# SmplCo — Full content This file contains the complete blog, case study, and key page content for SmplCo in plain markdown so AI agents can ingest it efficiently. Short manifest at /llms.txt. Generated dynamically from live content. SmplCo is a digital product studio. We build prototypes in 5 days and ship production software using AI-assisted design and development. Founders and scale-ups come to us to turn ideas into working products fast. Offices in Stavanger, London, San Francisco, Szeged, and St. Gallen. Contact: andreas@smpl.as · https://smpl.as/contact --- --- # Blog posts # How to Make an MVP Go Viral: 3 Lessons from 10,000 Hits Date: 2026-08-18 · Author: Michael Millar · Tags: MVP, Product Development, Digital Innovation > NCS Live drew 10,000 users in six hours. Three lessons on scope, immediate value, and letting the people who use your MVP shape what comes next. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/how-to-make-an-mvp-go-viral --- # AI and the Demise of Great UI Date: 2026-07-22 · Author: Andreas Melvaer · Tags: Vibecoding, AI Development, Product Development, Digital Innovation > Everyone can 'design a product' with AI now. Our UI/UX Design Lead, Leonardo Hernandez, on why AI-led design still looks like AI-led design, and what actually earns a user's trust. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/ai-and-the-demise-of-great-ui Leo, our UI/UX Design Lead, said something on camera recently that has been rattling around my head since. AI-led design looks like AI-led design. Vibe coding means almost anyone can ship a product now. Almost nobody can make it feel like it belongs to them. ## Why does UI still decide whether people trust a product? "UI is the first barrier a product has to clear," Leo told me. "It builds trust before anyone has read a word of your pitch." Whenever an app feels polished, it signals that the person using it is getting value for their money. That's just human nature, and it isn't limited to software. It's why a well finished car feels faster before you've turned the key, and why a laptop that closes with a satisfying click feels like it will last longer than one that doesn't. Polish is a proxy for value, and once a user believes there's value, they come back. We've built 150-odd products with founders since we started, and the ones that get remembered are rarely the ones with the cleverest backend. They're the ones where every screen agrees with every other screen: same spacing, same weight of type, same handful of colours doing the same jobs. Leo calls this having a visual language, a set of rules dragged across the entire product without exception. It sounds obvious stated like that. It is one of the hardest disciplines to actually hold. ## What happens when everyone has the same tools? Here's the part that should worry you if you're fundraising off the back of a vibe-coded prototype. A model can generate a beautiful button, a nice card, a competent onboarding flow, all in isolation. What it has no memory of is the other twenty screens in your product, and no particular instinct for whether this one holds the line on the rules you set for the last one. Left unattended, that's how a product ends up looking like it was designed by committee: a different designer for every prompt, because in effect, that's what happened. None of that is an argument against building with AI. It's how we build almost everything now, and it's faster and cheaper than anything that came before it. It's an argument for keeping someone in the loop whose entire job is consistency: someone who looks at screen fourteen and asks whether it still agrees with screen one. That's the bit AI still can't do for you, and it's exactly the bit that decides whether an investor, or a customer, believes the product is real. Vibe coding raised the floor. It didn't touch the ceiling. Whether your product feels distinct, trustworthy, and worth opening again tomorrow still comes down to the same fundamentals it always has: a clear visual language, applied without exception, by someone paying attention. That's still a design problem, not a prompting problem. If you want a second pair of eyes on yours, [have a look at what we've built with other founders](/work), or [get in touch](/contact).

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--- # How to stop AI damaging investor/boardroom relations Date: 2026-07-02 · Author: Michael Millar > AI-generated board reports are making it harder for investors to verify that companies are building what their strategy promised, with costly consequences. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/investorsstartupsdisconnect --- # Is the battle between UI designers and developers finally over? Date: 2026-06-16 · Author: Andreas Melvær > HUNTA, a Norwegian hunting marketplace, needed a new identity. We designed it by hand in Figma, then used Claude to roll it out as a real, working design system in code, not a static file for someone else to rebuild. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/hunta-hunts-success --- # What did the lawyers say about our AI experiment? Date: 2026-06-16 · Author: Michael Millar > We vibe-coded an AI invoicing tool live on stage, then handed it to lawyers — here is what they found, and what it means for safe AI integration. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/what-did-the-lawyers-say-about-our-ai-integrations --- # Building AI inside the Microsoft stack you already own Date: 2026-06-03 · Author: Andreas Melvaer · Tags: AI Development, Custom Software, Power Apps, Digital Innovation > How Logi Trans, a Norwegian haulier certified to ISO 27001, builds real AI inside the Microsoft stack it already owns, and why adoption is the hard part. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/ai-inside-the-microsoft-stack Logi Trans moves freight along the Norwegian coast: oil-industry routes between the supply bases, weight intervals fine-tuned by the kilo, police escorts for the loads too big to move quietly. It is also certified to ISO 27001 as if it were a software company. I wanted to understand why a haulier had made that particular choice. Logi Trans worked this out themselves, with one in-house developer and a clear idea of what they wanted. I went to see Cathrine Ogne, who directs the Logi Trans group, and Ragnar Olsen, their commercial director, because the companies quietly getting this right are far more interesting to me than the ones talking about it. They have been at it for three or four years, most of recorded history in AI terms, and have stood up at the Offshore Norge innovation conference to talk about it. What struck me is what they didn't do. They didn't hand their data to a startup. They didn't sign a six-figure annual licence for a bespoke "AI platform." They looked at the Microsoft stack they were already paying for, already certified on, already running the entire business in, and decided that was where the building would happen. ![A red Logi Trans electric Volvo truck and flatbed trailer parked on tarmac.](/images/blog/inline/logitrans-electric-volvo.jpg) ## Why would a haulage company certify to ISO 27001? On paper it makes little sense. ISO 27001 is the information-security standard you associate with cloud providers, not with a company whose core product is a lorry arriving on time. Logi Trans is one of the few in its industry to hold it, certified by DNV alongside the more expected 9001, 14001 and 45001 for quality, environment and working conditions. The logic is commercial. When you bid for the big oil-industry tenders, the paperwork now asks hard questions: how you handle data, who can access what, how systems are logged. Ragnar's reasoning was blunt: they certified as an IT company because that is what serious IT innovation in a regulated supply chain increasingly requires. Clean-desk policies, layered authorisation, logging portals, having to log deeper into a system to reach its sensitive parts. That certification turns out to be the thing that makes everything else possible. Once your security architecture is audited and signed off, building AI inside it stops being a risk conversation. The fence is already there. You are adding tools behind it. ## What they actually built Strip away the strategy talk and there are concrete systems doing concrete work. The centre of gravity is their transport management system, TMS X. It is their operating system, their booking portal and their invoicing portal at once. Orders, transports, pickups, deliveries, the invoice at the end: it all runs there. The first real win was removing the typing. A customer places an order through their own ERP system; the transport booking lands directly in TMS X over an API or EDI flow, which sets the whole job in motion. From there Logi Trans pulls the files straight to the drivers and subcontractors who do the moving, and the customer is updated automatically, through their API if they have one, or through Logi Trans's own booking portal if they don't. No email. Nobody re-keying an order from one screen into another. That sounds modest. It isn't. The old way was a person reading each incoming order and entering it into the next system by hand, all day, every day. Cathrine described the before state simply as "a lot of manual registration." Taking it away gave them capacity back: more throughput from the same team, people freed to talk to customers and drivers instead of acting as a relay between two databases. ## Build inside the stack you already own This is the part I keep returning to, because it is the most repeatable. Logi Trans's working rule is simple: as long as it stays inside the Microsoft package they already license, it works. Same security, same certification, already paid for. Stay inside that boundary and a new automation stops being a procurement project and becomes an afternoon's work. They hired one developer last year to sit with exactly these tasks. They have started building small Power Apps to automate workflows. They use external trainers for the upskilling rather than pretending to do everything in-house. And they are waiting on a new, Microsoft-based version of their TMS platform, due in about a year, that will let them run agents on top of it in parallel. I put it to Ragnar that this is the right strategy for more or less any medium-sized-and-up business: build within the security architecture you already have, inside the stack you already run. Whether that stack is Microsoft's or Google's matters less than the discipline of staying inside it. In Norway it happens to be Microsoft nearly everywhere; the principle holds either way. This is really the [build-versus-buy question](/blog/saas-audit-build-custom-tools), answered by reading the licence you already signed. Working out what you genuinely own, and what actually needs buying, is [a conversation we have constantly](/contact). ## Why is adoption harder than the technology? Here is the uncomfortable truth every honest version of this story reaches: the technology was never the hard part. Getting people to use it well was. Cathrine has been deliberate about not forcing it. They have not pushed Copilot onto people with no interest in it, partly because of the per-seat cost, mostly because forced tools get used badly or not at all. They started at leadership level with the genuinely curious, then made it "half-forced" for the middle managers, who have to start using it before it reaches everyone else. The curious teach themselves. The rest, in her words, sit and wait until it gets pulled down over their heads. The guardrails matter as much as the rollout. Her first priority is training people not to treat ChatGPT as an encyclopedia, but to use it only for what they can verify themselves, and never to paste sensitive information into a tool that might remember it. She made the point with a domestic example: her kids come home repeating things they read on ChatGPT as if they were the evening news. That instinct, uncorrected, is the last thing you want loose inside a company handling commercial data. Then there is design, which Ragnar lit up about. They run dashboards for delivery precision and tracking, and he is adamant that the first screen has to be clean and intuitive or people simply won't use it. He has been shown solutions that, in his words, "look like the 80s": heavy, ugly, dead on arrival. Make it as advanced as you like underneath; the surface has to be easy. We spend most of our [build work](/work) on exactly this gap, between "technically works" and "people actually use it." It is the difference between a system people adopt and a licence nobody opens. ## What comes next: tender and pricing agents The roadmap is where it gets interesting for anyone in a bid-heavy industry. Ragnar walked through three agents they have weighed up. A tender agent to read the enormous, technical tender documents the oil industry produces. A pricing agent you feed the matrices and tariffs, and get a number back quickly. An auto-response agent for the steady trickle of customers who just want a fast answer without going through a person. The tender one is the most compelling. Oil-and-gas tenders are vast, and the cruel joke is that a small operator receives exactly the same hundred-page monster as a multinational. Most of the effort is reading and understanding before you can even begin to answer. That is ideal work for a ring-fenced, local agent with access to the right internal information: the sort that drafts maybe ninety per cent of a response and leaves a human the last ten, plus the final read. Pricing is similar but messier: their matrices cover the whole Norwegian coast with a European tariff layered on top, much of it repetitive, the difference often just weight intervals. The hard cases stay human. Is the load out of gauge? Is it big enough to need a police escort, which never comes with a fixed price? None of it is live yet. They haven't needed it. But Ragnar's read matched mine: it is coming, and when the need is real they will build it, inside the same fence as everything else. ## The quiet version of an AI strategy What stayed with me, driving away, was how undramatic the whole thing is. No moonshot. No rip-and-replace. A coast-long haulage business got itself properly certified, hired one builder, trained the willing, and started making the tools it needed out of the software already sitting on every desk. They didn't buy an AI strategy. They noticed they already owned one. --- # SmplCo x Lovable: total sellouts Date: 2026-05-29 · Author: Michael Millar · Tags: Lovable, Founder Series, Vibe Coding, AI Development, Events > THEY ABSOLUTELY SMASHED IT. Congrats to everyone at our sold out Lovable Founder Series. Here's what we took away — and why the format changes everything. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/lovable-founder-series-stavanger THEY ABSOLUTELY SMASHED IT. Congratulations to everyone who came to our sold out Lovable Founder Series at [Innovation Dock](https://www.innovationdock.no/). It was great to see innovators from all walks of entrepreneurial life — companies like Equinor, Bouvet ASA and SEID AS sitting next to founders, startups, and some who had never tried AI-assisted coding before. So many good ideas came out of the evening — not least Andreas' live vibe-coded bingo game 🥳 ## What did we learn? The biggest lesson was perhaps that no matter the advances in tech, the rules for success remain the same. **One:** if you want to win, you've got to make the leap and get started. Most people never take that step. By doing so you're already ahead of the crowd. And Lovable makes that step much, much easier. **Two:** if you build it they won't come. Nobody cares until you make them care. You have to get out there. Tell a great story. Give your product away for free if necessary — but do whatever you have to do to get people using it and build the hype around it. ## Why is Lovable Founder Series so good? The format the Founder Series follows is exactly how we think everyone should do events like these. We are forever hassling incubators and accelerators to change their models to be more like this. Why? Two things happen that don't normally happen in the same room: **One:** you build a real product from scratch — so it's not just endless reams of theory that you'll struggle to do anything with. **Two:** you hear from founders who've already turned their products into real businesses. That combination — building *and* learning how to scale — is what sets the Founders Series apart.

