that tested well and that nobody uses.
GoWeya is where we learned most of that, and it is why the advice we give about scope is usually to build less.
How we decide
In roughly this order, and the order is the point.
- 01
Clarity
If the thing cannot be explained plainly, it is not understood yet. That applies to a screen, an estimate and an invoice equally.
- 02
Function
It has to work before it has to look like anything. A beautiful build that fails on a mid-range Android has failed.
- 03
Restraint
The best version of most features is a smaller one. We argue for cutting things, including things we suggested.
- 04
Character
Once the first three hold, a product is allowed to feel like something. Not before.
Working with us
You work with the people building it.
No account-manager telephone game. The people talking to you about the product are the ones designing and engineering it, so nothing is lost being relayed and nobody has to check with the team and get back to you.
It is the honest advantage of a studio this size, and it is why we would rather stay small than grow into a layer of people who describe the work to each other.
ZL Studio and ZL Technologies
ZL Technologies is the company. ZL Studio is the name it builds under, and the name that appears on the work. Products keep their own identities: GoWeya is GoWeya, credited as a product by ZL Studio rather than absorbed into it.
Contracts, invoices and anything legal are ZL Technologies. Everything else is ZL Studio.
Have something you want built?
Tell us what it is and roughly where it is up to. We will tell you what it would take.