For a long time, a software company meant one product. Building it took a large team and several years, so a company picked one idea, raised money for it, and hired until the product could pay for everyone. An idea too small to carry that team did not get built.
The cost of building dropped
That rule came from what building cost, and building costs far less than it did. A few people with good tools can now do work that used to need a department. The one-product company still works. It is no longer the only kind that does.
Several products, one small company
Lowside Labs is the other kind. We are a small company that makes several products and runs all of them. Each product does one job for a specific group of people, mostly small teams and solo founders.
None of them has to become huge. A product is worth making if it solves a real problem well and earns enough to keep our attention.
Narrow products are worth making
A large company rarely builds a tool for a few thousand people, because the tool would never pay for the team behind it. We can build it, and we can leave it narrow. Much of the software we like most is narrow.
A product is not a bet
There is a bad version of this idea. A company with several products can treat each one as a bet, ship it, and move on when it does not take off.
We do not want to be that company. Every product on this site keeps getting work after it ships, and the people who answer your email are the people who write the code.
Judgment did not get cheaper
Code got cheap. Deciding what to build did not. No tool tells us which problem is worth solving or where a product should stop, and most of our time goes there.
What we do not know
We do not know how far this goes. Some products may still need the older kind of company. We will find out by shipping.
To follow along, leave your email. To reach us, write to info@lowsidelabs.com.