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Thanks to everyone who came along. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. And thanks again to our own [Andreas Melvær](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreasmelvær/) and [Line Hjartarson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/linehjartarson/) for running the show, alongside the fantastic [Olav Larsen](https://www.linkedin.com/in/olav-larsen/). ## FAQs **How do Lovable Founders Series events work?** You come with a problem you want to solve, a side project you've been thinking about, or just curiosity. Then, using Lovable, you go from idea to working product during the event. Describe what you want, and the AI builds it. Mentors like Andreas and Line and the Lovable team are in the room to help you move fast. You'll also hear from real founders share how they went from idea to product to revenue using Lovable. You walk out with a working prototype, free Lovable credits to keep building, connections with founders in your city, and access to a global community of 4,000+ builders. **What is vibe coding?** We've written a whole article about that — [read it here](/blog/what-is-vibe-coding). **How do I find a Lovable Founders Series event near me?** Visit [lovable.dev](https://lovable.dev) to find events near you. Simple as that. **How does SmplCo use AI-assisted coding to bring digital products and services to life?** We have created a highly efficient and effective process to enable start-ups, scale-ups and corporate innovation teams build digital products fast using AI-assisted design and development, as well as dramatically improve the efficiency and performance of their internal processes using autonomous ('agentic') systems. We ship working prototypes in 5 days and production software in weeks, not quarters. 150+ products built, €10m+ raised by our clients, and recognised by Figma as a world-leader in AI-assisted development. --- # We Automated a Beer Festival in an Afternoon. Most Workflow Fixes Are Like This Now. Date: 2026-05-15 · Author: Andreas Melvaer · Tags: Vibecoding, Custom Software, Prototyping, Strategy > We built an automation tool for the Mash beer festival in Barcelona in an afternoon. The point: improving how an organisation works doesn't have to take months. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/automated-beer-festival-in-an-afternoon **Mash** is an international craft beer festival in Barcelona, now in its eighth edition. A team runs it. I help with the design side and have done so for years. Every edition, somewhere between booking the line-up and opening the doors, the same set of jobs grows: festival posters, an Instagram post for each attending brewery, and the printed signage that goes up around the venue. None of it is hard work. It is just slow, repetitive, and there is always more of it than I remember from last year. Breweries fly in from across the globe, which means dozens of little graphic jobs that all look slightly different. A logo to find, clean up, drop into a template, export, name correctly, upload. By the time I finish, I have made the same mistake three times and the festival is a week closer. ## What we actually did about it So instead of clearing another weekend for it, I spent an afternoon and built a small tool for Mash. We have called it *a trip in tiles*. Underneath sits a deck of 160 hand-drawn black-and-white tiles (eyes, mushrooms, faces, suns, all the usual psychedelic suspects), and the tool composes them into the things we need. - **Posters.** Pick a vibe (psychedelic, surreal, occult, take your pick), hit *summon poster*, and out comes an A2 festival poster on a 5×6 grid. - **Brewery frames.** *"Paste a brewery's website. We fetch their logo, lay it inside a 5×5 deck of tiles with a 3×3 hole, and frame it in black or white."* That is the Instagram tile for every attending brewery, generated from a URL. - **Signage** (coming next). Upload a spreadsheet of breweries and the tool generates the printed signage for the venue. ![The poster screen, generating a Mash festival poster from a vibe and a 5x6 grid of tiles.](/images/blog/inline/mash-poster-tool.jpg) *The poster screen. Pick a vibe, hit summon, out comes the festival poster.* Every output gets logged in a gallery alongside the rest, which is useful when the team needs to pick between options. ![The brewery frame screen, with a URL input that auto-fetches the brewery's logo and lays it inside a 5x5 deck of tiles.](/images/blog/inline/mash-brewery-frame.jpg) *Paste a brewery's URL, the tool fetches their logo and frames it. Dozens of breweries used to be a long evening.* ## The actual point Mash is a craft beer festival. We are not the audience for a big "digital transformation" pitch. We did not need one. What is interesting is that the tool took *an afternoon*. Not a month. Not a procurement cycle. Not a budget round. There was no agency involved, no kick-off meeting, no roadmap. I had an annoyance, I sat down, and by the end of the day it was largely gone. That maths is genuinely different from what it was even two years ago, and most organisations have not caught up to it yet. If something costs your team a few hours every quarter, it is probably already worth automating. If it costs you a few evenings every year, it was worth automating a long time ago. The reason people put it off is usually not the cost of building. It is the assumption that *building* is a project. It no longer has to be. The same logic scales. If an afternoon of work can do this for an international festival in Barcelona, the same thinking applied to a finance team's monthly reporting, a sales team's onboarding flow, or whatever quietly chewed-up corner of an organisation you can think of, is hard to argue with. Most of the things that grind down a team's evenings are not glamorous problems. They are small, repetitive, slightly different every time. Those are exactly the problems this current generation of tooling is suspiciously good at chewing through. ## If something is eating your evenings If there is a thing in your organisation that everyone groans about every quarter, it probably does not need a project. It needs an afternoon. We've [written before](/blog/saas-audit-build-custom-tools) about the same shift on the SaaS side. The maths on building vs buying has moved, and most companies are still paying for software that does ten times more than they need. The festival tool is the same idea in miniature: the things that used to be too small to justify building are not too small any more. If you've got a workflow that's been quietly costing you nights, [get in touch](/contact) and we'll take a look at which afternoon it needs. --- # A Legal AI Firm Just Hired Jude Law. Storytelling Is Back As A Must-Have Moat. Date: 2026-05-14 · Author: Michael Millar · Tags: Brand Strategy, Storytelling, Marketing, AI > A legal AI company just hired Jude Law. In a world where anyone can vibecode a product, storytelling is a crucial moat for you & your tech. Here's why — and how to do it. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/jude-law-legora-storytelling **In short:** In a world where anyone can vibecode a product, storytelling has re-emerged as both a crucial defensive moat for your tech, and a way to get noticed in the most distracted time in human history. Here's how you can tell a story and build a brand at the same time. ## A legal AI company just hired Jude Law. Not a lawyer. Not an AI expert. **Jude Law.** The company is [Legora](https://legora.com) and it's just hit $100m in ARR and is on track to hit $250m in ARR by the end of the year. They've just raised $550m at Series D. And they've spent some of it on a Hollywood actor opening a campaign with the line: *"It's fair to assume I know quite a bit about law — after all, my name is Jude."* You might think this is a PR trick. A flashy, vacuous piece of ad-land tomfoolery, born of suddenly having too much cash. But the Chief Revenue Officer claims the campaign has been been a [gamechanger](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465?i=1000767161811), generating a $50m sales pipeline. Welcome to marketing tech in a vibecoding age. ## What that signal actually means We're coming out of a cycle where tech would often sell itself. That technical sale is over. Take the Legora example: legal firms know AI works. Now, they're not just asking *"does this product do the thing?"*, they've started asking *"do I trust the people behind it?"*. And trust isn't won with a feature comparison table. Trust is a brand game. It's about what people say about you when you're not in the room. Jude Law isn't a gimmick. He's a signal. The signal that Legora knows the fight has moved from flashy tech product (AI *obvs*) towards perception. And they've decided to fight it where their competitors aren't. That means a plethora of age-old marketing adages are back in fashion ...'Sell the sizzle, not the sausage' ...'People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.' And so on, and so on. The point is we are in an age where technological proliferation has smashed headlong into the most distracted era in human history. And that means standing out from the crowd is incredibly important ... and incredibly difficult. ## Welcome to the age of vibecoding There's a bigger force at work here, and every entepreneur and innovator needs to understand it. A year ago, you needed engineers, a stack, six months and a runway to build a credible product. Today an enterprising teenager with Claude, Lovable, or Base 44 can ship a working B2B SaaS prototype before dinner. We've started calling it [vibecoding](../services), and it has completely demolished the assumption that *building the thing* is the hard part. When everyone can build, building alone stops being the moat - particularly when so many vibecoding builds don't stand a chance of being sustainable or scalable (we've got a whole guide to building well [here](https://smpl.as/blog/ai-from-risk-to-advantage). But, whether you build well or not, the core truth remains: if your differentiator is your product alone, there's a good chance you are differentiating on the cheapest, most replicable thing in the entire stack. ## So what *is* a moat exactly? A moat is the thing that can't be instantly vibecoded. It's the thing a competitor can't replicate over a free weekend. And your proprietary tech - or clever application of multiple other pieces of tech - MUST still be a crucial part of that moat. *Stories only work if you base them on something of substance.* But much harder to replicate than your tech is how people feel when they hear your name. The story they tell their colleagues about you. The reason they pick you when, on paper, the two options look identical. That's the power of brand. And the engine that builds brand at speed is storytelling. ![The author, telling stories back in the day](/images/blog/inline/brand-stories-inline.png) *The author, telling stories back in the day* ## "Would you ask someone to marry you on the first date?" Probably not. Yet that's exactly how most tech entrepreneurs go to market. They lead with the product. The features. The integrations. The roadmap. The unit economics, if they're feeling really seductive. But customers, even B2B ones, even procurement teams, (even general counsel in the case of Legora), don't buy that way. They buy from brands they feel something about. Google's own research found: - **50%** of B2B buyers are more likely to buy if they connect emotionally with your brand - **71%** purchase when they see personal value in your business - **69%** will pay a higher price to do business with a brand they believe in We aren't talking about consumer purchases of fizzy water. These are CFO-signed enterprise contracts. And they still hinge on feeling. That's because feeling is a shortcut for trust. And in a world where anyone can vibecode a passable product, trust is a variable that is worth competing on and will repay you many times over. ## Why storytelling, specifically? Because it's the format the human brain is actually built for. Studies show neural activity increases roughly fivefold when we hear a good story. People retain about [70% of information delivered through stories](https://speakingcpr.com/the-numbers-dont-lie-stories-not-statistics-make-you-memorable/), versus only 10% from data and statistics. A good story triggers dopamine (memory) and oxytocin (connection). A good spec sheet triggers… nothing. This isn't romanticism. It's neurology. That's why the WSJ recently declared big US companies [are desperately seeking 'storytellers'](https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-are-desperately-seeking-storytellers-7b79f54e). They've finally noticed that engineering can scale, distribution can scale, the algorithm can scale — but the part that actually moves a buyer over the line is a human telling another human something they want to hear. In 2026 a lot of people are realising they have to rediscover one of the oldest skills humanity possesses: storytelling. But - and this is a BIG BUT - there's an elephant in room here: if AI can magically produce products, it can, of course, magically create stories. Bad stories. Drab, dull, mid-of-the-road stories. And, by God, we're drowining in those. ## 7 rules to tell stories that actually land The rules of good storytelling haven't changed since we were doing it around campfires. The medium has, but the principles haven't. Underpinning everything is the need to tell stories with honesty - **Pick a defined audience.** One size never fits all. Generic stories land generically, which is to say, nowhere. - **Make it all about them.** All good stories aim to entertain, educate, inspire, and/or inform. They prioritise giving value (in whatever form that takes). They do not scream: "Look at me, I'm great" - **Benefits before features.** Nobody cares about your shiny thing until they know what it does for them. - **Use T.R.U.T.H.** All the best stories are Topical, Relevant (to your audience), Unusual, contain Trouble / conflict, and have Humans at their heart. (Yes, even in B2B. *Especially* in B2B.) - **Consistency beats virality.** Show up reliably enough that showing up becomes expected. That compounds. Viral doesn't. - **Pick a voice and stay in it.** Clarity over flare. Always. - **Add hooks throughout.** Strong opinions, questions, weird facts, a memorable line, a quote. If you read those and felt a stab of *we don't do most of those*, you're not alone. Most companies are *rubbish* at storytelling — which is exactly why getting it right wins you so much ground. --- **Free guide** ### Attention Is New Gold 6 pages of frameworks for making your brand and stories stand out — TRUTH storytelling, behavioural science, and 6 field lessons from real brand-building. [**Download for free**](../attention-guide) ![Attention Is New Gold — the founder's guide to brand & storytelling](/images/attention-guide-promo.webp) --- ## Where are your Jude Law moments hiding? You don't need a $600M raise to do what Legora did. You need to find the thing in your business that's worth talking about — and then talk about it like a human. Stories live in places founders overlook: - Your take on the news, trends, or someone else's story (this article is exactly that — a Jude Law ad triggered it) - Your origin story — *why* you built this, not *what* you built - The inspirations and bets behind your decisions - Your team's stories — the messy, funny, unrepeatable ones, not the LinkedIn headshots - Customer case studies told as stories, not as testimonials. Tension → insight → outcome. - The rough alongside the smooth. People trust founders who admit what didn't work. Polished is forgettable. If you can't work out how to tell a story, fall back on the Pub Test: *how would I tell this to my ideal customer down the pub?* If it survives there, it'll survive anywhere. ## What Legora actually bought Look at the Legora campaign one more time. What did they actually purchase with Jude Law's appearance fee? Not awareness. They could have bought awareness with paid media at a fraction of the cost. What they bought was **a story people would tell each other** — at law firm coffee machines, on commutes, in posts like this one. Free distribution. Genuine emotional response. A category that previously thought of itself as serious and dry suddenly associated with something charming and self-aware. That's the trade every founder should be making right now, at whatever scale you can afford. I suspect you can't afford Jude Law. But you can do the *equivalent*. Find the unexpected, human, slightly-too-bold thing that signals you understand the world your customer lives in. In a world where everyone can build, the founder who can *tell* wins. ## Want the full version? If you want the frameworks we use to help founders earn this kind of attention — TRUTH storytelling, the master story formula, the behavioural science principles that actually move buyers, and six field lessons from real brand-building — we've put it all into a free 6-page guide. [**Download: Attention Is New Gold — The Founder's Guide to Brand & Storytelling**](../attention-guide) These are the frameworks we use every day to help founders earn attention that converts. And if you want to talk through how to apply any of it to your own situation, [drop me a line](mailto:mike@smpl.as) or [get in touch](../contact). I love a bit of storytelling... --- # When AI Starts Talking to Your Accounting Software Date: 2026-05-13 · Author: Andreas Melvær · Tags: AI, MCP, Vibe coding, Legal, Internal Tools > I wired Claude into our accounting software. Then I called the lawyers. Notes from the build, the legal grey zones, and the 4 June event with CMS Kluge. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/ai-talking-to-accounting-software **In short:** On Thursday 4 June I am speaking at Tech-Forum Stavanger at CMS Kluge's offices, alongside the CFO of Easee, the MD of Aline AS, and two of CMS Kluge's lawyers. The format is unusual: I present a working AI-coded tool, the lawyers do a live risk analysis of it on stage, and we see what survives. To set it up I wired Claude into PowerOfficeGo, our accounting system. This is what I learned in the process and why we asked the lawyers to be in the room. ## Why I built it Before every board meeting I find myself fighting the same interfaces. Reporting tools I use four times a year. Filters I half-remember. Date ranges I always have to double-check. None of it is hard. It is slow enough that I dread the half hour before each meeting. The other thing is the small administrative tax that sits across every consultancy. New client. New project number. Sprint complete, draft an invoice. Each task takes two minutes. Each task gets done forty times a year. Multiply across a team and you are paying real money for clicking through forms. So I started wondering what would happen if I could just talk to the software instead of operating it. ## What I built PowerOfficeGo were generous enough to give me API access in a test environment. The piece that connects an AI model to another system is called an MCP. Model Context Protocol. Think of it as a bridge with rails on it: the AI can do specific things on specific data, in a way the underlying system understands. What I built is that bridge. Now I can sit in Claude and say things like: - "Create a new client called Menu." - "Create a five-day sprint project for Menu about checkout systems." - "We finished the sprint. Draft the invoice." - "Show me the latest board reports." And the system does it. It feels properly futuristic the first few times. Then it just feels like the way software should have worked all along. ## Why I called the lawyers About a week in, I was reading something about Regnskapsloven (Norway's accounting law) and a small thought arrived: what happens when information that used to live safely inside an accounting system starts flowing through an external AI model? The honest answer is I'm not sure. The slightly less honest answer is that probably nobody is. Most regulations were written long before someone could connect their accounting software to Claude over a weekend. We can now. The legal frameworks have not caught up. That is why CMS Kluge will be in the room. Not to say yes or no, but to map the terrain. What sits inside GDPR. What sits outside it. Where the boundary is between safe experimentation and an exposure nobody noticed. The interesting question is not whether AI in business is happening. It is happening, in every company, mostly outside official channels. The interesting question is whether the people building these tools understand what they are wiring together. ## What companies are underestimating A lot of large organisations already have most of the safety infrastructure they need. Microsoft enterprise environments with sandboxing baked in. Permission systems tightened over years. Audit logs. Existing GDPR controls. Internal sign-off processes. The opportunity is not really to replace any of that. It is to change how people inside the company interact with the systems they already have. If you have spent serious time inside Meta Business Suite, Google Ads, or a large ERP, you know what I mean. Vast interfaces, layered with dashboards, settings, side panels, dropdowns. Most of the people who need a single answer from those systems are not specialists. The cost of operating them adds up fast. A conversational layer over the same systems removes most of that friction. You stop navigating software and start asking it questions. The data is the same. The permissions are the same. The legal substrate is the same. The cognitive load drops by an order of magnitude. That, more than any new app, is the change that will quietly compound over the next year inside companies that get it right. ## The mistake everyone makes The biggest thing that goes wrong with AI-assisted development right now is people skipping the planning step. The reason is obvious. The building part suddenly works. You sit down at lunch, you have an idea, you ask an agent, and by dinner you have something that runs. The temptation is to skip the slow part and go straight to the fun part. Most teams I have watched fall into this. The slow part is the part that matters. Before I built the MCP into PowerOfficeGo, I sat with Claude in planning mode for an afternoon. We mapped: - Which workflows in our consultancy were worth automating - Where the friction actually sat - Which data needed to flow where - Which fields the AI should never touch - Which actions needed a human in the loop, and which were safe to run alone Then I made Claude explain the plan back to me before writing a line of code. If the explanation did not make sense, the plan was wrong, and the build would have been wrong. That sequence is boring. It is also the difference between a useful internal tool and a Frankenstein your future self has to apologise for. ## What I hope people leave the event with A clear head, mostly. There are useful AI-assisted automations sitting quietly on the table in most companies right now. Most are not moonshots. They are small bridges between tools the company already pays for, used by people who do not need a developer's permission to try something. That is most of the upside. The other thing I want people to leave with is a compass for the trade-offs. Where the safe ground is inside their existing tech stack. Which pattern of human-in-the-loop makes sense for which task. Which connections are worth thinking carefully about before wiring them up. And a sense of when to call a lawyer rather than guessing. The whole reason this is interesting is that the laws were not written for last summer's tech. We are figuring it out together. CMS Kluge is the right kind of room to do that figuring in. ## If you want to come **Tech-Forum Stavanger**, Thursday 4 June 2026. **Where**: CMS Kluge, Herbarium, Olav Kyrres gate 21, Stavanger. **Programme**: - 15:30: Doors, registration, food and drinks - 16:00: Welcome by Linn Cathrine Jøsendal, CMS Kluge - 16:05: Intro to AI-assisted coding, Line Hjartarson (Aline AS) - 16:20: Presentation of an AI-coded tool with a live legal-and-risk analysis on stage. Me, plus Ove Andre Vanebo and Bernt Olav Thorsheim from CMS Kluge - 16:50: Practical experience with AI-assisted coding, Øyvind Osjord (CFO, Easee ASA) - 17:10: Panel discussion moderated by Bernt Olav Thorsheim, CMS Kluge - 17:30: Wrap, with the option to stay on the rooftop terrace if the weather holds Hosted by CMS Kluge alongside Laerdal Medical, Corporater, SpareBank 1 Sør-Norge, and Håmsø Patentbyrå. [**Register here**](https://news.cms.law/s/de1d5df3ed24f05ff0b0c7aea49148290a7923b3). If you cannot make it but want to talk about a specific build you are considering, [get in touch](/contact). We do this kind of work for clients at SmplCo every week. The plan-before-you-build framework, the MCP work, the integration layer that connects what you already use. Same playbook as the PowerOfficeGo build, scaled to the workflow that matters in your business. --- # I Built My Own CRM. Then a HubSpot Partner Took Me On. Date: 2026-05-12 · Author: Andreas Melvær · Tags: CRM, Vibe coding, Build vs Buy, Custom Software, AI > A licensed HubSpot partner invited me on to defend the decision to drop HubSpot. Here is what their CTO and I actually disagreed on, and six things to think through if you are tempted to build your own. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/build-or-buy-crm-debate-podcast **In short:** A Norwegian consultancy called Frei is a licensed HubSpot partner. They invited me onto their podcast to defend the decision to drop HubSpot and build SmplCo's own CRM. Their CTO is a former sculptor. The most useful 45 minutes I have spent on the build-versus-buy question. A couple of weeks ago I [wrote about](/blog/build-your-own-digital-ecosystem) why we dropped HubSpot and built our own CRM. The post landed on the LinkedIn feed of [Frei](https://frei.as/), a Norwegian consultancy. Frei consults on HubSpot every day. They are a licensed partner. I sent their producer a half-serious DM: "Is this too hot to talk about, given HubSpot?" Their answer was the opposite of what I expected. They sharpened their pencils. ## Who I was debating The man across the table from me was Dorian McFarland, CTO at Frei. The first thing Dorian told me about himself was that he was a stonecutter. A sculptor. Trained as an artist 30 years ago, self-taught into technology, mostly through making mistakes for two decades. I liked him immediately. The host is Andreas Oddane. He framed the format up front. They wanted dialectic, not consensus. He asked us both to hold our positions a beat longer than was comfortable, on the theory that the middle ground gets watered down too quickly when reasonable people meet. It worked. We ended up somewhere I didn't expect. ## What I had actually built For listeners who hadn't read the original post, I summarised. SmplCo's CRM is a small custom system tied to our Google Workspace stack. It picks people up the moment they touch us (a webinar, a blog click, a gated download), drops them a Calendar booking link, and follows them through to a first meeting without anyone touching it. After the meeting, Gemini writes a summary and attaches it to the contact. When a contract is signed, the record updates itself. It replaced HubSpot. It converts our leads better than the team-managed pipeline did. It costs us roughly nothing per month. That's the version I went in with. ## The door problem Dorian's first move was to question whether what I had built was actually a CRM. He pulled in a phrase from game development: the *door problem*. In a video game, a door looks simple. Until you try to build one. Animation states, collision detection, NPC pathing, lighting, audio, who has the key, what happens when two people open it at once. The visible part is one percent of the actual work. His point: a CRM isn't a feature. It's a structured workflow from end to end. Most of what makes a CRM worth paying for is the part you don't see. Audit history. Governance. Permissions. The decade of edge cases other product teams have already worked through. He had a number for it: 80 percent of the system gets built in the first weekend. 10 percent in the next week. The remaining 10 percent is the rest of the system's life, because it never finishes. New needs land. Integrations break. People leave. That last 10 percent is where the actual cost lives. That landed. I had no clean counter to it on the call. ## The sculptor's argument The strongest moment in the conversation, for me, came when Dorian pulled in his old craft. He started as a stonecutter. The work of a sculptor, he said, is to find the form already inside the stone and carve away everything that isn't it. Michelangelo's job description, more or less. He used this to explain HubSpot. An enterprise CRM is a block of marble. You don't add features to make it fit your business. You hide them. You shape the interface down until what's left is the form your team actually needs. The work is subtraction, and the marble has already been quarried. Building your own is the other approach. You start with a lump of clay and shape upward. You also become responsible for every feature that does or doesn't exist. I had not heard the subtraction frame put that cleanly before. It will stay with me. ## The new vendor lock-in The other strong point Dorian made was about lock-in. We tend to think of SaaS lock-in as the thing we're escaping by building our own. Investing time in HubSpot becomes a cost the moment you want to leave. Fair enough. But Dorian's argument was that we are trading one form of lock-in for another. He called it *Development as a Service*. When an AI agent writes the code, you own the output, but you don't own the cognitive investment. You don't quite know how it works. Agents write documentation, but be honest: who reads it? Andreas Oddane sharpened the point. The moment the human task gets handed to the agent, learning stops. You build a thing that works, but you don't learn the thing the way you would if you had built it yourself. And the agent's price will rise, slowly, until it sits just below the cost of a human doing the same work. That is the same lock-in we have always had with vendors. It just has a different shape. I conceded ground here. I don't have a clean answer for what happens to SmplCo's CRM the day I leave SmplCo. The person who inherits it will inherit something they did not design and can't ask the original engineer about. ## Where I held ground The threshold for "business critical" has moved. Two years ago, vibe-coding internal tools would have been irresponsible for almost any team. Today the codegen is better, the patterns are stable, and the debugging loop is faster. A small senior team replacing a chunk of its SaaS stack with custom tools is genuinely different from a small team trying to do the same in 2023. The other thing I held on was the speed of the iteration loop. In a small team that uses what I built, I can see friction in real time. Someone struggles with a field, I rebuild the field that afternoon, we test it in a meeting that evening. Most importantly, I take things away. The Meta Ads agent I built isn't there because I love automation. It's there because I never want to log into Meta Ads Manager again. Andreas Oddane pointed out that the willingness to remove things is, in his experience, the rarest behaviour he sees in software teams. People will add forever. Almost nobody will subtract. That, more than anything, is the reason I think a built-our-own approach can work. It only works if you are the kind of operator who can delete things. ## Six things to consider before you build your own If this debate has piqued your interest, here are the questions I'd run through honestly first. They came out of the conversation; they're not a marketing list. **1. Do you have a clear data model?** Not a database schema. A clear picture of what entities exist in your business and how they relate. Without it, you'll build a Frankenstein and call it integration. **2. Is your team small enough that one builder equals most users?** The 80-10-10 rule says the long tail of your system is maintenance. If you are the only one who can maintain it, that's fine while you're three people. It is a serious risk by the time you are 15. **3. Can you actually take things away?** Dorian's sculpting metaphor cuts both ways. If you can't subtract, you'll end up with a homemade HubSpot in two years. With fewer engineers fixing it. **4. Are you replicating, or building something that didn't exist?** Dorian noted that when photography arrived, people used it to take portraits. When AI arrived, the first thing companies ask is whether HubSpot can be made to behave like Excel. Don't build a CRM that imitates the CRM you just dropped. Build the thing that the old shape made impossible. **5. What's your data foundation?** AI is mostly useful when there is clean, structured data sitting underneath. If you build a CRM on a clean foundation, your agents will get smarter as you grow. If you build it on duct tape, you have a duct-tape stack that AI just makes louder. **6. What's your security and compliance posture?** Dorian is testing an MCP between Claude and PowerOffice, the accounting system. He's doing it with a corporate-law firm in the room. Anyone wiring an AI agent into commercial data without thinking about GDPR is asking for an interesting year. Move fast, but not on the legal stuff. ## What I'd actually advise If you are small, senior, and clear-headed about your workflow, the case for building is stronger than it has ever been. The tooling has arrived. The cost has collapsed. You will own the result. If you are not small, or not yet sure about the workflow, or worried about the day your only builder leaves the company, buy. HubSpot is a serious product. So is the standardised layer it gives you, especially as the data underneath becomes the substrate AI agents work on. Frei spends every day helping companies make that work. If you want a third option, it's the one we run at SmplCo all the time: build something small enough that the team that uses it can also maintain it, on a foundation that the rest of the world can integrate with. It's the version most companies don't realise is available to them. If you want help thinking through whether it fits your situation, [get in touch](/contact). We are not the only people who can build it, but we have done it for our own house, and for clients, often enough to have a few opinions about what works. The full debate is in Norwegian. Forty-five minutes of two people who actually disagree, hosted with civility. Listen on [**Spotify**](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6XJKvkwhIDDtSbozeN5x8M) or [**Apple Podcasts**](https://podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/5-vibe-or-die-eller-stole-p%C3%A5-det-som-er-bygget-debatt/id1874113969?i=1000767276048). Thanks to Dorian McFarland, host Andreas Oddane, the team at [Frei](https://frei.as/), and producer [Top of Mind](https://topofmind.no/) for taking the conversation seriously. Related reading: - [We replaced our SaaS stack with custom internal tools](/blog/build-your-own-digital-ecosystem) - [The case for disciplined vibecoding](/blog/vibecoding-how-we-actually-ship-products) --- # How to integrate AI into your product without burning cash Date: 2026-04-30 · Author: Andreas Melvær · Tags: AI, Product strategy, Barclays Eagle Labs, Webinar > Six lessons from our Eagle Labs webinar: AI-as-build-tool vs AI-in-product, why tokens cost money, planning before vibe-coding, guardrails, defensibility. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/integrate-ai-into-your-product-without-burning-cash A couple of weeks ago, [Mike](https://smpl.as/about) and I joined Luke Hampson of Barclays Eagle Labs for an hour-long webinar on integrating AI into a product. The signup question was the right one: *how do you turn AI from a risky expense into a scalable product advantage?* The recording is up on our site here: **[Watch the full webinar](/webinars/effectively-integrate-ai-into-your-product)**. Six lessons stood out worth lifting onto the blog. ### 1. AI to *build with* is not the same as AI *inside* your product A lot of teams blur this line. They are not the same decision. We walked through two SmplCo-built products on the call: one where AI is the engine (it calls Gemini at runtime to write coaching plans), and one where AI was just the construction tool (a hockey-coaching platform built in Claude Code that runs on a vanilla CMS and would still work if every model went offline tomorrow). Both are fine — they just have completely different cost profiles and risk surfaces. Conflating them leads to bad strategy. ### 2. Tokens cost money When AI is inside your product, the model serves users at runtime, and *every interaction costs tokens*. A free feature that calls a model on every keystroke is a fundamentally different proposition from a paid feature that calls it once per session. Map your usage before you ship — not after the bill arrives. ### 3. Plan before you vibe-code Vibe coding (talking to an agent and letting it build) works. It works *much* better when you write the data model, system architecture, and user journeys down first. The most common thing we see is founders bringing in vibe-coded prototypes that look great on the surface and are spaghetti underneath. Untangling that is expensive. Spending an hour planning is not.

Free playbook · 13 pages

Build with AI without building a monster

The workflow Mike and I use with founders every week — planning, designing and shipping with AI. Same framework we walk through in the webinar.

