The Great Folks builds and operates software products of its own, then puts the same team on yours. Product, design, engineering and go-to-market, for about what one senior hire costs, month to month.
We have. We run products of our own, which means we've made payroll off software we shipped, chased customers who didn't convert, and fixed the things that broke at 2am. You get a team that thinks about your product the way an owner does, because that's the only way we know how.
Nobody here hands you a deck and leaves. We build the thing, launch the thing, and stay on to make it work. Our own products are the proof, and the reason our advice costs us something when it's wrong.
Product, design, engineering and go-to-market, on tap. You'd spend the same on one good senior person and still be missing three skill sets. Scale us up when there's a push on, scale us back when there isn't.
The code, the accounts, the domains, the documentation. It's yours from day one and it stays yours the day you don't need us. No proprietary platform, no hostage situation, no thirty-day notice buried on page nine.
You've got an idea and no team.
You know the market, you know the customer, you just don't have anyone to build it. We take it from a conversation to something real people pay for.
You run a business and software isn't your job.
You need a tool your business genuinely needs, built properly, without hiring a department or babysitting a dev shop.
You shipped it and it's not converting.
The product exists. The funnel leaks. We'll find where and fix it, then keep tightening it week over week.
Your team is good but short-handed.
You need a designer for eight weeks, or a product lead, or two engineers who won't need onboarding. We plug the specific gap.
Not case studies. Businesses. These are a few of the ones we took from a blank page to paying customers, and we still operate every one of them today.
The same team, the same standard. A sample of some of our recent client work.
Most people come to us at Shape or Build. Some come at Launch with a product that isn't selling. You don't have to buy the whole thing.
Work out what's worth building before anyone writes code. We pressure-test the idea, talk to the people who'd pay for it, and come back with a scope you can actually afford.
We ship it. Working software in front of you every two weeks, in your accounts, on your infrastructure, with a demo you can click rather than a status report you can't.
Building it is half the job. We handle pricing, positioning, the funnel, the payment flow and the first customers, because a product nobody buys isn't finished.
Then we keep it moving: watching the numbers, fixing what breaks, shipping what's next. Until your own team is ready to take it, and we hand it over cleanly.
If AI belongs in your product, we'll build it in. If it doesn't, we won't sell it to you.
AI, agents and automation are genuinely central to how we operate. They're the reason a team this size can run its own products and still take on client work, and the reason your build costs what it costs.
We use them where they earn their place: writing and reviewing code, standing up infrastructure, generating and testing content, running the boring parts of our own operation. What you buy is a product that works, not a technology we're excited about.
No account managers, no layer between you and the people doing the work. A partner is involved in every engagement and you'll know exactly who is on your project before it starts.
Taylor spent years on the operating side of a fast-growing background screening company, most recently leading customer and operations teams, before starting The Great Folks. He's the one who asks whether anybody will actually pay for this.
He also runs the studio's own products and does buy-side M&A advisory, which is a useful habit: it means he reads a product the way a buyer does. Ask him about housebuilding if you want him to talk your ear off.
LinkedIn ↗
Charley leads how things get built. He's the technical lead on the studio's products and on client work, from architecture and infrastructure through to the analytics that tell you whether any of it worked.
He's the reason our builds ship on time and the reason they're still standing up a year later.
LinkedIn ↗
Wyatt looks after the studio's search, marketing collateral and the occasional piece of tech nobody else wanted to touch. He taught himself most of it, which is exactly how he likes to learn: by fixing things that were annoying him until they weren't.
He's based in Victoria, BC, and is the first to admit he'd rather be the least experienced person in the room. Ask him about SEO if you want a longer answer than you bargained for.
LinkedIn ↗Not in the usual sense. An agency builds what you specify and hands it over. We build and run software products of our own, so we work on yours the way an owner would: we'll argue with the spec, launch it, and stay on to make it convert. Custom software development is most of the work. It's not the whole job.
Builds are fixed scope and fixed price. We agree what you're getting and what it costs before anything starts, and if the work looks like running past it we come to you first, not after. Once you're live, most clients keep us on a monthly retainer for maintenance and continued product work, at roughly what one senior hire would cost you. Either way you see the number before you commit to it, and there are no surprise invoices.
Two shapes, and both are deliberately short. A build is a fixed-scope, fixed-price project with a defined end date, so you know exactly what you're signing up for before you sign it. Ongoing work runs on a retainer with a short term and a short notice period, both agreed up front. Underneath both sits a services agreement that is a few pages long and written to be read. No multi-year terms, no automatic renewals, no exit fees. We'd rather earn the next month than trap you in it.
A partner is involved in every engagement, alongside the specific people your project needs: designers, engineers, a product lead. You meet all of them before work starts. We don't hand you to a team you haven't met, and we don't staff a project with people who need three weeks to get up to speed.
Completely. Code, accounts, domains, infrastructure, documentation. It's set up in your name from the start, not migrated to you at the end. If we part ways you lose nothing but us.
Usually one to two weeks. We keep the client list short on purpose, which means we're not slotting you into a queue behind five other builds.
It's most of our clients. You bring the market knowledge, we bring everything else, and we'll explain what we're doing in plain language the whole way. If you ever get a code walkthrough when you asked for an update, tell us and we'll fix it.
Then we fill the gap rather than replace them. That might be product leadership, design, go-to-market, or a couple of engineers for a stretch. We work in your tools and your process.
A developer builds what you specify. If the spec is wrong, you get a well-built product nobody wants. We take responsibility for the whole arc: what to build, whether anyone wants it, how it gets in front of customers, and what happens after launch. That's four skill sets, and you're paying about what one of them costs.
Most agencies have never owned a product. They deliver against a statement of work, invoice, and move on. We run businesses of our own, so we've had to care about conversion rates and unit economics and churn on our own dime. That changes what we recommend.
We help you do it. Documentation, a hiring profile for the people you'll need, and a handover with overlap so nothing falls through. Working ourselves out of a job is the plan, not the failure case.
Victoria, British Columbia. We work with clients across Canada and the US, and everything runs remote-first, so it rarely matters. If you happen to be on the Island we'll happily buy you a coffee.
Anything where we don't think it'll work. Rescue jobs on codebases nobody understands, projects with no route to a customer, and anyone who wants a body-shop rate card rather than a partner. We take a handful of clients at a time and we'd rather say no than do it badly.
Thirty minutes, no deck, no pitch. We'll tell you what we'd do, roughly what it takes, and whether we're the right people for it. Sometimes the answer is no and that's a useful call too.