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Build with AI without building a monster — free playbook
### 4. Guardrails and the "sleep at night" test If AI is in your product, it is an attack surface. Prompt injection, token-bill abuse, exposure of unintended endpoints, hallucinations and bias are real. The mitigations are well-understood — scoped prompts, rate limiting, evals, scoped credentials — but they need an owner. Mike's framing: *how well do you sleep at night?* If you can't answer, you haven't done enough. ### 5. Defensibility when everyone can code When everyone can vibe-code an MVP in a weekend, "we built it" is no longer a moat. The investor question gets sharper, not softer. Real moats: proprietary data, distribution, brand, deep domain expertise, regulated workflow integrations. Non-moats: "we have a clever prompt" or "we wrap a foundation model". If you are reselling Anthropic tokens, that is a feature, not a defence. ### 6. AI for the *business*, not just the product Most founders are focused on putting AI in the product. The bigger near-term ROI is putting AI inside their *business* — replacing the SaaS stack they only use 10% of with internal tools they own. We rebuilt most of SmplCo's internal stack this way; it is now a weekend of focused work for someone who knows what they want. We've packaged this whole framework into a free guide: [The AI Integration Playbook](/ai-playbook). And the [full webinar recording is here](/webinars/effectively-integrate-ai-into-your-product) if you want the long version. If you're trying to figure out where AI fits in your product or your business and want a second pair of eyes, [book a call](/book) — happy to map it out without the hype. --- # The investor dilemma: is the team actually building what the strategy says? Date: 2026-04-29 · Author: Andreas Melvær · Tags: SaaS, Strategy, Due Diligence, Investors, Boards, BAS TrustDesk > Boardroom strategy versus repo reality: how can boards, buyers and investors get an honest view of what's being built? URL: https://smpl.as/blog/bas-trustdesk In short: How can investors and board leaders build more productive, trustworthy relationships when a company's strategy lives in glossy slide decks and execution lives in the repo ...and nothing connects them? If you're an investor, a board member courting investors, or a CTO reporting on progress, try giving honest answers to these questions: - Who answers the question: "Are we building what the strategy said?" Is it a self-graded report card? - Is the board pack written by the same people who set the roadmap? Is the roadmap being reviewed against itself? - Is there a link back to the original strategy artefacts that started the year? - Every six months are you asking the same uncomfortable question? Do the answers depend more on the CTO's storytelling than on the data underneath? All the often, the answers to these questions make for sobering reading. For founders, this is uncomfortable but survivable. At least for while. For boards, buyers, and investors, it's expensive. If you're writing a cheque, joining a board, or running diligence on an acquisition target, the most expensive thing you can take on faith is "we're building what we said we'd build". By the time the gap shows up in retention, in burn, or in a missed milestone, you've already paid for an engineering quarter pointed in the wrong direction. And, in this new AI era, it could be about to get a lot worse. ** How AI is damaging boardroom / investor relations Self-reported board packs read well. Engineering velocity charts look reassuring. A confident CTO is hard to challenge in a 90-minute meeting. None of those tell you whether last quarter's £400k of engineering effort actually moved the company toward the strategy you signed up for, or quietly drifted into a feature pile that nobody on the board ever asked for. And it's much easier to create this smokescreen - whether intentional or not - in the age of AI. Tor Einar Enne is an entrepreneur saw strategy and execution increasingly diverging, so he decided to fix the problem by building [BAS TrustDesk](https://bastrustdesk.com). "In the modern era, Artificial Intelligence makes it easy for anyone to generate polished, glossy board reports in minutes," he says. "This makes it very difficult for investors to separate genuine substance from the narrative." This result is everyone can lose, often before a deal even gets out of the gate. "When creating convincing-looking decks is so easy, investors often decline funding based on feeling that the numbers do not 'feel' real," Tor Einar says. His solution, Trust Desk, aims to strip away this politeness layer by allowing founders to provide independent validation of progress and performance. ## Why this matters for buyers and investors [BAS TrustDesk's](https://bastrustdesk.com) software uses Artificial Intelligence to distill information from strategy documents, specifically hunting for "jobs to be done" and validated hypotheses. This gives you a traceable view of the actual work, mapped back to the strategy that was approved, in language a board pack can carry: - *For acquirers*, that's the difference between buying the strategy and buying the surprise - *For VCs and angels*, it's the difference between leading from the data and leading from the deck. - *For non-executive directors*, it's the answer to the questions that really matter between board meetings ![BAS TrustDesk task workflow cards linked to Jira and GitHub](/images/bas/bas-tasks.webp) The result is companies avoid spending years building products that lack market demand, which Tor Einar cites as a primary reason for tech company failure. The system monitors the development backlog to ensure that the work being completed is aligned with the company's stated strategy rather than drifting away > "There is significant value for both the board and investors in getting objective information that cannot be tweaked by the user. Investors get the right numbers, but CEO's also get protected from numbers that have been 'rounded up' or team presenting unrealistic expectations." > > **Tor Einar Enne**, Founder, BAS TrustDeck ## Let's get technical: how does BAS TrustDesk do this? The platform offers a strategy-to-execution validation platform that connects read-only to the systems where execution actually happens (Jira, Azure DevOps, GitHub) and ingests the strategy artefacts the company committed to. From those two inputs it produces a traceable report on: - Whether the work being shipped lines up with the strategy that was approved - Where the gaps are, ranked by the size of their impact - Whether the team validated the underlying assumptions before committing engineering spend - A board-ready PDF that any non-executive director, VC partner, or M&A diligence team can read without needing to be technical In short, it turns a question that used to depend on trust into one that depends on data. ![BAS TrustDesk overall strategy score](/images/bas/bas-strategy-score.webp) ## How SmplCo helped Tor Einar nail his platform [BAS TrustDesk](https://bastrustdesk.com) came to SmplCo at the start of 2026 with a live product, paying customers, and a need to sharpen what the next version of the platform did and who it did it for. We ran a 5-Day Prototype paired with a Design System in a single week. The team then rebuilt the application end-to-end on top of the system that came out of it. The full story behind the relaunch is in the [BAS TrustDesk case study](/work/bas). > "We came in with a live product, a handful of customers, and a vibe-coded prototype of where we thought the next version needed to go. Five days with SmplCo gave us two things we could not easily have got on our own: the discipline to pick one primary user, and a design system that has carried through every screen of the rebuild." > > **Tor Einar Enne**, Founder, BAS TrusDesk ## Want to learn how we helped BAS If you're a buyer, board member, or investor who's tired of taking strategy-execution alignment on faith, [BAS TrustDesk](https://bastrustdesk.com) is live and onboarding new customers. If you're a founder thinking about a major rebuild and want a foundation that lasts, [come and have a chat with us](/contact). And if you want the design and product story behind the BAS relaunch, the [case study lives here](/work/bas). --- # Turn AI From a Risky Expense Into a Product Advantage Date: 2026-04-28 · Author: Andreas Melvær · Tags: AI, Product Strategy, Webinar, Eagle Labs > Most teams bolt AI onto the wrong feature, burn cash on the wrong model, or wait too long. The four-stage framework we use to help founders avoid all of this. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/ai-from-risk-to-advantage [Mike](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmillarfrsa/) and I are settling in to run a webinar with [Barclays Eagle Labs](https://labs.uk.barclays/events/effectively-integrate-ai-into-your-product/) on how to integrate AI into your product without lighting cash on fire. The 'AI Question' is one that comes up in nearly every conversation we have with founders right now, and the honest answer is that most teams are getting it wrong in one of three predictable ways: **Mistake One:** bolting AI onto the wrong feature. **Mistake Two:** paying for an enterprise model when a small one would do. **Mistake Three:** freezing, waiting for the perfect moment that never comes. Each of these mistakes is expensive, in its own special way. This post is the short version of what we'll be walking through. Sign up for [the webinar](https://labs.uk.barclays/events/effectively-integrate-ai-into-your-product/) if you want the long version with Q&A, or grab the [free playbook](/ai-playbook) if you'd rather just read it. ## AI is a competitive advantage. It's also a strategic risk. That's the line we keep coming back to. At the moment we've got ...hang on, just checking the CRM... 16 active clients / product developments on the go at SmplCo, and every single one of those products has some AI inside it. And here's the thing: the _amount_ of AI embedded in each is not what matters. The most succesful are the ones that picked the _right_ place to put it, in the right way, at the right stage. A pre-seed founder treating AI like a Series-B scale problem will burn months on infrastructure they don't need yet. A scale-up bolting on a chat interface because their competitor did will end up with a feature nobody asked for. The cost isn't always money — sometimes it's six months of focus. It can also be security (if you're looking into chatbots, for example, have a quick search for 'prompt injection' and feel the chills.) To be clear: we think AI is **great**. We use it all the time and, we're proud to say, to great effect. We've been picked by [Figma](https://www.figma.com/) as a global exemplar of AI-assisted product development, and we just won [Lovable's international SheBuilds hackathon](https://lovable.dev/). AI is involved in almost every one of our projects. But we've seen plenty of teams use it badly. There's been plenty of times we've coughed politely and suggested maybe the right answer was *less* AI, not more.

Free playbook · 13 pages

Build with AI without building a monster

A practical guide to planning, designing and shipping with AI. The workflow Andreas and Mike use with founders every week.

Download for free
Build with AI without building a monster — free playbook
## Don't start with AI. Start with a plan and a structure. This lesson is crucial and sits at the core of the playbook. And it's the bit most teams skip. People start prompting before they really know what they're building, AI makes something that looks like an app, and then the problems show up. Things like unclear journeys, messy data, design that drifts from screen to screen, and code nobody wants to touch the next morning. The workflow we've settled on after 150+ products goes like this: **Plan → Figma → Claude Design → Claude Code → GitHub → Deploy.** So, for the love of all that is holy, plan first. The boring questions are where the value lives: - who is it for? - what problem are you solving? - what's the first useful journey? - what does "done" actually mean? Using that, you create a one-page build brief. Then it's onto building the journey in Figma, including the three states everyone forgets: empty, loading, error. _Then_ Claude Design turns the system into rules so the AI builds inside it, not beside it. Then it's on to Claude Code and - THIS IS CRUCIAL - you ask it to plan before it codes, like a good junior developer instead of a caffeinated raccoon with access to your repo. GitHub, deploy, README, env vars in the right place. Then a sanity check on data, security, who can access what, and so on. And whenever you're doing anything, always have this mantra repeating in your head: 'Build what makes me different, integrate what doesn't.' And before you add any AI feature, ask the question that decides everything: "Is AI the product, or just a feature?" They're very different commitments. ## Want the detail? There's a free 13-page playbook that walks the whole thing through, with the prompts we actually use and the patterns to avoid. [Download it here](/ai-playbook) — no sales pitch, just the framework. If you'd rather hear it live with the chance to ask Mike and me anything, [register for tomorrow's webinar](https://labs.uk.barclays/events/effectively-integrate-ai-into-your-product/). It's free, it's online, it's an hour, and there's a recording for anyone who registers but can't make it live. And if you're already building something AI-powered and want a second opinion before you ship, [get in touch](/contact). It's the kind of thing we are really rather good at, and we have the badges to prove it. --- # Attention Is the New Gold. Here's How Founders Win It. Date: 2026-04-21 · Author: Michael Millar · Tags: Brand Strategy, Marketing, Storytelling, Content > You do not have an attention problem — you have a relevance problem. What founders get wrong about winning attention, and the frameworks we use to fix it. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/attention-is-new-gold **In short:** The average person encounters between 4,000 and 10,000 brand messages a day. Most of them don't land. For founders, this creates a painful paradox: you need attention to grow, but the cost of earning it keeps rising while the window to earn it keeps shrinking. The good news is that most brands compete badly — and the founders who understand this can win disproportionate attention with simple, practical frameworks. ## You Don't Have an Attention Problem Most founders think they're losing the battle for attention because they lack budget, reach, or followers. Usually the real issue is simpler: **what they're saying isn't specific enough to matter to anyone in particular**. Generic content slides straight past people. Specific, honest, particular content — the kind that makes someone think "this is written for me" — stops them cold. The goal isn't to be visible to the wrong million. It's to be unmissable to the right 1,000. ## What Attention Actually Costs Before we talk about frameworks, let's get the stakes right. We're producing more content than at any point in human history, and most of it is ignored. People have become very selective and efficient at filtering out anything that doesn't matter to them. For a startup or scaleup, this means: - Cold outreach open rates are falling - Organic social reach is collapsing - Paid CPMs keep climbing - The time someone will give you to make your point is measured in seconds If your content isn't earning attention on its own merits, throwing more of it at the problem just makes the problem bigger. ## The Cornerstones of Brand Value A brand can be summed up as **"what people say about you when you're not in the room."** Before worrying about content or campaigns, the brand itself must earn trust. A strong brand makes a promise that is: - **Valuable** — genuinely useful to the people you serve - **Relevant** — right fit for your specific audience - **Differentiated** — clearly distinct from alternatives - **Trustworthy** — delivered consistently over time And most importantly — **delivered consistently**. Each quality builds on the last. You can be valuable but not relevant (wrong audience). Relevant but not differentiated (forgettable). Differentiated but not trustworthy (hollow). Only when all four are present — and sustained — does a brand compound in value. If you're stuck getting attention, the highest-leverage question isn't "how do we post more?" It's "which of these four is weakest right now?" ## The TRUTH Framework At SmplCo we run every piece of content through a framework we call TRUTH. If a story fails more than two of the five, we rework it. The **Tension** test is the one most founders consistently fail. **T — Topical.** Is this connected to something people are thinking about today? Timely stories travel further. **R — Relevant.** Would your ideal customer think "this is written for me"? Or does it read like it was written for everyone? **U — Unusual.** Is there something surprising or counterintuitive here? Predictable stories are forgettable stories. (The classic: "man bites dog.") **T — Trouble / Tension.** What's broken, at stake, or unresolved in this story? Every great story has a problem at its centre. Without tension, there's little reason to keep reading. **H — Human.** Who is the real person at the centre of this? Real people, real stakes, real emotion. The more specific and human, the more universal its appeal. The master formula, if you want to simplify it even further: **"Most people think X, but I've come to believe Y, which means Z."** If you can't complete that sentence, you don't have a story yet — you have a topic. ## Where Good Stories Come From Points of view are much better received than information alone. Combine what you know with what you believe. - **Industry-related content** (what's going on, what's changing) works best with cold audiences who don't know you yet. - **Organisational content** (your stance on how to do business, how to treat people) builds trust with warm audiences. - **Product content** (your expertise applied to real-world problems) converts audiences who are already considering a solution. Most founders default to product content far too early. They post about what they're selling, when the audience doesn't yet know why they should care. ## 8 Principles of Behavioural Science That Win Customers Customers don't make rational decisions. They think they do, but they don't — they make fast, intuitive ones, and then rationalise them afterwards. Understanding the cognitive shortcuts that drive behaviour is one of the highest-leverage things a founder can learn. Here are the eight that matter most: 1. **Social proof** — when uncertain, people look to what others are doing. Lead with specific customer numbers and verbatim quotes. *"Over 3,000 teams use us"* beats *"trusted by thousands."* 2. **Loss aversion** — losses feel roughly twice as powerful as equivalent gains. Reframe around what they're losing by not acting. *"Don't lose another deal"* often outperforms *"close more deals."* 3. **Authority bias** — people defer to perceived experts and credible sources, often without questioning the underlying evidence. Earn and display authority signals: press coverage, awards, advisors, speaking slots. 4. **Reciprocity** — when someone gives us something, we feel a deep obligation to give something back. Give genuine value before asking for anything. The gift must feel unconditional to work. 5. **Default effect** — people stick with whatever option requires no active choice. Changing defaults is one of the highest-leverage design moves. Make signing up easier than not signing up. 6. **Cognitive fluency** — the easier something is to understand, the more trustworthy and credible it feels. Clarity signals competence. Complexity signals risk. Rewrite your homepage until a 12-year-old could understand it. 7. **Anchoring** — the first number someone encounters sets a reference point that shapes all subsequent judgements. Always show your highest pricing tier first. Name your number first. 8. **Peak-End Rule** — people judge experiences by how they felt at the peak and at the end — not the average across the whole experience. A rocky middle is forgivable if the peak and ending are exceptional. Obsess over onboarding and the renewal moment. **The most powerful combination:** loss aversion + social proof + reciprocity. Show what others are gaining that your prospect is currently missing, and give them something useful for free before you ask for anything.

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## 6 Field Lessons That Actually Move the Needle We've distilled years of brand-building into six lessons we find ourselves repeating to founders over and over. **1. The founder voice is an unfair advantage — if you actually use it.** Institutional brand content from a startup is almost always weaker than content from the founder. People follow people, not logos. Your perspective, your reasoning, your mistakes, your bets on the future — none of that can be replicated by a competitor. The most powerful thing you can do for your brand costs nothing except courage: write in your actual voice about things you actually believe. Safe content is invisible content. **2. Story structure is a skill, not a gift.** The founders who communicate well aren't necessarily more interesting — they've learned how to structure what they say. Use this: **Tension** (something broken) → **Insight** (what you've learned) → **Implication** (what it means for how they should act). **3. Consistency beats virality.** Everyone wants the viral moment. But the brands and founders with durable attention aren't the ones who went viral. They're the ones who showed up reliably over time until showing up became expected. Virality is a lottery. Consistency is a compounding investment. Define your **minimum viable content commitment** — the volume and quality you can honestly sustain even in a bad week. **4. The medium is part of the message.** Most founders default to the formats they're most comfortable with rather than the ones most effective for what they're trying to say. Long-form writing builds authority over time. Short video earns attention fast but is easily forgotten. Podcasts create intimacy and loyalty that other formats rarely match. Events and roundtables generate high-trust attention no algorithm can replicate. Ask where your ideal customers are already paying attention voluntarily — not where they're being targeted. These are their "spheres of influence." Choose the format that lets you demonstrate your specific edge most credibly. **5. Distribution is at least half the work.** The best content nobody sees is just a diary entry. Most founders spend 90% of their effort on creation and 10% on distribution. It should be closer to 50/50. Distribution means building genuine relationships with people who have existing audiences, understanding which platforms have algorithmic tailwinds right now, and repurposing intentionally across channels. **6. Be honest with yourself about what you're putting off.** What's one thing you've been putting off for your brand because it felt too risky, too personal, or too time-consuming? And what would it mean for your business if you actually did it? Usually the answer to that question is the highest-leverage thing you could do this quarter. ## The Quick Reference If you want to distil everything above into a single checklist: - **TRUTH test** — Topical, Relevant, Unusual, Trouble, Human. Run every story through it before publishing. - **Master formula** — "Most people think X, but I've come to believe Y, which means Z." If you can't complete it, you have a topic, not a story. - **Behavioural triple** — loss aversion + social proof + reciprocity. - **Founder voice first.** Personal beats institutional every time. - **Consistency compounds.** Pick a cadence you can sustain on a bad week. - **Match format to purpose.** Where do your people actually pay attention? - **50/50 create vs distribute.** The best content nobody sees doesn't count. ## Want the Full Version? We've put all of the above — plus the detailed behavioural science cards and the full field lesson framework — into a free 6-page guide. [**Download: Attention Is New Gold — The Founder's Guide to Brand & Storytelling**](/attention-guide) It's genuinely practical. No buzzword salad, no thought-leadership filler. Just the frameworks we use every day to help founders earn attention that converts. And if you want to talk through how to apply it to your specific situation, [get in touch](/contact). It's the kind of thing we help with. --- # Your Brand Is Too Polished. That's the Problem. Date: 2026-04-21 · Author: Andreas Melvaer · Tags: Brand Strategy, Marketing, LinkedIn, Storytelling > A half-chaotic bar in Stavanger built a more distinctive presence than companies with much bigger budgets. Here is why polished is forgettable. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/polished-is-forgettable I've been thinking about this a lot lately after talking about [Gnu Bar and LinkedIn at Yggdrasilkonferansen](https://www.kode24.no/artikkel/tar-av-pa-linkedin-alt-ma-ikke-gjores-sa-forbanna-riktig/261403). Not because I think there is some big secret behind it, but because the whole thing is slightly absurd. A half-chaotic bar in Stavanger ended up building a more distinctive presence than a lot of very serious companies with proper budgets, proper strategies and much more sensible people involved. And I think the reason is fairly simple. Most brand communication is too polished to be remembered. If you open LinkedIn and scroll for half a minute, you will see the same tone, the same structure and the same safe little lessons dressed up as insight. Someone has learned something from a difficult conversation. Someone is being "vulnerable" in a very controlled way. Someone has an "unpopular opinion" that is, in fact, an extremely popular opinion. It is all so polished, careful and format-tested that it becomes impossible to remember. That is the trap. A lot of companies think they have a reach problem, when what they really have is a memorability problem. They are saying things that are perfectly fine, perfectly sensible and perfectly harmless, and that is exactly why nobody notices them. The content is not bad enough to be embarrassing, but not alive enough to matter. ![SmplCo on the main stage at Yggdrasilkonferansen](/images/blog/inline/yggdrasil-smpl-slide.jpg) Gnu Bar should probably not work. A few years ago, a group of us bought a bar that was in trouble. We did not have much of a marketing budget, so instead of doing what sensible people might do, I made a LinkedIn page for the bar and let it speak like a slightly unhinged gnu. The gnu has opinions, speaks Stavanger dialect, exaggerates shamelessly, picks fights and behaves in ways no brand consultant would ever recommend with a straight face. And that worked. Not because it was polished, but because it wasn't. It had edges. It sounded like itself. People either liked it or they didn't, but at least they remembered it. That matters more than people like to admit. The useful lesson is not that every company should invent a fictional animal and let it run loose on social media. It is simply that most of the standard advice pushes brands in the wrong direction. Companies are told to be professional, consistent, safe, clear, personal, vulnerable and broadly appealing, and the end result is often communication with no real shape to it at all. It has been sanded down so thoroughly that there is nothing left for people to grab onto.

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That is why polished content so often disappears. It may be competent. It may even be strategically correct. But it does not leave a mark. What people actually respond to is usually something more human than that. A real point of view. A recognisable voice. Some tension. Some risk. Something slightly awkward, specific or alive. Not chaos for the sake of it, and not empty provocation, just signs that there is an actual mind behind the words. ![Yggdrasil conference dinner — the room we were pitching to](/images/blog/inline/yggdrasil-dinner.jpg) If you are a founder, that is probably the more useful question to ask. Not "does this sound professional?" but "will anyone remember this tomorrow?" Those are not the same thing. A lot of founders know perfectly well that their safest content is also their weakest. They know the sharper version would be better. They know the real story is more interesting than the approved one. But they back away from it because it feels risky. That is fair enough. It is risky. But invisible is risky too. Probably riskier. The brands that cut through are usually not the ones trying hardest to look polished. They are the ones that feel distinct, alive and slightly difficult to ignore. That does not mean being louder. It just means being less generic. That is the whole point. **Polished is not the goal. Memorable is.** My colleague Mike has written a more structured take on [why attention is the new gold](/blog/attention-is-new-gold) — with the frameworks, the behavioural science, and the field lessons. If this piece is the field report, his is the playbook. Worth a read if you're thinking about how to apply any of this. And if you want help finding the actual voice of your brand — the one hiding underneath the sanded-down version — [get in touch](/contact). It's the kind of thing we help with. --- # Who Owns AI-Generated Code? A Founder's Legal Guide Date: 2026-04-15 · Author: Andreas Melvaer · Tags: AI, Development, Custom Software, Vibecoding > AI tools ship code in minutes. But can you copyright it? What if it copies someone else's work? Practical answers for founders building with AI. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/ai-code-ownership-legal **In short:** AI-assisted coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot can generate production-ready code in minutes. But the legal framework around who owns that code, whether it's copyrightable, and what happens when it inadvertently copies someone else's work hasn't caught up. If you're building products with AI, you need to understand the risks before you ship. ## The Speed Is Real. So Are the Questions. We use AI-assisted coding every day at SmplCo. It's how we [build products in five days](/blog/5-day-prototype-custom-software) instead of five months. It's how we [shipped our own internal tools](/blog/build-your-own-digital-ecosystem) in weeks. We're not sceptical about AI coding — we're practitioners. ![Developers pair-programming and reviewing AI-generated code together](/images/blog/inline/team-reviewing-code.jpg) But we've also had to think carefully about what it means when a significant chunk of your codebase was generated by a machine. Not because we're worried about quality — the code is often excellent. Because we're building products for clients who need to own what they've paid for. And right now, the law isn't entirely clear on that. ## Can You Copyright AI-Generated Code? This is the big one. In most jurisdictions, copyright requires a human author. The US Copyright Office has been explicit: works created entirely by AI, with no meaningful human creative input, [cannot be copyrighted](https://www.copyright.gov/ai/). But here's where it gets interesting. Most AI-assisted coding isn't fully autonomous. You're prompting it, reviewing it, editing it, directing it. You're making creative decisions about architecture, naming, structure, flow. The AI is more like a very fast junior developer than a replacement for human thought. **The practical reality:** - **Fully AI-generated code** (zero human editing) — likely not copyrightable - **AI-assisted code** (human-directed, reviewed, modified) — probably copyrightable, but untested in most courts - **AI-generated code that you substantially rework** — almost certainly copyrightable as a derivative work The problem is that "substantial" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. There's no bright line. Nobody's tested this properly in court yet, certainly not for code. ## What About the Training Data Problem? AI coding tools are trained on billions of lines of existing code — much of it open source, some of it proprietary. This creates two risks: **1. Accidental licence contamination.** If the AI generates code that's substantially similar to GPL-licensed code, your project might inherit those licence obligations. That could mean you're legally required to open-source your own code. For a commercial product, that's a nightmare. **2. Reproducing proprietary code.** There have been documented cases of Copilot generating near-verbatim snippets from its training data. If that snippet belongs to someone who didn't consent to it being used for training, you could have a copyright infringement problem. **What to do about it:** - Run licence scanning tools on AI-generated code (like FOSSA or Snyk) - Treat AI output as you would code from an untrusted source — review it - For critical or novel logic, write it yourself or heavily rework the AI output - Keep records of your prompts and editing process (this helps establish human authorship) ![Team discussing AI development approach and compliance in a working session](/images/blog/inline/team-discussing-project.jpg) ## The EU AI Act and What It Means for Developers The [EU AI Act](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/) came into force in 2025 and introduces obligations around transparency and risk. While coding tools are generally classified as limited-risk, there are requirements worth knowing: - **Transparency obligations.** If you're deploying AI-generated content (including code that powers user-facing features), you may need to disclose that AI was involved in its creation. - **High-risk classifications.** If your AI-assisted product touches healthcare, finance, or critical infrastructure, stricter rules apply — including documentation, human oversight, and conformity assessments. - **General-purpose AI models.** The providers of tools like Claude and GPT-4 have their own compliance obligations. But downstream users (that's you) share responsibility for how the outputs are used. In Norway, the [Datatilsynet](https://www.datatilsynet.no/) is actively engaging with AI governance. If you're building products for the Norwegian or European market, this isn't theoretical — it's compliance you need to plan for. ## Liability: When AI Code Breaks Things Here's a scenario we think about: you ship a product. The AI wrote a significant piece of the backend logic. That logic has a bug that causes a data breach. Who's liable? **Currently, the answer is: you are.** The company that ships the product bears the liability, regardless of whether a human or an AI wrote the problematic code. AI tool providers generally disclaim liability for the outputs in their terms of service. This isn't actually that different from using Stack Overflow or open-source libraries — you're responsible for what you ship. But it does mean that AI-generated code needs the same (or more) rigorous review as human-written code. The speed gain from AI is real, but it can't come at the cost of testing and review. ## What We Actually Do at SmplCo We've landed on a practical approach that balances speed with responsibility: - **We treat AI as a collaborator, not an autopilot.** Every piece of AI-generated code is reviewed, tested, and often substantially modified by a human developer. - **We keep prompt logs.** When building client products, we document the creative direction and decisions that shaped the code. This strengthens the case for human authorship. - **We run licence checks.** Automated scanning catches potential contamination before it reaches production. - **We're transparent with clients.** We explain that we use [AI-assisted development](/blog/what-is-vibe-coding) and what that means for their IP ownership. No surprises. - **We don't ship what we don't understand.** If the AI generates something clever but opaque, we either rewrite it or learn it before it goes live. ## Five Things You Should Do Right Now If you're building with AI coding tools, here's a practical checklist: 1. **Establish an AI usage policy.** Even a one-pager. What tools are approved? How should AI-generated code be reviewed? Who signs off? 2. **Document your process.** Keep records of prompts, creative decisions, and human modifications. This is your evidence of authorship if it's ever challenged. 3. **Run licence scanning.** Tools like FOSSA, Snyk, or even basic grep searches can flag potential GPL contamination in AI-generated code. 4. **Update your client contracts.** Make sure your IP assignment clauses account for AI-assisted development. Be explicit about it. 5. **Stay informed.** The law is evolving fast. The EU AI Act, US copyright rulings, and UK IP guidance are all in flux. What's grey today might be black or white next year. ## The Bottom Line AI-assisted coding is here to stay. We use it. We love it. We've built [150+ products](/work) with it. But the legal landscape is genuinely uncertain, and pretending otherwise is irresponsible. The good news is that the practical mitigations are straightforward: review what AI generates, document your creative input, scan for licence issues, and be transparent with clients. None of this slows you down meaningfully. It just means you're building responsibly. If you want to talk about how to adopt AI-assisted development without the legal headaches, [get in touch](/contact). It's the kind of thing we help with. --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **Can I own code that was written by AI?** It depends on how much human creative input was involved. Fully autonomous AI output is likely not copyrightable. But AI-assisted code where a human directed, reviewed, and modified the output is probably protectable — though this hasn't been definitively tested in court. **Does using GitHub Copilot or Claude Code create licence risks?** Potentially, yes. These tools are trained on open-source code, and there's a small risk of generating output that matches GPL or other copyleft-licensed code. Running licence scanning tools on AI-generated code is a sensible precaution. **Do I need to tell my clients I used AI to write their code?** There's no universal legal requirement yet, but transparency builds trust and protects you. Under the EU AI Act, certain transparency obligations may apply depending on your product's risk classification. We recommend being upfront about it. --- # We Replaced Our SaaS Stack with Custom Internal Tools Date: 2026-04-07 · Author: Andreas Melvaer · Tags: Custom Software, SaaS, Digital development, AI, CRM > We replaced scattered SaaS with a custom CRM, newsletter, task planner, and Meta Ads integration. What we learned about building internal tools. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/build-your-own-digital-ecosystem **In short:** If your team spends more time switching between tools than doing actual work, you can probably build something better yourself. Modern frameworks and AI-assisted development have made it realistic for small teams to build custom CRMs, planners, and marketing tools in weeks — and own the result entirely. ## The Problem with Off-the-Shelf SaaS Platforms Most companies run their business across a stack of tools they didn't choose — they inherited. A CRM here, a newsletter tool there, a project planner somewhere else, a website on a CMS that costs more to manage than it's worth. You end up paying for a thousand features and using forty. Nothing connects properly. You switch tabs more than you do actual work. And every time you want to change something, the answer is an upgrade, a plugin, or a workaround. We were in the same spot. We had a Framer site that was getting harder to maintain, a CRM workflow spread across spreadsheets and memory, and campaign reporting that meant logging into three different dashboards to figure out what was going on. ## What We Built: CRM, Newsletter, Planner, and Ad Tools So we built our own stuff — five custom tools to replace a handful of paid SaaS platforms: - **Custom CRM** — three-stage pipeline (Prospect, Active Client, Complete) replacing spreadsheet-based tracking - **Newsletter tool** — integrated with the same database as the CRM, no separate email platform needed - **Task planner** — connected to client data so we can see what work is happening for whom - **Meta Ads integration** — direct API connection for campaign deployment without dashboard-hopping - **Next.js website** — replaced the Framer CMS, achieving a 100% Ahrefs site health score We moved [the website](/) off Framer and onto Next.js. The Ahrefs health score went from patchy to 100%, but more importantly the site just became easier to work with — we can change things without fighting the platform. ![Ahrefs site audit showing 100% health score after moving off the CMS.](/images/blog/inline/ahrefs.jpg) The CRM has three stages. Prospect, active client, complete. That's it. Not seventeen pipeline steps named by someone who's never spoken to a client. The planner is linked to the CRM so we can see what work is happening for who. The newsletter tool sits in the same system, same database. ![Our suite of tools — CRM, Email, Planner, Strategy, Landing Pages, and Meta Ads — all connected as one system.](/images/blog/inline/oursuiteoftools.webp) We also built a strategy pipeline where [AI agents](/blog/vibecoding-how-we-actually-ship-products) handle positioning, landing pages, ad copy, and campaign deployment. Each step feeds context into the next one. The campaign tool talks directly to Meta's API, so we can deploy and monitor ads from the same place we manage everything else. **The trade-offs of building your own tools:** - No vendor support team — you maintain it yourself - Requires discipline to avoid feature creep - But: faster iteration — new features ship in hours, not vendor release cycles - Full data ownership and no per-seat licensing costs When we needed a new flag on contacts last week, it took an hour. No ticket, no vendor, no quarterly roadmap. ## Why Any Company Can Build Custom Internal Tools What's interesting isn't that we did this. It's that the barrier to doing it has dropped enough that [most companies could build at least some of their own tools](/blog/what-is-vibe-coding) — the ones where off-the-shelf platforms are either overkill or just don't fit. That doesn't mean it's trivial. You still need to think about what you're building and why. Scope creep is real. Maintenance is real. But the gap between what generic platforms offer and what your business actually needs is getting easier to close. A lot of businesses are stuck with too many tools, too much manual work, and systems that are more annoying than helpful. Same goes for websites — they often become [harder and more expensive to manage](/blog/power-apps-code-apps-custom-ui) than they need to be.

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## Five Things You Can Do This Week to Assess Your Situation You don't need to commit to anything. But if the SaaS sprawl is starting to feel heavy, these five steps will tell you whether building makes sense for your team. **1. Audit your tool stack.** List every paid tool your team uses. Next to each one, write the percentage of features you actually use. Anything under 20% is a candidate for replacement. **2. Find your most expensive workaround.** What's the one thing your team does manually because no tool does it the way you need? That clunky spreadsheet, that copy-paste between platforms, that report someone builds by hand every Monday. That's your first build candidate. **3. Calculate what you're really paying.** Add up not just the subscription fees, but the time cost — switching between dashboards, re-entering data, waiting for vendor support. Most teams are surprised when they see the real number. **4. Pick one small thing and prototype it.** Don't start with a CRM. Start with a dashboard, an admin panel, or an internal form that replaces a manual process. Something you could build in a weekend. See how it feels to own the tool. **5. Talk to your team.** Ask them: "What tool do you dread opening every day?" The answers will tell you where the biggest wins are. People know what's broken — they just assume it can't be fixed. If you want a structured approach to all of this, our [free Build Guide](/build-guide) walks through the decision process step by step. ## Build vs Buy: The Bottom Line You don't have to rip out everything and start from scratch. But next time you need a new capability, it's worth asking: do we actually need another platform, or can we just build this one thing? More often than you'd expect, the answer is yes. If you want to talk about it, [get in touch](/contact). --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **Is it realistic for a small team to build their own internal tools?** Yes. With modern frameworks like Next.js and AI-assisted coding tools like Claude Code, a team of two to three developers can build a functional CRM, task planner, or newsletter tool in a few weeks. The key is scoping tightly and resisting feature creep. **What are the main risks of building instead of buying?** You take on maintenance responsibility, you don't get a vendor support team, and you need the discipline to keep scope small. But you gain full ownership, zero per-seat costs, and the ability to ship changes in hours instead of waiting for vendor roadmaps. **How do you decide what to build vs what to buy?** Ask yourself: "Are we using less than 20% of this tool's features?" If yes, you are paying for complexity you don't need. Build when your workflow is specific enough that no off-the-shelf tool fits well. Our [free Build Guide](/build-guide) walks through the full decision process. --- # Successful Fundraising in 2026: What Investors Actually Want Date: 2026-03-28 · Author: Andreas Melvær · Tags: Fundraising, Eagle Labs, Prototyping, Product Development > We joined Neil Wood of Wood Associates London for a packed Eagle Labs webinar on fundraising. 300+ founders tuned in. Here is what they learned. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/successful-fundraising-2026 ## I recently watched our very own [Michael Millar](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmillarfrsa/) and [Neil Wood](https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-wood-85410286/) of Wood Associates (London) deliver a webinar for [Barclays Eagle Labs](https://labs.uk.barclays/) on successful fundraising in 2026. Over 300 founders showed up. The questions didn't stop. And the advice was worth every minute. Here's what I took away, and what every founder thinking about raising should know right now. You can [watch the full webinar on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJzeJmunyUg), but if you'd rather get the highlights distilled, read on. ## What does the investment landscape look like in 2026? Mixed. That's the honest answer. Neil, who set up [Wood Associates (London)](https://www.woodassociateslondon.net/) 14 years ago after spinning out of some of the major banks, said that contrary to all the doom and gloom the market is "cautiously optimistic", with investors prioritising profitability and robust business plans over inflated valuations. The sectors getting the most attention? AI (obviously), health tech, energy, and fintech. But here's the crucial nuance: investors are done with AI for the sake of AI. As SmplCo's Mchael put it: "AI that adds genuine value is really high on investors' minds right now. AI for the sake of AI is a waste of time. The kind that gives you defensibility, gets you to market faster, or solves a problem no one else can solve quite like you." The same lesson applied to blockchain a few years ago. Founders were bolting it into their decks because they thought investors expected it. Investors saw right through it. Don't make the same mistake with AI. ## Watch the full webinar ## Are investors writing bigger cheques? Yes. But to fewer companies. That's the paradox of the current market. Larger, more substantial cheques are being written, but investors are being far more selective about where they go. Due diligence is deeper than ever. The bar for evidence is higher. Which means the founders who do their homework are the ones who win. This is as true for Angel investors - of whom there are roughly 15,000 in the UK, investing about a billion pounds a year, mostly in early-stage ventures and taking advantage of SEIS and EIS tax relief - as it is for VCs looking to invest subtantially bigger sums. ## What do investors look at first? Neil was refreshingly direct about this. When someone arrives on his doorstep, the first thing he looks at is where they are on the revenue and traction journey. For Wood Associates, who focus on raises between £1m and £10m, the benchmark is around £200,000–£250,000 in actual revenue. Cash in the bank, not projections. For earlier-stage raises, it's different. Angels buy into people. Is the founder enthusiastic? Can they articulate the problem? Do they have the passion to stand in front of investors and make them believe? (One instructive guide comes from [Y Combinator](https://www.ycombinator.com/) co-founder, Paul Graham, who says investors are looking for a ‘formidable’ founder, who is a domain expert, believes deeply in their idea, and has the ability to overcome obstacles as and when they arise.) Then comes the market. How big is the problem? What's your TAM (total addressable market)? Can you capture enough of it to deliver a meaningful return? For tech businesses, investors are typically looking for 10–15x their initial capital over five years. Your market needs to be big enough to make that plausible.
Pitch deck challenge slide from the Pitch Prep Pack
One of the practical exercises in our free Pitch Prep Pack
## What collateral do you need to pitch to investors? This is where a lot of founders overthink it. Or underthink it. The essential documents, according to Neil, are: - **An investor deck** (10–12 slides max. 40-page decks get binned) - **A financial model** - **A one-page executive summary** for initial approaches - **MEGA BONUS: an interactive prototype** that brings your product to life Business plans and information memoranda? Neil rarely sees them these days. The deck and model do the heavy lifting. But within those documents, every word matters. The key sections to nail: your purpose, target audience, problem and solution, market analysis, evidence of traction, and your team. And the thing that's become increasingly important in 2026? **Traction.** Proof of concept. Evidence that people actually want what you're building. Even if you're pre-revenue, you can demonstrate this through letters of intent, development partners, beta users, or pilot customers. Investors are no longer willing to go on a wing and a prayer.

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## Do you need a prototype? The short answer is an emphatic 'yes'. A protoype can change everything. This is something we've seen at SmplCo **SO** many times. In the webinar, Michael quoted Chris Tottman, a well-known VC investor from [Notion Capital](https://www.notioncapital.com/): > "Investors are pattern-matching machines. We've seen thousands of pitch decks. When you put a working prototype in front of us, everything changes." A simple, interactive, clickable prototype that you can demonstrate live elevates you above the crowd. It turns your pitch from "let me tell you about my idea" into "let me show you." We create these, with Silicon Valley levels of UX and UI quality, [in five days](/blog/5-day-prototype-custom-software), and we've seen founders raise tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, off the back of them. It's the old adage: 'show, don't tell'. Decks simply can't bring what's in your head to life the way a prototype will. [Drop us a line](/contact) if you want us to explain further. ## How should you approach investors? Not with a blanket email blast. Please. Neil outlined four channels, and each requires a different approach: 1. **Warm introductions.** The gold standard. A founder they've already backed, or an angel whose judgement they trust, passes your details along. You're not making the approach; someone credible is doing it for you. This is what Neil does for a living. 2. **Back-channel networks.** A co-investor forwards your deck to another investor. Again, the recommendation comes from inside the ecosystem. 3. **Public presence.** LinkedIn, events, content, social proof. The more visible you are before you approach, the more likely investors have already heard of you when your deck lands. 4. **Cold outreach.** Not inferior, just harder. It's a different skill. If you don't know any investors, you can still raise. It just takes more persistence and a sharper message. ## Who are all these different investor types? Quick primer for those who need it: - **Angels**: High-net-worth individuals, sometimes investing alone, sometimes in syndicates to share risk - **Super angels / UHNW syndicates**: Larger individual cheques, typically up to a couple of million across a syndicate - **VCs (venture capitalists)**: Raise funds from limited partners (LPs), often structured as EIS funds. If your business is EIS-eligible, you're more attractive to them - **Family offices**: Start at around half a billion in total wealth. They invest their own money, move faster than VCs, are less risk-averse, and typically take a 20–25% stake - **PE houses**: Later-stage, profitable businesses. Usually take a 60%+ controlling stake The chronology matters: friends and family first, then angels, then Series A. Don't try to skip stages. If you haven't raised £500k, you're unlikely to raise £2.5m. You'll be too early-stage for the investors at that level. ## How do you nail the pitch itself? Mike's colleague Lasse (who sold his last company for $2.8 billion) always says: **"You've got three minutes to make or break your pitch."** Three minutes. If you don't capture attention at the start, you're done. Neil's pitch essentials: - Keep to time. Learn it by heart. No cue cards - Lots of eye contact - Tell a passionate, compelling story. You might be one of ten pitches that day - Cover anticipated investor questions in the deck itself so they're not left wondering - Don't be overconfident or defensive. If you've got this far, the investor is looking to invest. Go in with a positive attitude - **Know your numbers.** They will spot anomalies. If growth looks too steep or there's an unexplained cost spike, have an explanation ready ## The "Gina" technique: storytelling that sticks This was one of my favourite moments from the webinar. Mike shared a brilliantly simple storytelling exercise from our [Pitch Prep Guide](/pitch-prep) that helps founders open their pitch in a way that actually makes investors sit up: Create a character. Give them a name. Say, 'Gina'. Gina has a problem. Describe who she is and what she does, her day, her frustrations, and the pain she's dealing with. Now show what happens when Gina uses your solution. A, B, C and - boom! - Gina's day is transformed. She gets XYZ specific benefits and they matter to her for [the following reasons...] It's simple. It's human. And it works because without Gina, you're just another faceless product. With Gina, you're telling a story investors can see, feel, and remember. Our guide walks you through the whole exercise. [Grab it free here](/pitch-prep). ## What happens after they say "we're interested"? The hard work doesn't stop. Neil walked through the post-pitch journey: 1. **Due diligence.** They interrogate everything in your data room (i.e. a secure, centralised place where you've stored all your important, confidential documents). This process is getting deeper and more thorough every year. 2. **Term sheet.** A negotiating document outlining how much they'll invest, at what valuation, and under what conditions. 3. **Pre-conditions.** They might want you to hire a finance director, strengthen the management team, or hit certain milestones before the money flows. 4. **Contract and close.** Negotiate the term sheet, sign the contract, receive the investment. It's rarely linear. It takes patience, persistence, and a thick skin. ## The bottom line Fundraising in 2026 is harder in some ways. More due diligence, higher expectations around traction, deeper scrutiny of your numbers. But bigger cheques are being written for founders who get it right. The formula hasn't changed: solve a real problem, prove people want it, tell a compelling story, know your numbers, and approach the right investors in the right way. If you want to go deeper, [watch the full webinar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJzeJmunyUg). And if you want hands-on help getting investor-ready, from prototypes to pitch decks to introductions, [download our free Pitch Prep Guide](/pitch-prep) or [get in touch](/contact). We're offering free half-hour investor-readiness consultations. Choose from: - **An Investor-Ready Audit** with Neil and Michael - focus: your journey to landing investment; AND/OR - **An Investment Story Audit** with Michael and Andreas (MD of SmplCo) - focus: how to best tell investors your story (including the specific collateral you will need to win them over) No strings attached. Because the founders who prepare properly are the ones who raise successfully. And that's what we want to see. ## A word on Barclays Eagle Labs A massive thank you to the [Barclays Eagle Labs](https://labs.uk.barclays/) team — and [Lilly Chatwin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilly-chatwin-782762194/) in particular — for hosting this session. Eagle Labs is a genuinely brilliant resource for founders at any stage. They've got 42 locations across the UK, everything they offer is completely free, and you don't need to bank with Barclays to benefit. If you're raising or thinking about raising, their [Demo Directory](https://labs.uk.barclays/demo-directory/) is well worth a look. It's a great way to get your product in front of the right people. And their Female Founders Rise programme is doing important work to close the gender gap in funding. Check them out. ## Watch the full webinar --- # Is Your Website AI-Ready? 5 Tips for Maximum AEO Date: 2026-03-20 · Author: Michael Millar, Partner, SmplCo · Tags: AEO, SEO, AI Search, Digital Marketing, Website > AEO is the new SEO. Here's exactly how we optimised our website for AI search — and the 5 tips you can steal today. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/aeo-tips We ran an AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) audit to see how visible SmplCo’s site was to AI search engines. The results weren’t pretty. “SmplCo has strong content and brand foundations,” the report, created in Claude AI, began. So far so good. But it went rapidly downhill from there. “The site is currently near-invisible to AI answer engines,” the report went on, giving us a 4.5/10 AEO score and concluding that “significant improvements needed before AI answer engines will feature.” Eek. --- ## What Even Is AEO? Using the best practise steps outlined below we set about fixing things. And - spoiler alert - when we ran the audit again we go a 9.6/10. Hooray! In a minute we’ll tell you exactly how we did it - and how you can do it too - but first let’s get our heads around AEO. Try this little experiment. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude Chat or Google's AI Overview and search for something in your industry. Now ask yourself: does your website show up as a source? If the answer is no — or "I have no idea" — then you've got an AEO problem. AEO is best seen as a new generation of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Instead of optimising to rank on a search results page, you're optimising to be *cited* by AI. And the rules are different enough that most websites aren't ready for it. --- ## Why does AEO matter? Traditional SEO is about getting to page one of Google. AEO is about being the source that AI tools pull from when someone asks a question — in ChatGPT, in Perplexity, in Google's AI Overviews (or in whatever comes next!) The shift matters because AI search doesn't show ten blue links. It shows one answer. If that answer isn't you, **you're invisible**. AEO is particularly important to SmplCo because we’re operating in a space where tech-savvy founders and innovation teams will go to AI chat ask questions like "how long does it take to build an MVP?", "what is vibe coding?", or " do I need a prototype to attract investors?" All this means AEO is arguably more valuable (to us, anyway) than SEO, because it places SmplCo directly in the moment of consideration. It puts us closer to potential clients who are actively considering buying all the (extremely high quality!) stuff that we provide. That's why we put the time and effort into auditing and rebuilding the SmplCo website with this in mind. And here’s what we did to resurrect our score from a miserable 4.5 to the 9.6 we're really quite proud of - and how you can do it too. ---
![AEO audit score improvement](/images/blog/inline/aeo-blog-image-2.png)

Our full audit score ...not great

## Tip 1: Structure Your Content Around Questions AI engines are question-answering machines. They scan content looking for clear, direct answers to specific questions. If your website is full of vague brand prose ("We deliver transformative solutions for dynamic markets"), you're invisible to them. **What to do:** - Rewrite your key pages so they directly answer the questions your customers actually ask - Use H2 and H3 headings phrased as questions: *"What is AEO?"*, *"How much does X cost?"*, *"What's the difference between X and Y?"* - Lead with the answer in the first sentence of each section — don't bury it Think of it less like writing copy and more like writing a really good FAQ. Because that's essentially what AI is looking for. --- ## Tip 2: Add Schema Markup (Structured Data) This one is the most technical tip on the list, but it's worth doing. Schema markup is code you add to your website that tells search engines (and AI systems) exactly what your content *is* — not just what it says. The types that matter most for AEO: - **FAQPage schema** — marks up your Q&A content so AI can parse it directly - **Article schema** — identifies your blog posts as credible, dateable content - **Organization schema** — establishes who you are, what you do, and where you're based We added JSON-LD schema across our key pages and blog posts. It's not glamorous work, but it's the difference between AI *guessing* what your content means and *knowing*. --- ## Tip 3: Write for Snippets, Not Just Rankings Here's the practical version of Tip 1. When AI pulls a citation, it typically grabs a short, self-contained chunk of text — usually 40–60 words that answer a question cleanly and completely. **The format AI loves:** > *[Direct answer to the question in one sentence. Then 1–2 sentences of supporting context or nuance. Keep it under 60 words total.]* Train yourself to write introductory paragraphs this way for every section. Lead with the answer. Follow with the detail. If someone could pull out just that first paragraph and share it as a complete response — you've nailed it. We restructured several service pages on the SmplCo site using this approach. The change was subtle on the surface but significant for how AI engines read us. --- ## Tip 4: Build Your E-E-A-T Signals E-E-A-T stands for **Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness**. It's a framework Google uses to evaluate content quality — and AI search engines have adopted similar signals to decide whose content is worth citing. In plain English: AI needs to know you're credible before it quotes you. **How to build E-E-A-T:** - Add author bios with real credentials and links to their work - Publish case studies with specific, verifiable outcomes (not just "we increased revenue") - Link out to credible sources when you make claims - Get mentioned and linked to from other reputable websites in your industry - Keep your About page up to date with your actual team and history The SmplCo blog now includes proper author attribution and links to real outcomes from client work. Small changes, but they signal legitimacy to both humans and machines. --- ## Tip 5: Keep Your Content Fresh and Factually Accurate AI search engines aren't static. They're continuously learning, and they have a strong preference for content that is current, accurate, and not contradicted by more recent sources. Stale content gets deprioritised. Outdated stats get ignored. Pages that haven't been touched in three years are a liability. **What this looks like in practice:** - Review your key pages every quarter — update stats, refresh examples, fix anything that's gone out of date - Add a "last updated" date to long-form content - When you publish new posts or case studies, link back to older relevant content (and update those older pages to link forward) - Delete or consolidate thin pages that no longer serve a purpose We now treat content hygiene as a regular task, not a one-off project. It compounds over time. --- ## The Bottom Line AEO isn't a replacement for SEO — it's what SEO is becoming. The fundamentals of good content still apply: be clear, be helpful, be accurate. But the *delivery* of that content needs to be optimised for a world where AI is the first thing people ask, not a search bar. The five tips above are exactly what we applied to the SmplCo website. None of them are secret sauce. They're just disciplined execution of things most websites skip. **If you want help auditing your site for AI searchability, or rebuilding pages to be AEO-ready — [get in touch](/contact) or email me on [mike@smpl.as](mailto:mike@smpl.as).** **It's the kind of thing we do well. And we have a report to prove it...** ---
Michael Millar

About the Author

Michael Millar is a partner and founder of SmplCo. Before taking on Go-To-Market responsibilities for both SmplCo and our clients, he was a journalist (BBC, Reuters, Spectator, etc.), political lobbyist and global comms leader. --- # Why no-one is using your Power Apps and how to fix it. Date: 2026-03-03 · Author: Andreas Melvaer · Tags: Development > Power Apps Code Apps are reshaping enterprise software. Andreas Melvaer and Samsari's Oliver Lyso discuss what this shift means for your business. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/power-apps-code-apps-custom-ui SmplCo's managing partner Andreas Melvaer sat down with Oliver Lyso, developer and managing director at Samsari — Microsoft app specialists — to talk about a shift that's been quietly reshaping enterprise software: Power Apps Code Apps. The takeaway? The days of clunky internal tools are numbered. ## Who This Is For If any of these sound familiar, this is relevant to you: - You're already on Microsoft 365 or Dynamics but your internal tools feel dated and clunky - You've tried Power Apps before but hit the limits of the standard component library - Your teams have low adoption on internal tools — they default to spreadsheets and email instead - You want custom software but need it to fit within your existing Microsoft security and compliance framework - You're paying for platform capabilities you're barely using The technology has caught up. The question now is whether your tools will catch up with it. ## Power Apps Has Changed — You Can Actually Build What You Want Now The big shift is Code Apps. You can now use React, work in Visual Studio Code, deploy with the Power Platform CLI — and still get everything the Microsoft platform gives you. Dataverse, security, roles, integrations. It's the best of both worlds. You're not stuck inside the standard component library anymore. You can build the solution exactly the way you want it, without the compromises that used to come with Power Apps. ## What This Means for User Experience The number one reason internal tools fail isn't the technology — it's adoption. People don't use them because they're painful to use. The interfaces are clunky, the workflows don't match how people actually work, and eventually everyone finds a workaround in Excel or email. When you can build a proper React frontend on top of the Microsoft stack, you can give people interfaces that are genuinely good to use. Not just functional — actually well-designed. SmplCo is a product design and development company — we think about user journeys, interaction patterns, visual design. Pairing that with deep Microsoft expertise means customers can now get state-of-the-art user interfaces on their Microsoft apps. ## The AI Acceleration With tools like Claude Code, Copilot, and even the Figma MCP, you can go from idea to design to working app much faster than before. The Figma-to-code pipeline has gotten incredibly fast. And when you combine that with the Power Platform — where your data layer, security model, and integrations are already in place — you're not starting from zero. ## Getting More Out of What You Already Pay For Most organisations are paying for huge platforms and using a fraction of the features. The opportunity here isn't about buying more software. It's about unlocking the value of what you've already got. A well-designed Power App with a proper React frontend can replace three separate tools and a stack of spreadsheets — using infrastructure the company is already paying for. And because it's all inside the Microsoft ecosystem, you get security, compliance, and governance out of the box. If you want to explore what's possible with Code Apps, AI-assisted development, and proper product design on the Microsoft stack, [get in touch](/contact). --- # From Post-it to Product in 5 Days Date: 2026-03-02 · Author: Andreas Melvaer · Tags: Prototyping > SmplCo founders on the 5-Day Prototype process, how AI has supercharged it, and why seeing really is believing. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/5-day-prototype-custom-software SmplCo founders Michael Millar and Andreas Melvaer have helped build over 150 digital products — from scrappy start-up MVPs to enterprise innovation platforms. Here they explain the process behind SmplCo's 5-Day Prototype, how new AI tooling has supercharged it, and why seeing really is believing. ## Why Seeing Is Believing Most digital projects fail before they start. Not because the idea is bad, but because the gap between "what if" and "here it is" takes too long to cross. Six months of discovery. Three rounds of stakeholder alignment. A deck that gets shelved. We created the 5-Day Prototype because of a simple truth: people don't buy ideas. They buy what they can see and touch. A slide deck describes what something could be. A prototype shows what it will be. That distinction matters when you're trying to win budget from a board, convince an investor, or align a team that's been arguing in circles for months. After five days, you walk away with a clickable, high-fidelity prototype that lets you bring your idea to life and move rapidly towards your next strategic goal. ![Workshop session](/images/blog/inline/prototype-inline.jpg) *Mapping out the user journey during a workshop session — where ideas start taking shape.* ## How the 5 Days Actually Work **Day 1: The Workshop** — We sit down with the customer and run a structured workshop. We interview stakeholders, ask hard questions about what the product actually needs to do, and start sketching the user journey live in the room. **Days 2–3: Design Sprint** — Our design team translates the workshop output into high-fidelity Figma designs — real UI, real flows, real interactions. Not placeholder boxes. Actual interfaces that look and feel like the final product. **Days 4–5: The Visionary Prototype** — By the end of the week, we deliver a clickable, interactive experience that communicates the full vision of the product — what it looks like, how it flows, how it feels. ![Design system and UI components](/images/blog/inline/prototype-inline-2.jpg) *From sketch to screen — the design system and UI components that come together during a prototype sprint.* ## From Prototype to Product: The New Playbook Here's where things have changed dramatically. With the Figma-Claude MCP, we can take our Figma designs and generate production-ready code that's deployed directly to GitHub. The classic friction between product designer and developer is dramatically reduced. Figma recognised this shift when they wrote about our work with Saddle, a Norwegian SaaS platform for M&A decision-making. Using Figma Make combined with our 5-Day Prototype process, we took Saddle from concept to a working, deployed MVP in two weeks. ## Why This Changes the Build-vs-Buy Equation When you can go from idea to interactive prototype in a week, and from prototype to working product in another week or two, the maths changes. You're no longer choosing between a costly enterprise subscription and a six-month custom development project. With tools like Claude Code handling code generation, and the Figma MCP bridging the gap between design and development, it's now possible for clients to make data available and start populating tools via APIs almost immediately. ## Start With Five Days If you're sitting on an idea — whether it's a new product, an internal tool, or a replacement for a SaaS subscription — the question isn't whether you can afford to prototype it. It's whether you can afford not to. Five days. One prototype. A clear path forward. [Get in touch](/contact) and let's build something. --- # Your SaaS Bill Is Lying to You (Here's How to Audit It) Date: 2026-03-02 · Author: Andreas Melvaer · Tags: Strategy > Most organisations use only 5-10% of the features they pay for in their SaaS subscriptions. Here's how to audit your spend and decide what to build instead. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/saas-audit-build-custom-tools Here's a number that should make every CFO uncomfortable: most organisations use between 5 and 10 percent of the features in their SaaS subscriptions. The rest is waste. And it adds up fast. ## The SaaS Bloat Problem Enterprise software has a dirty secret. Those "all-in-one" platforms that promise to handle everything? They're designed to be sticky, not efficient. They bundle hundreds of features because that justifies the price tag — not because you need them. The result: your team uses a handful of core features and ignores the rest. But you're paying for all of it. Every month. ## How to Audit Your SaaS Spend Start by asking three questions about each tool: 1. **What features do we actually use?** Not what we could use. Not what we planned to use when we bought it. What do people actually open and interact with every day? 2. **What would it cost to build just those features?** With AI-assisted development, the answer is often less than you'd think — and less than a year's subscription. 3. **What's the switching cost?** Consider data migration, training, and integration work. Sometimes the switching cost is genuinely high. Often, it's lower than inertia makes it feel. ## When Building Makes More Sense Than Buying The build-vs-buy equation has shifted dramatically. When you can go from idea to working product in two to three weeks using a prototype-first process with AI-assisted development, the calculus changes. A purpose-built tool that does exactly what your team needs — nothing more, nothing less — often costs less than a year of a bloated SaaS subscription. And it fits your workflow perfectly because it was designed around it. ## The New Economics The combination of rapid prototyping, AI code generation, and modern deployment infrastructure means custom software is no longer the expensive, slow option. In many cases, it's the cheaper, faster one. If your SaaS bill is growing but your team's productivity isn't, it might be time for an audit. [Get in touch](/contact) and we'll help you figure out what to keep, what to cut, and what to build. --- # What Is Vibe Coding? (And Why Most Founders Get It Wrong) Date: 2026-03-02 · Author: Andreas Melvaer · Tags: Development > Vibe coding is everywhere — but most founders misunderstand what it actually means and how to use it effectively. Here's what you need to know. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/what-is-vibe-coding Vibe coding is the hot new term in tech — but most founders are getting it completely wrong. They think it means letting AI write all the code while they sit back. The reality is more nuanced, more powerful, and more dangerous if you don't understand it. ## What Vibe Coding Actually Is At its core, vibe coding is about using AI tools to translate your intent into working code. You describe what you want — the "vibe" — and AI generates the implementation. Tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Lovable have made this increasingly accessible. But here's the catch: the quality of what comes out depends entirely on the quality of what goes in. And that's where most founders stumble. ## Why Most Founders Get It Wrong The biggest mistake is thinking vibe coding eliminates the need for product thinking. It doesn't. It accelerates the execution of decisions — but it doesn't make those decisions for you. If you vibe-code without a clear product vision, you'll get code fast. But it'll be the wrong code. You'll build features no one needs, miss critical user flows, and end up with something that technically works but practically fails. ## How to Do It Right The founders who get the most out of vibe coding are the ones who combine it with strong product design fundamentals. They workshop their ideas first. They map user journeys. They create high-fidelity prototypes. And then they use AI to turn those well-defined designs into working software. This is exactly the approach we take at SmplCo. Our 5-Day Prototype process gives you the product clarity that makes vibe coding actually effective. You're not coding vibes into the void — you're coding against a validated, tested design. ## The Bottom Line Vibe coding is a genuine revolution in how software gets built. But like any powerful tool, it amplifies whatever you point it at. Point it at a well-designed product and you'll ship faster than ever. Point it at a vague idea and you'll build technical debt faster than ever. The smart move is to invest in the thinking before you invest in the coding. [Get in touch](/contact) if you want to explore how. --- # Testing OpenClaw at SmplCo: Nothing this fun is risk free... Date: 2026-02-11 · Author: SmplCo · Tags: AI, OpenClaw, Agents, Automation > We have been experimenting with OpenClaw — not as a 'we replaced our team with AI' story, but as a serious test of agentic coding for production work. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/openclaw Over the past week, we've been experimenting with something called OpenClaw. Not as a "we replaced our team with AI" story. But as a serious test of what autonomous AI agents can realistically do inside a small company. And we are hooked! This post is about what OpenClaw actually is, why we're running it on a dedicated machine, and what we're learning. ## What is OpenClaw? [OpenClaw](https://openclaw.ai) is an open-source agent framework. In practical terms, that means: - You can create AI "agents" with specific roles - They can run on schedules (cron jobs) - They can access APIs, email, documents, or websites - They can communicate with each other - They can perform recurring tasks autonomously Instead of prompting ChatGPT manually, you design a system where agents operate continuously in the background. That's powerful. And that's exactly why you need to be careful and not just install it on your personal computer. ![The Cron-automations we have set up, including dinner recommendations](/images/blog/inline/openclaw-inline.jpg) *The Cron-automations we have set up, including dinner recommendations.* ## What We've Actually Built So Far Within this isolated environment, we've designed and deployed a small agent ecosystem. Along with lots of automated jobs, visual dashboards that shows whats going on and even a tiny CRM based on our figjam kanban board. Here's what currently exists inside the dedicated OpenClaw machine: ![Claw made a CRM that links to our Figjam kanban-board that we use for planning](/images/blog/inline/openclaw-inline-2.jpg) *Claw made a CRM that links to our Figjam kanban-board that we use for planning.* ## Meet the System (As It Actually Runs) This is changing by the hour and we are learning all the time. Here's the short version as of 11th of February at 11:22 CET: ### SmplClaw, Orchestrator (The Boss) Routes tasks, monitors health, manages cron jobs, logs everything. Our main pint of contact for running the team ### Penelope, Ops & Inbox (The assistant) Has her own inbox at assistant@smpl.as. Checks email every 5 minutes, drafts replies (never auto-sends), prepares meeting briefs, flags unanswered threads. Runs under strict email safety rules verified daily by SmplClaw. ### HawkClaw, Opportunity Monitor (The sales rep) Scans selected platforms, summarizes relevant briefs, drafts only, never sends without approval. ### SmplContent, (The writer) Creates blog posts first drafts, newsletters, documentation. Structured output. No publishing rights, All our stuff is still written by humans and published by humans, we thing we are still better than AI at this. ### ClawArtist, Visual Generator Produces visuals on demand. No autonomous posting. ### ArchClaw + DevClaw Architecture first. Then technical scaffolding. These are the Dev. team. ### FigmaClaw Design system structuring + API sync between figmjam boards and CRM. (something thats relevant to our business). ### SEOClaw Website audits, keyword clustering, prioritized improvement lists. ### ClawExpert Continuously optimizes the OpenClaw setup itself. And is supposed to read everything about OpenClaw ![Making sure we are not spending too many tokens](/images/blog/inline/openclaw-inline-3.jpg) *Making sure we are not spending too many tokens* ## Infrastructure Behind It - 11 agents - 12 cron jobs (automatons) - Inbox checks every 5 minutes - Morning briefs at 08:00 - Weekly cost reports - Health checks every 2 hours - Nightwatch monitoring every 30 minutes --- # The Case for Disciplined Vibecoding Date: 2026-02-01 · Author: Andreas Melvaer · Tags: Vibecoding, Product Development, Lovable, AI, Development > Bjorn Ivar and I built a mini SaaS, Wallogo, using vibecoding. What we learned about shipping production software with AI in days, not months. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/vibecoding-how-we-actually-ship-products Let me back up. When SmplCo founder and serial entrepreneur Bjorn Ivar and I started building the mini SaaS - [Wallogo](https://www.wallogo.com/), we didn't want to spend months debating wireframes and user flows in a vacuum. We wanted to feel what we were building. So we jumped straight into Lovable and started creating the actual experience - not mockups, not specifications, but a real product you could interact with. Click it. Break it. See how it felt. Something clicked when we did that. Decisions started to stick. The friction between what we imagined and what we were making just evaporated. We were moving fast, sure, but it felt controlled. Calm, even. The kind of pace where you're still thinking clearly. ## The Experience Comes First I think a lot of teams get this backwards. They start with technical constraints - databases, APIs, infrastructure - and then try to bolt experience on top. It feels logical, but it's usually backwards. What we discovered is that if you start with what people actually do and see, everything else becomes way easier to figure out. The flow. The decisions they make. The moment-to-moment experience. When you nail that first, the structure kind of falls into place naturally. With [Lovable](https://lovable.dev/), Bjorn Ivar and I could iterate on the actual user experience in hours, not sprints. We'd rebuild entire sections when something didn't feel right. No gatekeeping. No process overhead. Just "does this work better?" Designers, product thinkers, developers - we were all in the same space thinking about the same thing. ![wallogo.com is built in Lovable](/images/blog/inline/vibecoding-inline.png) *wallogo.com is built in Lovable* ## From Feeling to Structure Here's the thing about vibecoding that most people get wrong: it's not a shortcut. It's actually more disciplined than traditional approaches, just in different ways. Once we felt confident about the experience - when it flowed right and users understood it intuitively - we'd step back and ask the LLM to formalize what we'd built. We'd write something like: "We've designed the user experience and we're happy with how it works. Can you propose a clean database schema that makes sense for this flow, map out the key journeys step by step, and show me how the systems connect?" The structures that came back weren't off-the-wall ideas dreamed up by an AI. They made sense because they were grounded in actual user behavior we'd already designed. We could challenge them, iterate on them, validate them. Only after we felt good about the architecture did we actually connect it to the real infrastructure - databases, payments, authentication, all of it. And the prompts we wrote? Those became intellectual property. We keep them secure and refine them over time. ## Why Clarity Matters More Than Speed I've watched teams try to use vibecoding as a way to move faster without thinking harder. That almost never works. In fact, that's usually where things fall apart. LLMs are terrible at messes. If you just keep patching the same project, asking for tweaks and fixes, the quality slowly degrades. I've learned it's usually smarter to stop, take a breath, and reset. Get your vibecoder to extract what's actually working, write a clean new prompt, and start fresh in a new project. It sounds inefficient, but it's not. What actually saves time is having a crystal-clear picture of what you want to build before you touch the keyboard. Vibecoding amplifies intent - which means if your intent is fuzzy, everything that follows is fuzzy too. Spending time on clarity at the start pays dividends. The other thing: don't underestimate structure. Changing colors or layouts is trivial. Restructuring your data model or rethinking core assumptions halfway through? That's expensive. Getting that right early matters. ![Central prompts are kept in our own CMS](/images/blog/inline/vibecoding-inline-2.png) *Central prompts are kept in our own CMS* ## Building With Purpose I'm lucky to work with designers like Line Hjartarson, who won Lovable's She Builds initiative with[Get To Give](https://gettogive.co/). Line used vibecoding for something that couldn't have been solved the traditional way - a product designed around how kids experience generosity. That needed emotion, tone, interaction design. All the things you can't specify in a requirements document. Line had to explore the design before the structure made sense. But because she had such a clear vision of what the product needed to feel like, that exploration had a direction. It wasn't wandering - it was deliberate. And vibecoding let her do that without losing control. That's when I realized: this isn't just about speed. It's about protecting your intent while you move fast. ## What Vibecoding Actually Requires The biggest shift I've noticed is that vibecoding opens up who gets to participate in product building. You don't need everyone to memorize syntax or understand infrastructure. You need people who understand users, problems, and outcomes. The technical barrier comes down. But - and this is crucial - your judgment matters more, not less. Someone still needs to know when to trust the AI and when to push back. Someone still needs to sense when something is off even if the code looks clean. That judgment is where experience lives. Over the last few years, I've been teaching these workflows through our bootcamps - the Lovable bootcamp and the Figma bootcamp we run at W3Schools. The thing I notice is that practitioners learn faster than anyone else. You can't really understand this stuff from theory. You have to build something, watch it fail, figure out why, and rebuild it. That's where the intuition develops. ## The New Normal Honestly, I don't think of vibecoding as a trend anymore. It's just how we work now. It's how teams who want to move with confidence and clarity move. You're not cutting corners. You're just changing the order. Design experience before you commit to structure. Explore before you build at scale. Let clarity lead. The teams who figure this out early - who treat vibecoding as a real discipline and not a hack - they ship differently. Fewer false starts. Less friction between people. Better alignment on what matters. And the products that come out the other side actually look like what people imagined. That's worth learning. ![Get to Give - the She Builds winner](/images/blog/inline/vibecoding-inline-3.png) *Get to Give - the She Builds winner.* --- # How to win an AI hackathon / buildathon Date: 2026-01-20 · Author: Line Hjartarson & Andreas Melvær · Tags: AI, Hackathon, Buildathon, Innovation, Strategy > Taking part in an AI hackathon can be a real career accelerator. Here is how SmplCo won Lovable's SheBuilds international hackathon — what actually worked. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/how-to-win-ai-hackathon-buildathon ## Taking part in an AI hackathon - or buildathon - can be an awesome opportunity for entrepreneurs and innovators. These sprints - often over 48-hours - help you: - validate your idea - advance your product - get access to money and expertise - win free software support - get your - and your product's - name in lights (see below) But innovators often approach them in totally the wrong way. We recently helped the fantastic team at [Get to Give](https://gettogive.co/) win a buildthon run by the fastest growing software company in the world, [Lovable](https://lovable.dev/). If you want to find out how we did it - and how to give yourself the best chance of success - then here's our step-by-step guide. ![Press coverage of Get to Give's buildathon win](/images/blog/inline/hackathon-inline.webp) *Press coverage of Get to Give's buildathon win* ## Day One is not Day One Let's be honest: the notion of a "48-hour" hackathon is a LIE. If you show up on Day One waiting for inspiration to strike, you've already lost. The teams that walk away with the oversized cheques and the VC meetings didn't win during the weekend. They won in the weeks before. A buildathon isn't a sprint; it's a heist. You need a plan, a map, and the right tools packed before you even step in the building (all of which we'll cover below). ![Don't be looking for ideas when the clock is running](/images/blog/inline/hackathon-inline-2.png) *Don't be looking for ideas when the clock is running* ## 2. Make sure you're solving a real problem (not just a cool one) We see the same error all the time. Innovators: - fall in love with a piece of tech and try to retrofit a problem to it; and/or - try to solve a problem they have, but no one else has (or least not a scalable number); and/or - try to solve a problem in a way that no one needs In every case the true value of the idea exists in their head, and their head alone. Don't be that person. Start with a validated idea. Something that actually hurts and needs fixing - ideally urgently. If your idea doesn't solve a genuine pain point, no amount of LLM magic will save it. Hackathon judges are looking for utility, not just a tech demo. Validate the problem before you write a single line of code. ![Problem solvers: Get to Give helps children develop empathy and generosity](/images/blog/inline/hackathon-inline-3.png) *Problem solvers: Get to Give helps children develop empathy and generosity* ## 3. Mise-en-place: pre-cook your ingredients Chefs don't start chopping onions when the dinner rush starts. They prep. Make as many ingredients as you can before the clock starts ticking. In particular, consider prepping your: - UI Components: Have your buttons, cards, and nav bars ready - Assets: Stockpile your images, icons, and animations When the hackathon starts, you want to be assembling, not designing from scratch. You should be building the house, not making the bricks. ## 4. Kill the "AI Aesthetic" If your app looks like it was designed by Midjourney v4 (by that we mean neon purples, cyber-grid backgrounds, glowing nodes, etc.) you are going to blend in with 90% of the room. To win, you need to stand out. And right now, standing out means looking human. Create a unique visual identity. Design something that looks tactile, grounded, and distinct. (And pleeeease avoid the default "AI purple gradients.") The judges are tired of the same sci-fi tropes. Give them something that feels real and engaging and …human. ![AI Aesthetic, featuring SmplCo MD (and article author), Andreas](/images/blog/inline/hackathon-inline-4.png) *AI Aesthetic, featuring SmplCo MD (and article author), Andreas* ## Dry Run Your Prompts Here is the dirty secret of AI development: AI sucks at iterating. If you are tweaking your system prompts during the hackathon, you are wasting time. (By 'system prompts', we mean the foundational instructions that lay down the general rules for how your AI operates.) AI is a powerful engine, but it needs a precise steering wheel. Dry run your prompts beforehand. Test them until they deliver exactly what you envision, every single time. When the pressure is on, you need reliable outputs, not hallucinations. ![You could put anything in that prompt box. But you shouldn't.](/images/blog/inline/hackathon-inline-5.png) *You could put anything in that prompt box. But you shouldn't.* ## The "Friend of a Friend" Test You need feedback, but you need the right kind of feedback. Testing on your friends is OK, but they'll often be too nice. (And 'nice feedback' is the kind of feedback that ends up bankrupting you.) Same goes for testing on your family. But the gold standard? Have your friends test it on their friends. You need to be one step removed to get the truth. By removing yourself from the room, you strip away the politeness filter and get the raw, honest feedback you need to pivot before the demo. ## The Demo Video is Everything You can build the greatest tech stack in the world, but if your demo video is boring, you lose. A great video can make a broken prototype look like a finished product. Do NOT leave the video until the last hour. Start scripting your video early. Focus on the narrative in the context of the category, competition or judging criteria, and tell it in this order: - Show the pain / problem - Introduce the solution & its benefits - Reveal the magic of it in action - Show the delightful results If you remember nothing else, remember to focus the benefits FIRST in your storytelling. No one cares about your shiny thing until they know what's in it for them. When it comes to making it, remember you're on an AI hackathon! So make AI do the work. Below is the video we made for Get To Give, which won Lovable's SheBuilds buildathon. For this, we used stills from Gemini's [Nano Banana](https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChsSEwi55YP8r_6RAxWzMtQBHeVLGiUYACICCAEQARoCb2E&ae=2&co=1&ase=2&gclid=CjwKCAiA64LLBhBhEiwA-Pxgu6C6Ka4Odg3SUM0xW5bG_qHBysQIK-iUzTYeoEn9EwvwRlvnB-hMHxoC8vgQAvD_BwE&ei=RulgaZbdG-qvptQPyKWr2Q4&cid=CAASZuRomOVvpX9fU0lrs1Fexn-UmZ9VuYEn-lB8pNtFmIMydCkxLxy3CnI98UwV4GXHI7Pmwyz0fxFoV3v8GBLVfFCtKU9Mn0sR_wxSoCkDJwltY3E2_HQFaMTUDPIghRPIERcGJqXsGw&cce=2&category=acrcp_v1_71&sig=AOD64_1a87ID-C2vWo_-u4Tvq962IS_CYg&q&sqi=2&nis=4&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwiWmP37r_6RAxXql4kEHcjSKusQ0Qx6BAgLEAE), motion by [Midjourney](https://www.midjourney.com/), and added a voice over using [ElevenLabs](https://elevenlabs.io/). Good luck! --- # The big companies adopting an ancient art to win customers Date: 2026-01-15 · Author: Michael Millar · Tags: Brand Strategy, Storytelling, Marketing, Customer Engagement > In 2026 there is something more valuable than gold. More valuable than rare earth metals. More valuable even than goddamned printer ink. That thing? Attention. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/how-to-build-a-brand-with-stories ## In 2026 there is something more valuable than gold. More valuable than rare earth metals. More valuable even than goddamned printer ink. ## That thing? Attention. In a world where technology proliferates and brands market to us with relentless, energy-sapping enthusiasm, attention has become painfully scarce. But if you can get your customers' attention and - holy of holies - turn that attention into trust, the rewards are huge. That's why the world's biggest brands are racing to rediscover an ancient craft - one powerful enough to cut through the noise and actually make people care. That craft? Storytelling. ![The author, telling stories back in the day](/images/blog/inline/brand-stories-inline.png) *The author, telling stories back in the day* ## 'Desperately seeking…' The Wall Street Journal recently proclaimed big US companies [Are Desperately Seeking 'Storytellers'.](https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-are-desperately-seeking-storytellers-7b79f54e) To cut a long story short, this is because they've realised that in such a noisy world, emotionally-engaging stories (that aren't thinly disguised clickbait or sales pitches) are what people want. What they need. It's great stories that enable brands to build familiarity, trust and loyalty in a world of confusion and disillusionment. That enable you to engage. To connect. To create a sense of belonging in a world too long focused on "technology gurus, developer ninjas, & SEO rockstars", to quote the WSJ. Yes, it turns out that the way humans have built trust, loyalty, and all that good stuff over millennia are still what people crave. Funny that. But let's be clear: most firms are RUBBISH at storytelling. Which means if you can get it right, the prizes are yours for the taking. Here's how you do it (and, if you're really keen / cynical, why it works, right down to a neurological level.) ## Once upon a time First, it's worth understanding what underpins all this (outside of the exhausting ad bombardment we all get every day). If I were to sum it up in a single question, it would be: "Would you ask someone to marry you on the first date?" Probably not. The same goes for your customers (although this rule applies equally well to investors, suppliers, and any number of other stakeholders). If you want to win them over and build a lasting relationship, you first need to build awareness, understanding, and trust in your brand. And while no one will accept your marriage proposal straight away (sorry about that), a strong brand delivers an audience that will engage with you, do business with you, and even become your ambassadors. Then they're in it for the long haul. People engage with brands (as opposed to simply products) for lots of reasons. These include: - finding or reaching a desired state/status (often empowerment) - the feeling they get from doing so - the community they are joining - a shared mission or set of beliefs - …or a combination of the above To make this connection with them you've got to tell great stories. Or, as advertising legend David Ogilvie put it: 'tell the truth but make it fascinating' Or as another person put it, 'Start with the soul, not the sale'. (You won't be surprised to hear that there's no shortage of pithy one-liners in marketing circles). ## Just to be clear… Building a successful business means engaging with customers in many different ways; storytelling isn't a panacea. To get folks through the digital (or, indeed, physical) door you'll still have to consider things like promotions, price, the right channels to reach the audience, how you talk about product benefits and features, the way you package everything up, and so on. None of that is going away. But that's marketing. That's the 'how'…. As in: 'How are we getting people into our (web)shops filled with the desire to snap up our product or service?' Storytelling forms a key part of that, but the whole thing will be a damn sight easier if you've laid the groundwork already. I'm talking about establishing your brand: the 'why'… As in: 'Why are people going to want to associate themselves, work with, and buy from a company like ours?' ## All you need is love Your brand is what gets you leverage in a competitive industry and positive recognition among customers. "Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room" Jeff Bezos, Executive Chairman, Amazon If you take time to work on your brand (rather than simply pushing the benefits and features of your products), you will create deep and meaningful relationships – ones where customers understand you, trust you, and learn to love you. A great brand consistently offers customers an experience that is: - Valuable - Relevant - Differentiated (from your rivals) - Trustworthy That is what will keep them coming back for more. And a key vehicle to deliver it all is great stories. Below, I've dived into some pretty deep psychological reasons - even neurological (eek) - why this all works, as well as where you might source your own stories. But let's get to the meat of things first: how do you tell a great story? ## 7 rules for great storytelling Here are some rules to make sure you get your storytelling right. And, let's be honest, they are the same as they were when we did this around campfires outside our caves: - Communicate with a defined audience. ONE SIZE NEVER FITS ALL. A RISING TIDE DOES NOT LIFT ALL BOATS. Being all things to all people just results in bland stories - Tell stories that entertain, educate, inform, and/or inspire. Make sure you put these goals before saying 'Look at me, I'm great!' (I recommend the 80/20 rule, where you aim to spend 80% of the time helping people out with your expertise, insight, or even hilarious anecdotes, and 20% overtly demonstrating the benefits of you service.) - If you are talking about your products and services ALWAYS put benefits before features… no one cares about your shiny thing until they know what's in it for them - Tell stories that your audience will find topical/timely, relevant and unusual. Inject conflict wherever you can, and put human experiences at their core - Tell your stories in a consistent, authentic way that builds commonality (i.e. a sense of belonging / community) - Define how are you going to talk to your audience(s) and talk that way consistently (i.e. What tone of voice are you going to use? How technical or in-depth will you go? FYI: always prioritise clarity over flare) - Keep the audience engaged by adding lots of hooks as you go. (Hooks include strong statements, questions, interesting facts and stats, metaphors, quotes, personal anecdotes, etc.) ## Lessons from Hollywood To ensure you stay focused, look at your story and ask: - Does it value to your target audience? (Where their interests and yours intersect is that sweet spot) - Is this something they actually want to see / hear / read about (in the context of what you do)? - Does it position you as a voice of authority? (Be careful of straying into places you don't belong) - Does it contain the key messages you want to get across about your brand, its vision, and it values? (These don't need to be explicit, your stories can be a reflection of them) - Are you reaching your audiences in the places they hang out, both digitally and in the real world? (That'll shape the formats & channels you use to communicate with them) And, if you need a ready-made structure to help shape your stories, you could do worse than adopt Pixar's approach. [The famous animator uses](https://www.pixar.com/our-story) a very simple structure to begin writing all their films (my thoughts on what each step means are in brackets): - Once upon a time… [someone or something existed or came into being] - Every day… [something happened that was the norm / drove them on / etc.] - One day… [someone or something changed / took a big decision / etc.] - Because of that… [there were certain consequences] - Because of that… [someone or something had to take action] - Until finally… [the situation is resolved, lessons are learned, and a new paradigm adopted] If you can follow these rules then you will tell stories that will give people an engaging insight into your brand, what it does, and what it stands for… and, most importantly, what that means for them. Trust me, it won't take long for your customers to thank and reward you for it. ![An inspiring, vaguely primeval image to get your creative juices flowing](/images/blog/inline/brand-stories-inline-3.jpg) *An inspiring, vaguely primeval image to get your creative juices flowing* ## Where are your stories? It's really easy to think 'I don't have any stories to tell'. Everybody has stories to tell. Don't for one second think you don't. Your stories could come from all sorts of places. Here are some ideas to get you started: - Your take on the news, trends, or other people's stories (which is what inspired this article) - Your origin story (and what that tells the reader/viewer/listener about your vision, mission and values) - Your inspirations (what or who or where inspired you to make major decisions, for example) - Your employees' stories (from inside and outside of work, as long as they relate in some way to the firm and its mission) - Your work in the community or with other third parties, and why you/they are doing it - Customer case studies (how did your firm or its products make a difference to their lives?) ## I'll have a pint, please And don't shy away from telling the rough alongside the smooth. Audiences crave authenticity and transparency. (If there's humour in there - even at your own misfortune - then you get bonus points). We love hearing about people who struggle and overcome the odds because it gives us someone to root for. That's why trouble or tension is a part of all the best stories. If you can't work out how to tell your story, you can always fall back on the Pub Test. Ask yourself: how would I tell this story, about this thing, to my target audience down the pub? A simple, but surprisingly effective way to tell engaging stories without getting all tied up in tedious corporate marketing guff. ## Still here? Wow. Well then, let's reward you with some real geekery. Strap in tight… ### 3 reasons why good storytelling works **1. We are hardwired to engage with stories** We've been telling stories for thousands of years because they serve deep-rooted psychological needs. People have the innate desire to learn about certain developments that might be relevant to them. As humans we're on a constant quest for knowledge and stories help us satisfy the urge to learn and be entertained, and do so in a highly effective way. Stories help us to connect and feel part of a group; they help us to make sense of things and trigger deep emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, and joy. They give us something to believe in. Don't we all need that right now? "Storytelling is like a vitamin. When it gets into your readers, it permeates their whole being, and fights every objection that might otherwise stop them from becoming loyal customers." [Neil Patel, marketing guru](https://neilpatel.com/) **2. Our brains just love it** Let's briefly dip our toes into neurophysiology… Simply put, good stories make our brains light up. Studies show neural activity increases five-fold when we hear a good story. When those neurons fire it triggers memory and that lets us retain more information. This is why people retain [70% of information through stories](https://speakingcpr.com/the-numbers-dont-lie-stories-not-statistics-make-you-memorable/), but only 10% from data and statistics. To put it simply: if you're a storyteller you'll be more memorable to customers. That's not everything either… Scientific tests show well-told stories trigger the chemical dopamine in our brain, which (again) helps aid memory creation (and, hence, brand recall). They also trigger oxytocin, known as 'the love drug', stimulating deeply rooted, powerful emotions. If you do that then you're making customers care about you and helping them be better predisposed to you – on a neurological level. And (no matter how rational we all think we are in the 21st century) these emotions then influence our decision-making… and much more often than we might think. We make decisions based on emotions all the time – often without realising it – and justify them with logic afterwards. It's no coincidence that when marketers present us with data, it is often wrapped up in a story (e.g. a case study). These clever folk know that emotion means they get remembered. They know it's emotion that gets their stories – and hence their brand – shared …and it's emotion that opens wallets and purses. **3. Trust is a luxury item** Using a neat storytelling device, let's end where we started. As we move further into the 21st Century, people are becoming more and more savvy and more cynical. They won't tolerate the hard sell and, as I've already mentioned, they will get pretty put out if you try to marry them on the first date. The information overload is making us more distrusting than ever. That's why there's such a drive for businesses to present themselves as honest, authentic and transparent. Many firms are now waking up to the fact that consumers want even more than that: we want commonality. We want our brands to understand and relate to us. So it's hardly surprising that marketers have moved towards appealing to emotions, rather than bombarding their audiences with self-promotional tactics. This is as true in the traditionally more staid world of B2B, as it is in B2C. Research by Google found: - 50% of B2B buyers were more likely to buy if they can connect emotionally with your brand - 71% of B2B buyers purchase when they see personal value in your business - 69% of the B2B buyers surveyed are even willing to pay a higher price to do business with a brand they believe in … and the quickest way to take advantage of all that is to use a skill we've practised for millennia. Storytelling. Which just leaves us with one question: what's your story? ![Free no-strings-attached advice available here](/images/blog/inline/brand-stories-inline-2.png) *Free no-strings-attached advice available here* ## If you want to free advice on discovering & telling your story, drop me a line on [email](mailto:mike@smpl.as), or via our [contact page](../contact). Good luck! Michael --- # Andreas Wins People's Choice Marketing Award 2025 Date: 2026-01-10 · Author: SmplCo Team · Tags: Awards, Marketing, Andreas Melvær, Gnu Bar, LinkedIn > The same Andreas who leads SmplCo's international projects also runs a local bar — and just won the People's Choice Marketing Award for it. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/andreas-wins-peoples-choice-marketing-awards-2025 Yes, the same Andreas who spends his weekdays leading SmplCo's international projects somehow also runs a local bar that's become a full-blown LinkedIn phenomenon. Gnu Bar's mix of honesty, humour and chaos has earned a big following (and apparently a marketing award). "The whole idea behind Gnu was to write like someone who's three pints in, speaking his mind about everything he sees on LinkedIn. Honest, rough around the edges, sometimes calling people out, but always with a bit of humour and heart." Says Andreas We're proud of you, Andreas, and of Gnu, the slightly drunk claymation mascot who's clearly struck a nerve. Check out the Gnu on [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/gnu-bar). ![Andreas at the Marketing Awards](/images/blog/inline/marketing-awards-inline.jpg) --- # SmplCo: 'world-class' AI development Date: 2026-01-08 · Author: Michael Millar · Tags: AI Development, MVP, Vibecoding, Case Study, Figma > Apparently, SmplCo is world-class now. Figma just published a case study on how we took our client Saddle from a rough idea to a live product in 2 weeks. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/ai-assisted-mvps ## Apparently, SmplCo is world-class now. "WHAT?! Why? How?" you say? Well, we'll tell you. [Figma just published a case study](https://www.figma.com/customers/figma-make-helps-saddle-go-from-idea-to-launch-in-2-weeks/) on how we took our client [Saddle](https://www.saddle.no/) from a rough idea to a live product in 2 weeks. Figma - which is the gold standard for digital design - rarely does this and only chooses the best examples it can find from across the globe. This is like being a local carpenter, and Black & Decker (the biggest tool company in the world) putting a picture of your work on their front page and saying: "Look everyone, THIS is how you use a drill." 🏆 Which is why we're so excited by this validation of our work. What made this project stand out wasn't just speed, though. ![SmplCo AI development](/images/blog/inline/mvps-inline.webp) ### Saddle is a software platform that helps companies make faster, better decisions and drive innovation, particularly in crucial periods in mergers and acquisitions (M&A). By working with us, Saddle dramatically shortened the time it took to create the software, while slashing costs. "Before, the equivalent process to create a working MVP like the one we have for Saddle took us six months and eight times the money," says Simen Sanna, CEO and founder of [Saddle](https://www.saddle.no/). Simen (pictured below, L, with co-founder Johan Steen) is a Norwegian SaaS entrepreneur and former energy engineer who exited his last company in 2021 after developing the world's leading software for decarbonising offshore vessels. ![Saddle founders](/images/blog/inline/mvps-inline-2.jpeg) To achieve these amazing results we used AI-assisted "vibecoding" that didn't result in a bowl of code spaghetti. Using our own 'SmplCo method', we vibecoded responsibly, resulting in something sustainable. A product built on rock... not on sand, like so many vibecoded products. The result: - Usable components - Beautiful design - No headaches for the developers who have to maintain it later - A sustainable path for Saddle to grow and thrive All in 2 weeks. Not bad. If you want to talk about bringing your idea to life as efficiently and effectively as is humanely possible get in touch for [a free consultation.](../contact) --- # Lovable buildathon winners! Date: 2025-12-15 · Author: SmplCo Team · Tags: Lovable, SheBuilds, Buildathon, AI Development, Get to Give > In 48 hours, surrounded by 200+ inspiring women, that idea became something tangible. It was also validated. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/lovable-shebuilds-win ![SheBuilds winners](/images/blog/inline/shebuilds-inline.webp) In 48 hours, surrounded by 200+ inspiring women, that idea became something tangible. It was also validated. In just two days Maria had the tools to confirm: - parents want alternatives to consumer-driven gifting - kids are capable of understanding generosity - women build some of the most thoughtful, impactful tech when given the space Andreas said the win reaffirmed SmplCo's place at the forefront of AI-assisted development that actually works. It comes after SmplCo was recognised by Figma as a global exemplar of AI-assisted coding by Figma, alongside another client, Saddle. "This all goes to show how our little team is operating at the global forefront of these emerging technologies at the highest level," says Andreas. If you have any questions on how we go about AI assisted coding, the benefits and the pitfalls, [drop us a line](https://smpl.as/contact), or send Andreas a message on [andreas@smpl.as](mailto:andreas@smpl.as). --- # Altien: the app we'll all wish we had, one day Date: 2025-11-20 · Author: SmplCo Team · Tags: Healthcare, Care Homes, Communication, SaaS, Altien > Altien is transforming residential care home communications, replacing scattered notes and missed calls with one connected platform. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/altien ## Altien is bringing power to those we care for, and care about. Across Europe's residential care homes, the same problems repeat themselves every day: information is scattered across sticky notes and shift books; phone calls interrupt busy staff; instructions are lost between day and night teams; and families struggle to stay in the loop. The impact on residents is intense and can be heart-breaking in its results. But it doesn't stop there. The impact of poor communication snowballs into anxiety for next-of-kin, overworked, stressed nurses and care assistants, and small mistakes that can quickly grow into reputational damage for care homes. This elevates regulatory risk and, ultimately, destroys the businesses that we rely on to care for our increasingly ageing populations. There is an urgent need to fix this problem. Fortunately, there is Altien. ### The Big Idea Altien is a new digital communication service created by frontline healthcare professionals and purpose-built to fix the lack of structure and consistency around the non-medical, day-to-day flow of practical information about a resident's life. Instead of relying on calls, corridor conversations and paper notes, Altien brings appointments, simple messages, personal-belongings lists, and family updates into one shared, easy-to-use space. The aim is simple: reduce noise, save time, build trust and make more room for care. The result is a virtuous circle of residents who are better cared for, families who know their loved ones are in good hands, and businesses and staff that thrive and deliver the best possible care. ![Altien team](/images/blog/inline/altien-inline.jpg) "Altien can make everyday life easier, save time on routines and give us more time for the residents." Svein Petter, Business Manager, Sparekassen Sykehjem ### Making it work Altien's team of industry professionals have shaped their app to work in the world that they themselves have inhabited for decades. One of their key insights is that care-home communication shouldn't be a free-for-all chat app. In a regulated environment, open two-way messaging can create more work, not less. Altien is therefore structured and never noisy: staff control what's shared, families get the updates they need, and everyone sees the same practical facts in one place. Because the founders are a nurse and a healthcare worker with deep experience in dementia care, the workflows reflect how shifts really run - including handovers, everyday reminders, and responsibility for things like clothing and small purchases. The product starts with five focused functions that ensure appointments are kept, messages arrive, belongings are tracked and next-of-kin are appropriately involved - all in a tool that fits a hectic shift, not one that adds to it. And with plans for a marketplace that will engage homes, residents and next-of-kin to provide the essentials it needs, it offers a business model with potential for exponential growth. ### Benefits for everyone Altien offers clear, measurable benefits for its different target audiences: **For care homes and staff** - Productivity: One hub for practical updates reduces duplicate calls and ad-hoc chasing across shifts - Lower stress: Fewer interruptions; clearer handovers; less "who knew what?" drama - Recruitment & retention: A calmer, more predictable workday helps keep good people in post - and makes onboarding faster because the "how we do things" is visible from day one - Regulatory compliance: Structured family involvement and auditable, consistent information flows support compliance and reduce deviation risk **For next-of-kin and residents** - Ease of communication: Families get the essentials in one place without endless phone tag - Better communication: Updates are timely and reach the right person; messages don't vanish between shifts - Effective care: When practical details (from appointments to belongings) are handled well, frontline time shifts back to residents - Less stress & wasted time: Clear expectations reduce friction; families can act quickly on small needs (e.g., toiletries or clothing) instead of making extra trips. Of course, none of this becomes a reality without support and the investor proposition is strong too: - There is a large, addressable and underserved market: residential care homes in their home country of Norway alone house 450,000 users and growing due to ageing populations - Their SaaS subscription model offers strong repeat revenue opportunities - A planned marketplace expansion will engage homes, residents, and next-of-kin for essentials (e.g., clothing, toiletries, services) and offer exponential growth potential And let's not forget that most powerful driver: simple self-interest. Age comes for us all… "Altien represents exactly the type of entrepreneurial team we are looking for – agile, coachable and close to user needs. They combine solid insight with the ability to test and adapt the solution they develop quickly." Therese Oppegaard, Business Developer, Validé. ### Suddenly all I heard was screaming Far too many people with a relative in a care home have a story to tell about how their loved ones have been failed, and some of those stories are heart-breaking – for residents, families, and staff alike. And they can destroy the businesses we rely on to care for our elderly loved ones. Tommaso Orlando, one of Altien's founders, spent years on evening and night shifts. He remembers the night he heard screams coming from a resident's room. "I ran to the room and into a crisis. A next-of-kin who I knew had arrived to see her mother, who had dementia. Her mother was standing there, her clothes clenched in her hands., totally distraught. "These clothes were really expensive and a really important part of her possessions – and, I guess, her past. But they had been washed incorrectly on the previous shift and were ruined. "The request to 'please wash these carefully' had been shared verbally, then disappeared. The assistant who did the washing was a short-term stand-in who never saw the note. "The fallout was immediate: distress for the family, conflict at the door, and a demoralised night shift team who hadn't even made the mistake. "Now, this might seem like a small event but this kind of thing is happening thousands of times every day across our industry. That's horrible for residents, family and staff, but it's also destroying the care homes we rely on. "Even if you just look at this single incident, you've got to multiply the impact across residents and wards that hear about it, and then the spread via poor word-of-mouth and then staff burnout. "Would you send your mother to 'that terrible place where they don't even know how to wash clothes properly'?" Altien's in-built marketplace offers great value for users and big growth for investors. ### Get involved Altien exists to stop this domino effect. With a single, structured place for practical instructions and updates, the right people see the right note at the right time — and small lapses stop turning into big problems. Altien is now inviting municipalities and care institutions to join a nine-month pilot, with hands-on support from the team and genuine co-creation of features that save time and strengthen family involvement. A working prototype is ready, and the venture is backed by Valide AS and Innovation Norway, with growing interest from pilot environments. If you run a care home group, this is a chance to shape a tool built "for care, with care", and to prove the operational benefits before broader rollout. If you're an investor, Altien offers a focused SaaS platform for a large, underserved segment, designed by practitioners and aimed at measurable outcomes: fewer missed appointments, fewer lost belongings, calmer shifts and happier families. Altien is opening conversations now with pilot partners and investors who want to help set a new standard for everyday care. Get in touch via [Altien's website](https://altien.app/) to request prototype access and to find out more. --- # How one big corporate nailed digital innovation Date: 2025-11-01 · Author: SmplCo Team · Tags: Innovation, Corporate, Digital Transformation, SR-Bank, Team Structure > Interview with Vibeke Bjaanes, Innovation Manager at SR-Bank, on how a major bank became good at digital innovation — and what most corporates miss. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/how-one-big-corporate-nailed-digital-innovation Interview with Vibeke Lavik Bjaanes, Innovation Manager at SR‑Bank. She shares how the bank became good at digital innovation, a challenge for many large corporations. She studied economics and consulted before turning to innovation. Passion for creating and listening to customers drives her. ## Innovation team structure ### Cross‑functional task force fosters creativity SR Bank's innovation department has four full‑time employees dedicated to digital innovation; they form a "Taskforce." The task force taps colleagues from various departments – design, banking, business development – to work on specific projects. Working outside the bank and long days together foster psychological safety and creativity. Large organizations often struggle with siloed departments and rigid processes. To innovate, cross-functional squads with designers, engineers, and product managers working together cut through bureaucracy and foster collaboration. ### Small teams, big impact By forming small squads with decision-making autonomy and a shared mission, the company empowered teams to own the problem and deliver solutions quickly. These squads, combined with design, engineering, and product expertise, broke projects into bite-sized experiments and celebrated quick wins to maintain momentum. Small cross-functional teams of designers, engineers and product managers empower quick decisions and iteration, allowing the organization to move like a startup. By giving teams autonomy and a clear mission, innovation can happen faster than in traditional hierarchies. ### Bringing it all together The corporation's transformation shows that any organization can innovate if they empower small teams, build prototypes early and put customers at the center. By breaking down silos, embracing rapid experimentation and iterating based on real feedback, you can create products that delight users and drive growth. --- # No one will ever love your software… and that's OK Date: 2025-10-15 · Author: Michael Millar · Tags: Entrepreneurs, SaaS, Startup, QuickLog, ABAX, Customer Focus > The inspiring and deeply personal story of how our serial entrepreneur and co-founder at SmplCo conceived, built, and sold his own SaaS company. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/no-one-will-ever-love-your-software-and-that-s-ok ## The inspiring and deeply personal story of how our serial entrepreneur and co-founder at SmplCo conceived, built, and sold his own SaaS company. In this interview, Bjørn Ivar Knudsen talks about: - The overheard conversation that put him on the track to SaaS success - How being a misfit from early on shaped him into a successful entrepreneur - The 'euphoric' experience of his first paying customer, and how he won thousands more afterwards by helping them 'walk on the grass' - The tactics he used to build his customer base …including the underhand ones How he got on the radar of the market-leading software firm, then persuaded them to buy his platform. When you talk to Bjørn Ivar Knudsen, there's always a glint in his eye. Is it a sense of mischief or just a restless curiosity? In my experience, it's usually a bit of both. Those traits have served him very well in the past. They helped BIK (as he's fondly known 'round these parts) to design, build, and finally sell his telematics software, QuickLog, to market-leader ABAX, contributing to the evolution of Europe's second-largest asset tracking platform. His focus is now on helping entrepreneurs and innovators to bring their own digital dreams to life. ![Bjørn Ivar Knudsen](/images/blog/inline/love-software-inline.jpg) ### A euphoric, defining moment When I ask BIK about his success as an entrepreneur, he doesn't focus on that holy grail for entrepreneurs: exiting. Instead, he keeps coming back to his first sale and his first customer. 'That was euphoric, a defining moment,' he says. 'In that moment I knew somebody felt something I'd created was worth something to them; so much so that they were willing to pay for it.' 'I still remember the names of my first customers,' he adds with a big smile on his face. 'The very first one was called Lars, he was a golf pro and a travelling salesman.' How did winning that first customer feel, compared to the sense of accomplishment that came at the other end of the journey, when he sold the business? 'Selling a business is not like getting your first customer,' BIK says. 'It's a final confirmation that you have built something of value. And of course, the money arriving in your bank account is a great reward for all the effort and time and stress.' 'But the best moment is when the first customers use your software. There's no feeling like that.' ### A fateful telephone call That desire to simplify ideas and help people to solve problems never went away. You get the sense that BIK wants to help everyone… even if they haven't asked for him for help. The genesis of his telematics firm, QuickLog, is a case in point. 'I came up with my first SaaS company after I overheard an accountant complaining about how bad their employees were at logging business travel mileage,' he says 'They were saying how much money could be saved if there was a program that could create and keep travel records, and I thought: "Hmmm…" BIK's programming skills were a bit outdated, so he got a book called "Learn PHP in 21 days". 'Around 18 days later, I'd created a simple prototype for something that would determine travel destinations and distances and store them in the cloud,' he says, laughing at his own audacity. 'I tested it on my friends, and – to my great surprise – most were really impressed with how it worked. 'This eventually became QuickLog,' he explains. 'When we sold that company to telematics leader ABAX ten years later, my little start-up had grown into the largest app- and SaaS-based service of its kind in the country.' ![Bjørn Ivar early days](/images/blog/inline/love-software-inline-2.jpg) ### Help people walk on the grass That growth was driven by a genuine desire to understand his customers and put his ego to one side. 'You have to solve someone else's problem if you're going to succeed,' BIK says. 'In fact, you don't even need to solve it, just help make something they don't like a bit easier for them.' 'So often, nobody cares. They hate the task. They don't love your solution. They just love spending less time on getting their job done.' 'What they really want is for you to make their lives easier and help them do more of what they love; whether that's making more money, spending more time with their kids, going fishing, whatever.' 'You can quickly get caught up in ego,' he adds. 'But you are just an atom in their lives. They have their own struggles and KPIs and things they want to solve, and you've got to do whatever you can to help with that.' To make your solution work, you've got to solve your customers' problems in ways that work for them. 'You've got to respect and accommodate people's bad habits, their way of working,' Bjørn Ivar adds. 'People don't keep to the path, they want to walk on the grass if it's easier and quicker for them.' 'So, you've got to fit in with them. That's what we did with the mileage claim software and why it was a success.' ![QuickLog software](/images/blog/inline/love-software-inline-3.jpg) ### It's good to talk Getting this right meant BIK getting out in the market and talking to as many people as possible. 'To start with, there were no barriers between our QuickLog team and our users,' BIK says. 'We were listening to them all the time. Even when we got to thousands of users, I was still calling up and talking to as many as I could.' Bjørn Ivar dismisses the often-held fear that if you get out into the market and talk to people, someone will steal your ideas. 'Innovators – particularly start-up founders –have a tendency to be afraid of sharing their ideas,' he says. 'But this is usually your ego speaking. People don't usually steal ideas, they are more interested in their own ones.' Instead, he believes secrecy puts limitations on innovators. 'You need to think: "Is this the fastest way to get this to market?"' BIK says. 'And you won't get the answer unless you get people on board, share ideas, and get feedback.' 'You won't get any of that if you go around being all secretive.' ### Guerrilla War The only time Bjørn Ivar did require secrecy was when he turned to marketing tactics that were …questionable. 'There was no social media when I started, it was all about my banners on different webpages and in magazines,' he says. 'But I tested everything to see where I'd get the best return.' 'The best traction I got was fax marketing because all the offices had faxes – so I could get straight in there – and I knew all the companies needed what I was selling.' 'I tested everything, including black [all ink] backgrounds that really stood out but made people angry because they got ink all over themselves!' With a cheeky smile Bjørn Ivar turns to the darker arts. 'The tech websites used to do software reviews that anyone could do if they registered,' he says. 'So, I registered my software and created lots of different aliases to review my own software. I used to set an hour aside each night to do it!' That went on until one user got suspicious and started replying to the reviews asking what the reviewer's interest in the software really was… ### Selling the business Bjørn Ivar made so much noise in his industry that one of the big players, ABAX, came knocking. He was ready for them. 'I got a call from a guy representing ABAX,' he says. 'Straight away, I went to research them so I could understand what they were missing and where they were coming from,' BIK says. 'When I went to visit, I guess they'd already spent quite a lot of time picking my product apart, so they knew it was valuable to them – and I knew that too.' 'Because of all the marketing I'd done they had no idea how small my business was, so I had an advantage,' BIK adds. He went in with one goal: to give his suitors the impression he was fierce competition with skills and ideas they didn't have. 'You should never go into these meetings with your cap in your hand,' Bjorn Ivar says. 'Go in proud and confident. You should never give the impression that you need them, even if you probably do.' 'If a rival is looking at you, give the impression you are standing on your own two feet and – even if you aren't a threat now – at some point they are going to have become scared of you.' ![Bjørn Ivar presenting](/images/blog/inline/love-software-inline-4.jpg) ### Everlasting truths Despite 20 years passing since he first stepped into the world of entrepreneurs and innovation, Bjørn Ivar says the rules haven't changed, even if the tech has. 'The key to success is getting out there and digging the ditches,' he says. 'You need to talk to customers and get under their skin; to feel and see and experience their pain. You need to be a user of your own system.' 'Success lies in getting out of your bubble and getting into your customers' shoes.' If you want to catch up with Bjørn Ivar, or talk to the team about how we can bring your Big Idea to life faster, more efficiently, and considerably less stressfully than anyone else, we'd love to hear from you. [Click here](mailto:andreas@smpl.wpdev.evista.hu) to email our MD Andreas, or leave us a message [here](https://smpl.wpdev.evista.hu/whats-it-like-to-build-and-sell-a-saas-company/#getintouch). --- # 5 Must-Know Truths Before You Dive Into AI Date: 2025-09-15 · Author: SmplCo Team · Tags: AI Strategy, Business Strategy, AI Implementation, Fabriq AI > The AI gold rush is on. Five truths every founder and product leader needs to know before they ship their first AI feature. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/ai-strategy-5-must-knows-truths ## The great AI gold rush is on. It has become an indispensable part of new tech, while those with existing products and services are rushing to integrate. But there are many traps for the unwary. Luckily AI experts Jesse Lord and Ole Anders Andersen, from our partners [Fabriq AI](https://www.fabriqai.com/), are here to steer you around those traps. So, before you take another step towards AI, take these lessons on board. ### You Might Not Need AI (Yet) There's too much noise in the AI space. Everyone from start-ups to big corporates is piling in without asking the most basic question: "Do we actually need this?" Yes, AI will eventually be part of most businesses. But that doesn't mean now is the time for you. Some businesses don't need AI. Some don't even need a laptop. Use the same filter you'd apply to any investment. That means asking: Will this move the needle for your goals, your customers, or your bottom line? If it won't, AI is not for you (right now at least). ![AI strategy team](/images/blog/inline/ai-strategy-inline.webp) ### Ask the Only Question That Matters If you're considering AI, start here: "Where and how will this create real value – for us, for our customers, and for the business long-term?" This isn't about shiny tech. It's about outcomes. The hype cycle's over. What's left are lessons from people who wasted time and money chasing novelty. Don't be them. Build a quick prototype. Test if AI actually delivers what you need. Make sure you're solving real problems and that the complexity of the project is justified by clear, measurable value — not just a vague sense that "we should be doing AI." ### This AIn't a quick or easy fix Open AI has a lot to answer for here. Yes, it is very impressive, but it has made everyone think that 'AI is easy'. The company's Chat GPT model has made certain tasks trivial – often ones that were difficult to do well before. This model type - Generative AI - has amazing applications. Staff at call centres, for example, used to spend so much time summarising what was said on their calls. All that can now be easily automated using AI, providing loads of value to those businesses. But, in most cases, the AI solution you'll need will not just come out-of-the-box if you're going beyond the most basic tasks. Even OpenAI's market-leading – and extremely user-friendly – product won't give you what you need to go to market with a truly valuable solution of your own. ![AI strategy meeting](/images/blog/inline/ai-strategy-inline-2.jpg) ### Interesting times Chat GPT will give you around 60% of what you need easily. But the 60 - 80% stage starts getting difficult and expensive. Want to go 80 - 100%? Strap in and hold on tight. In this Gen-AI example, the first 60% is easy because you're probably trawling the internet for publicly available information. But when you start trying to access information and data that is not accessible to the web, things become, ahem, interesting. (Not least because you're moving into using more than one model.) Then, if you want AI models to access your own processes or behave in accordance with your requirements (where real value accrues), well, that's when things get really interesting. Like so many other situations in life, creating something truly valuable takes time and money and hard work. Integrating and using AI is no different. ### Centralise now, or pay later This one's for enterprises – and any start-up aiming to work with them. AI efforts need a centre of gravity. Without it, teams chase the tool of the week, duplicate work, and drift away from business priorities. One month it's OpenAI. The next it's Claude. Then it's DeepSeek, Mistral, or something no one's heard of yet. This can be understandable; the pace of change in the large language model (LLM) space is relentless. Betting everything on one vendor or model can leave you locked into tech that's obsolete six months later. You don't need central control over every experiment. But you do need a clear place where strategy is set, standards are enforced, and efforts are tracked. That's how you make sure AI work stays aligned with actual business value – not just the latest hype cycle. Without that, you're building on sand. ### Next steps If you want to find out how to nail your AI strategy, take advantage of a free, zero obligation, consultation with our experts. Either [click here](../contact) or drop our Managing Partner Andreas a line [directly](mailto:andreas@smpl.no). You can also contact the Fabriq team directly, [here](https://www.fabriqai.com/). They'll help you find the best fit between your ambition, budget and emerging tech. --- # News! SmplCo signs deal with UK's Barclays bank Date: 2025-08-01 · Author: Michael Millar · Tags: News, Partnership, Barclays, Eagles Labs, Entrepreneurs > SmplCo has signed a partnership with Barclays, one of the UK's biggest banks. We will deliver our services to founders in the Eagle Labs network. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/news-smplco-signs-deal-with-uk-s-barclays-bank ## We're delighted to announce SmplCo has signed a partnership with Barclays, one of the UK's biggest banks. SmplCo will deliver its services through the bank's incubator,[Barclays Eagles Labs,](https://labs.uk.barclays/) which has supported over 13,000 start-ups and high-growth businesses. We will offer our unique, 5-Day Prototype service to firms across Eagle Labs' UK-wide network, helping start-ups and scale-up businesses to test their ideas, land investment, and win customers. And we're in good company… We join the likes of Microsoft as one of only 10 companies taking part in Eagle Labs' Deals & Offers' service. ![SmplCo team with Barclays Eagle Labs](/images/blog/inline/barclays-inline.png) ### Huge validation Andreas Melvær, SmplCo's managing partner, said too many start-ups and scale-ups struggle with delays, costs and risks, and this partnership was a huge validation our efforts to change that. "A lot of the problems come from a product design industry that is often incentivised by the hour, while lacking the expertise to support entrepreneurs," he said. "We created the 5-Day Prototype so innovators could bring their ideas to life in a week, with support from a team of entrepreneurs who have built and sold their own businesses," Andreas added. ![Barclays Eagle Labs x SmplCo](/images/blog/inline/barclays-inline-2.jpg) Barclays Eagle Labs' mission to support the UK's entrepreneurial community goes to the heart of SmplCo's own mission to make it as easy as possible for innovators to bring great digital products and services to life. "It's a perfect partnership and we're excited to get started," Andreas said. If you want to find out more about our 5-Day Prototyping service, or just talk to the team about how you can bring your Big Idea to life faster, more efficiently, and with less risk, let us know. --- # Why Product Nerds Outperform Creative Designers Date: 2025-07-15 · Author: SmplCo Team · Tags: Product Design, Outsourcing, Business Strategy, Design Systems > Many product leads hire overseas designers for cost savings. Why product-nerd designers — those who think like product people — consistently outperform. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/why-product-nerds-outperform-creative-designers ## Many product leads turn to overseas designers for cost savings and access to global talent. Sounds great in theory, until you realize just how much time and effort it takes to make it work. ### The Common Struggles with Outsourced Designers 1. **Endless Briefing.** You have to spell everything out in detail. Every. Single. Time. 2. **Hard to Align on Business Logic.** Business logic and strategic goals get lost across time zones, cultures, and Slack threads. 3. **No Extra Mile.** Many outsourced designers execute exactly what they're told, nothing more, nothing less. It's a common story – delays, miscommunication, and designs that don't quite hit the mark. ### SmplCo's Smarter Approach We've been on both sides of the table, building our own SaaS products and working with outsourced designers, so we know how to make outsourcing actually work. In fact, it's quite simple. **We Get Your Product. No Lengthy Briefs Needed.** We understand digital products, user flows, and business goals from day one. No need to waste time explaining every decision, we just get it. Why? Because we are product nerds and own our own SaaS companies. **We Bridge the Gap Between Design and Development.** Instead of you managing designers and developers, we can do it for you. We brief both outsourced designers and developers, keeping everything aligned without the back-and-forth. **We Build for Scale, Not Just for Now.** Our design systems are structured for growth, with centralized styles, variables, and clear documentation. That means fewer inconsistencies, smoother onboarding, and effortless developer handoff. --- # Land your first customers using the Nurture Train Date: 2025-06-01 · Author: SmplCo Team · Tags: Market Fit, Customer Development, Nurturing, Lunos, MVP > How to go to market with customers already willing to pay — the SmplCo nurture-train approach for founders building before launch. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/all-aboard-the-nurture-train ## Imagine going to market, not only knowing people want what you're selling, but also having customers willing to pay right away… If this sounds too good to be true, then we've got news for you: it ain't. Welcome aboard the 'Nurture Train'. Your conductor today will be [Caroline van den Bergh,](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolinevdb/) from user testing experts (and SmplCo collaborators) [Lunos](https://www.heylunos.com/). ### Friendlyville Your first goal, Caroline says, is to get conversations going with real customers. The best way to do that is to start conversations by any means necessary, so you get to a stage where you have a group of engaged, unbiased people who are connected to the problem you're solving. These are your earliest indicators of a viable business. I like to refer to them as your 'friendlies'. These are people in your network – and by network, I mean anyone relevant you've ever met or have been associated with! You'll be amazed how willing people are to help, particularly when you tell them you're creating something new and exciting and need their help because they're experts. A little flattery goes a long way and, if you're setting up groups to get conversations going (which you should), you're also giving these people the chance to make new acquaintances and contacts. You can find 'friendlies' all over the place; from whatever industry you are in (or have been in), to connections at networking events, ex-colleagues you have met on the way, and old school friends (you never know where folks have ended up). ### The key Take any opportunity; I'm a bit of a chatterer and you won't believe how many times I've found people to help me or my clients on my kids' school run. The key is to not waste anyone's time. Be very, very clear if they qualify as early potential customers, or if they're just someone with an opinion. As a rule of thumb, see if they are connected with the problem and or are currently solving it themselves in some way. You can qualify them by asking: - what problem am I solving? - why do they need what I'm building? - who else is currently solving the problem and why you are going to it differently / better? - would they be willing to pay for it? If they are still relevant to you when you asked all these questions, then you'll be ready to answer THE key question that everyone asks before they will get involved: "What's in it for me?" ### Nurture Central Keep your early users in a pattern of nurture and engagement by regularly updating them with your own progress over email, in a WhatsApp group, or via whatever form of communication works for your customer base. The goal at this stage is to take people through three points of awareness: - **Know** – they either start to know who you are and you pop up in their world frequently enough to establish familiarity - **Like** – They like what you say, how you say it, and how you comminucate - **Trust** – you can come at this from lots of different angles; by associating with trusted figures in the space, endorsements, testimonials, thought leadership, etc Our recommendation is to start with 30 minutes a week communicating. If you are consistent you will see progress quickly. As ever, when you communicate focus on offering them value. That can be progress updates so they see the impact they're having, but you should also try being as generous as possible with sharing your knowledge and insight – particularly if it's come as part of this process. ### Questions & Answers For example, you could turn (anonymised) data from your surveys and interviews into a report that shows what other people are feeling, saying, and doing in their space. And make sure you put a 'call to action' at the end, asking for readers' opinions. That can start to drive traffic to landing pages or wherever you want to send potential customers. You can also build trust by offering wider insights on developments within your/their areas of specialty, once connected. Whatever channels you're using, just make sure you don't drown them in content. Remember the 30-minute rule. If it's appropriate, recognise their contributions publicly – by thanking them for their support on social media, for example. If you get this right, your 'beta customer' group – as they have now become – should have no problem with you asking them if they know anyone else who can help you develop your idea, so you can get more insight and grow your early customer base. ### Testing City Now we go from learning to testing. We'd recommend – if you haven't already – that you [develop a prototype](/blog/5-day-prototype-custom-software). This is the ideal way of bringing your vision to life, defining key customer journeys, testing assumptions, and getting in-depth feedback. By bringing the vision you've talked about to life, it will make your little beta community really excited about what they've helped create. They'll be able to play with it and feedback on what works and what doesn't, giving you really valuable insight. And the imagery is great for social channels, to create wider interest in what you're up to. ### Show the love Usually, innovators' next step is to jump into 'building' a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). We prefer to talk about a Minimum Viable Process …the best way for a customer to get to a solution to their problem. This has more value than the typical MVP approach of stripping a product back to the basics and then expecting a customer to connect with it. Another way of looking at this next step is a MLP – a Minimum Loveable Product. Ask: "What can you build that would provide enough value that a customer will probably pay for it?" Your focus now should be getting to the stage where you can onboard them and really demonstrate real-world value. Remember the adage: "You only need to be a couple of steps ahead of a customer to give them value". ### It's not cheating We've seen seen plenty of MVPs where clients are doing all the work manually behind the scenes. That's not cheating at all …as long as you are creating value. When you have that MVP, go to your early customer group and say: "Why don't we test this together, with you seeing the value and covering the cost of it?" Make it a very nominal fee and offer them other inducements – e.g. exclusive access or reduced fees when you launch properly. If you have: - paid attention to their needs - created something that solves a problem - have an experience that gets them to value quickly …they will often happily say 'yes'. ### Invitation Junction Hopefully, by this stage, you've created such engaged fans that they're going to be willing to advocate on your behalf. So, ask them to invite someone else into your product beta development community. All the work you've done developing your relationships, together with a product that solves a problem, should mean these late joiners are not only keen to help but will offer to pay something from the get-go. Now it's up to you to continue developing your plans into a fully working early product. The difference will be that – unlike many entrepreneurs and innovators in your position – your product will come with a ready-made market and the proof of demand. And that's when customers and investors alike sit up and pay attention. If you want a first class ticket on the Nurture Train, then get in touch with Caroline via the [Lunos website](https://www.heylunos.com/talk). She offers free discovery calls to understand more about your situation and how her team might be able to help. --- # Graduation day at SmplAcademy! Date: 2025-05-01 · Author: SmplCo Team · Tags: Digital Development, SmplAcademy, Education, Noroff, Graduates > The first graduates of SmplAcademy: after a month learning and contributing to our 5-Day Prototyping Service, what they shipped and what is next. URL: https://smpl.as/blog/graduation-day ## Congratulations to the first graduates of SmplAcademy! 🎓 ### Digital Hogwarts After a month of learning about, and contributing to, our 5-Day Prototyping Service, we're releasing our inaugural cohort back into wilds of education. SmplAcademy is a partnership between us and Noroff's School of Technology & Digital Media, to help prepare the next generation of digital product design wizards. 🧙‍♀️ We labelled it 'Digital Hogwarts'… mainly to get media attention, but you get the point. High fives all round for Silje, Charlotte, & Maria, as well as Bradford, Sam, Libré, Linki for making it happen, and Mikkel and Jeanne who helped us develop the idea, even if they didn't know it… Our MD, Andreas, praised the students, saying: "The students were really impressive… even said so." High praise indeed. ### During the course Our brilliant protégés: 🛠️ learned how to transform ideas into reality, at high speed 🚀 worked with us on real projects with actual clients, getting hands-on experience in a professional setting 🤓 received personalised mentorship and additional tutoring to maximise their learning and skill development during the placement Well done to everyone involved, including everyone who acted as mentors along the way: [Andreas](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andmel/), [Bjørn Ivar](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bj%C3%B8rn-ivar-knudsen-20345a29/), [Jingjing](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jingjing-li-b44443261/), [Leonardo](https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonardo-hernandez-celli-81499093/), and [Giorgiana](https://www.linkedin.com/in/giorgiana-mihaela-bejan/). The SmplAcademy will reopen its doors in the new year for more advice, prototypes, and cake… ![SmplAcademy graduation](/images/blog/inline/graduation-inline.jpg) --- # Case studies # TWENTY40 - Decarbonisation > TWENTY40 enables real estate portfolios to decarbonise faster and more efficiently. We defined and brought their all-in-one solution to life. URL: https://smpl.as/work/2040 # TWENTY40 - Decarbonisation [**TWENTY40**](https://www.linkedin.com/company/twenty40eu/) enables real estate portfolios to decarbonise faster and more efficiently. We defined and brought their all-in-one solution to life**,** using our **5-Day Prototyping method** and **Strategic Business Advisory**, based on our own experience of founding, growing and selling digital companies. The result was a hi-res, clickable vision of TWENTY40's future, focusing on core elements and journeys needed to engage key stakeholders. ## Services Delivered - Branding - UI/UX design - Prototype - Energy - Landing Page ## Review > "The 5-Day Prototype is incredibly impactful. We're still using it regularly for demos nearly a year later – it continues to communicate our vision clearly and professionally." **Andrea Wyss** *Operations, TWENTY40* ## Gallery ![TWENTY40 Dashboard](/images/2040/2040-dashboard-1.jpg) ![TWENTY40 Analytics](/images/2040/2040-dashboard-2.jpg) ![TWENTY40 Detail View](/images/2040/2040-dashboard-3.jpg) ![TWENTY40 UI](/images/2040/2040-ui-1.jpg) ![TWENTY40 Components](/images/2040/2040-ui-2.jpg) ![TWENTY40 Interface](/images/2040/2040-ui-3.webp) ![TWENTY40 Brand](/images/2040/2040-brand-1.jpg) ![TWENTY40 Brand Detail](/images/2040/2040-brand-2.jpg) ## Related Work Explore more success stories: - [Tilsig – Energy / Flow Monitoring](/work/tilsig) - [Share50 – Ad Revenue](/work/share50) --- # Altien - Healthcare > Altien is building a digital platform for nursing homes and healthcare institutions, improving daily life for staff, residents, and relatives. URL: https://smpl.as/work/altien # Altien - Healthcare [Altien](https://altien.app) is developing a digital tool for nursing homes and healthcare institutions. The goal is to improve everyday life for staff, residents, and relatives by digitising routines and creating a more meaningful daily experience. Our **UX,UI and Brand Design Experts** went to work, designing a streamlined, user-friendly platform. ## Services Delivered - UI/UX Design - Branding - Illustrations - 5 day-prototype ## Gallery ![Altien App Screen](/images/altien/altien-app-1.jpg) ![Altien App Detail](/images/altien/altien-app-2.jpg) ![Altien Mockup](/images/altien/altien-mockup.png) ![Altien App Overview](/images/altien/altien-app-3.jpg) ## Related Work Explore more success stories: - [Tilsig – Energy / Flow Monitoring](/work/tilsig) - [Share50 – Ad Revenue](/work/share50) --- # BAS TrustDesk – Strategy-to-Execution Validation > BAS TrustDesk gives boards and investors a traceable view of whether a company is building what its strategy said it would. URL: https://smpl.as/work/bas # BAS TrustDesk – Strategy-to-Execution Validation [**BAS TrustDesk**](https://bastrustdesk.com) is a strategy-to-execution validation platform for boards, investors, and transformation committees. It connects read-only to Jira, Azure DevOps and GitHub, ingests strategy artefacts, and produces a traceable report on whether a company is building what its strategy said — and whether the team has validated the underlying assumptions before committing engineering spend. ## What did the client think? > "We came in with a live product, a handful of customers, and a vibe-coded prototype of where we thought the next version needed to go. Five days with SmplCo gave us two things we could not easily have got on our own: the discipline to pick one primary user, and a design system that has carried through every screen of the rebuild." **Tor Einar Enne** *Founder, BAS Trust Systems* ## The Challenge TrustDesk arrived on a referral from Neetly, already in early production with a handful of customers using it daily. In the weeks before the sprint, the founder had vibe-coded a prototype of where he believed the next version needed to go — directionally opinionated, feature-rich, and built by one person alone on a theory of what users needed. The brief tried to greet six different audiences at once: - Series C CTOs, as configurators - Non-executive directors, reading the board pack - VC partners, running diligence - Angel investors, doing light DD - Enterprise PMO directors - Founders, running TrustDesk on their own companies The ask was sharper than the average brief: pick **one** primary user to build for first, and lay a design-system foundation the team could keep building on long-term. ## Our Solution We ran a **5-Day Prototype** in early January 2026, paired with a **Design System** delivered in the same week. By day three the centre of gravity was obvious: the CTO as the primary operator and configurator, the board-pack PDF as the first real artefact, everything else sequenced behind it. By day five, Tor Einar walked away with a clickable hi-res prototype and a system of tokens, components and patterns his engineers could carry straight into production. What followed wasn't a tweak. TrustDesk rebuilt the application end-to-end on top of the system, cut scope, and carried a single visual and interaction language through every screen. The current version is sharper, clearer about the problem it solves, and easier to use. ## Gallery ![BAS TrustDesk Assess Project Strategy dashboard](/images/bas/bas-dashboard-strategy.webp) ![BAS TrustDesk colour palette](/images/bas/bas-palette.jpg) ![BAS TrustDesk task workflow cards linked to Jira and GitHub](/images/bas/bas-tasks.webp) ![BAS TrustDesk Link Execution Tools dashboard](/images/bas/bas-dashboard-link-tools.jpg) ![BAS TrustDesk data quality and completeness scores](/images/bas/bas-quality-scores.webp) ![BAS TrustDesk overall strategy score](/images/bas/bas-strategy-score.webp) ![BAS TrustDesk SmartCrowding alignment report](/images/bas/bas-alignment-report.webp) ![BAS TrustDesk product screens overview](/images/bas/bas-screens-collage.webp) --- # Block Manager – Property Management > Block Manager revolutionises the running of multi-occupancy properties, solving endemic problems of poor workmanship, financial mismanagement, and complex legal systems. Its AI-driven platform systematises and automates everything related to residential building management. URL: https://smpl.as/work/blockmanager # Block Manager – Property Management Block Manager revolutionises the running of multi-occupancy properties, solving endemic problems of poor workmanship, financial mismanagement, and complex legal systems. The AI-driven platform systematises and — where possible — automates everything related to residential building management, making it much easier for tenants, property managers, and building committees alike to organise tasks, from collecting ground rent to making repairs. ## What did the client think? > "I remember when you first produced a prototype, it showed me what my future life would be like. It was amazing! Now, we've just closed our first fundraising round of £500,000 at a £5 million valuation." **Robert Elliott** *CEO, Block Manager* ## The Challenge - One platform, multiple stakeholders with different needs and permissions. Leaseholders, shareholders, committee members, and tenants all need to use the same platform — but each requires a different view, different permissions, and different levels of access to the same underlying data. - Residents want answers, not more communication. Frustration stems from poor service and a lack of transparency — residents need to find everything about their block in one place, be notified only of what actually needs their attention, and report issues quickly, with confidence that they'll be handled properly. - Committee members are running the building, not just tracking it. They need a single place to manage documents, oversee residents, and stay on top of finances — without switching between spreadsheets, email threads, and paper files. ## Our Solution - **Centralised property documentation and workflows.** We created one platform with six core capabilities: Digital Vault, Issue Reporting, Timeline, Contractor Management, Financial Management, and Communications & Support. - **Timeline: visual signals over text.** Each task carries several attributes — urgency, recurrence, ownership, dates, contractor — translated into colour-coded priority tags, status-based date styling, and clear ownership badges. Anyone can spot what matters at a glance, without opening a card, saving time for committees and residents who need to act, not read. - **Digital Vault: access-aware by design.** Documents split naturally into building-wide and unit-specific levels, each visible to different types of users. Rather than manage this with complex settings, the right access level is resolved through a quick selection at the point a committee member adds a document — and every file is tagged to a category, so anyone can find what they need without knowing where to look. - **Expandable safety and history cards.** Building safety details and property history live in cards that expand only when needed, keeping the default view calm while still letting residents understand where they live and letting committees add to and maintain that record over time. ## The Result From an early prototype, we developed the MVP into a live product, enabling Block Manager to validate the platform with actual committees, residents, and managers. This led to hundreds of clients signing up and, to date, Block Manager has raised £500,000 at a £5 million valuation. ## Gallery ![Block Manager's issue-reporting assistant, the resident Timeline home screen, and a task's Logged / Scheduled / Done status pipeline](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-overview-composite.png) ![The Digital Vault, showing role-tagged documents split across leaseholder, shareholder and committee access](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-digital-vault.png) ![Choosing who can see a document — the access level resolved through a quick selection at the point it's added](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-access-level-picker.png) ![Block Manager's marketing site, introducing the platform's six core capabilities](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-marketing-site.png) ![Building safety categories — Lift Breakdown, Electricity, Fire Safety, Water & Gas, Access and Crime — collapsed until needed](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-safety-categories.png) ![A building safety card expanded to show fire equipment instructions, escape routes and a map](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-safety-card-expanded.png) ![Scheduling a Timeline task, setting its critical level, category and filtering by service type](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-task-scheduling.png) ![The committee's Fire Door Tracker, tracking inspection status across every flat in the building](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-fire-door-tracker.png) ![Adding a new contractor and browsing the contractor directory by service type](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-contractor-management.png) ![Financial Management's budget breakdown alongside a Fire Safety task's cost, contractor and timeline detail](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-financial-management.png) ![The block's History & Story — an expandable card telling the building's story, alongside the main navigation menu](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-history-and-story.png) ![Adding a resident and assigning their role — Leaseholder, Shareholder, Committee or Tenant](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-add-resident.png) ![Resident Management, listing every unit's residents with their role and contact details](/images/blockmanager/blockmanager-resident-management.png) --- # Compera – Supply Chain Reporting > Compera helps tens of thousands of companies meet regulatory requirements, enhance transparency, and reduce their reporting burden. URL: https://smpl.as/work/compera # Compera – Supply Chain Reporting [Compera](https://compera.no/) helps tens of thousands of companies meet regulatory requirements, enhance transparency, and reduce their reporting burden. The platform began as a **5-Day Prototype** to simplify sustainability data sharing and value chain transparency. This helped the company win awards and partner buy-in, allowing us to develop an MVP - and then full-scale platform - using SmplCo's ultra-lean **Design as a Service**. ## Services Delivered - UI/UX Design - Prototyping - Branding & Illustration - MVP development - Energy - Landing Page ## Gallery ![Compera Dashboard](/images/compera/compera-dashboard-1.jpg) ![Compera Logo](/images/compera/compera-logo-light.jpg) ![Compera Charts](/images/compera/compera-charts.jpg) ![Compera Dashboard Detail](/images/compera/compera-dashboard-2.jpg) ![Compera Dashboard Overview](/images/compera/compera-dashboard-3.jpg) ![Compera Scope Analysis](/images/compera/compera-scope.jpg) ![Compera Brand](/images/compera/compera-brand-1.jpg) ![Compera Brand Detail](/images/compera/compera-brand-2.jpg) ## Review > "SmplCo's Product Design as a Service and management of development helped get us build our solution and win contracts!" **Lene Koll** *Founder, Compera* ## Related Work Explore more success stories: - [Tilsig – Energy / Flow Monitoring](/work/tilsig) - [Share50 – Ad Revenue](/work/share50) --- # Enquip – Real Estate / FS > Enquip helps real estate owners and investors analyse portfolio sustainability, compare clean energy options, and take action to increase property values. URL: https://smpl.as/work/enquip # Enquip – Real Estate / FS Enquip software enables real estate owners and investors to analyse portfolio sustainability, compare clean energy options, and increase property values. ## What did the client think? > "Smpl has done for us as the name implies - taken something complex and made it beautifully simple, helping us raise and helping us sell." **Kitty Harris** *Enquip Energy* ## The Challenge Real estate owners and investors needed a single platform to make sense of sustainability data that was scattered and hard to act on. Specifically, they needed to: - Analyse portfolio sustainability metrics - Compare actionable clean energy options - Make data-driven decisions to increase property values - Navigate the complex landscape of sustainable real estate investment ## Our Solution We ran a **5-Day Prototype**, taking Enquip's existing platform and rebuilding it into a more intuitive, efficient version. Our approach included: - **UI/UX Design**: creating a beautifully simple interface - **Rapid Prototyping**: a 5-day sprint methodology - **Energy-focused Illustrations**: visual communication of sustainability concepts - **Landing Page Optimization**: converting visitors into users The redesigned platform helped Enquip raise investment from new funding sources and win new customers through an improved experience — all while keeping the simplicity that made it stand out. ## Gallery ![Enquip's new platform interface showcasing sustainability analytics](/images/enquip/enquip-overview.jpg) ![Clean, intuitive UI design focused on user experience](/images/enquip/enquip-ui-design.jpg) ![Energy data visualization and portfolio insights](/images/enquip/enquip-data-viz.jpg) ![Comprehensive dashboard for real estate portfolio management](/images/enquip/enquip-dashboard.jpg) ![Advanced sustainability analysis and reporting features](/images/enquip/enquip-sustainability.jpg) --- # Get Rude – Sexual Health & Pleasure > Get Rude is the world's first personalised smart vibrator, reading arousal in real time and matching over 240 motions to the user's body. We designed the app experience that makes calibrating, using, and learning from it feel intuitive, engaging, and fun. URL: https://smpl.as/work/getrude # Get Rude – Sexual Health & Pleasure We track sleep. We track steps. We track calories. Sexual response is the last unmeasured vital sign. Vibrators are basically unchanged since the late '60s. Get Rude goes where no product exists today, sitting at the intersection of tracking, interpreting and intervening in sexual health and pleasure. It's the world's first personalised smart vibrator: it learns about the user, their body, and how they respond to stimulus, reading arousal in real time and matching over 240 motions to precisely target micro-erogenous zones. The software learns what works session by session, adapting in real time — reading, adjusting and responding like an attentive partner, so users never have to guess what their body needs again. ## The Challenge We focused on creating a user experience and interface for Get Rude that would make using their state-of-the-art toy intuitive, engaging, and fun. Our designers focused on: - Making calibration feel like discovery, not an interview about the user's body - Turning real-time biometric data into moments that feel attentive, not clinical - Showing AI insights with honest confidence levels, never hard scores - Making the experience feel rewarding using gamification ## Our Solution The platform we designed offers: - Discovery-first onboarding — hotspots, movement, touch — before any score appears - A home page that visibly evolves from empty state to personalised insights - A dedicated post-session flow that feels like the natural "after," not admin - Confidence-labelled insights (Strong / Moderate / Emerging) as the core UI pattern ## Gallery ![Get Rude's hotspot calibration, warm onboarding moment, and personalised home dashboard](/images/getrude/getrude-overview-composite.png) ![A post-session feedback screen, rating a motion on a simple emoji scale from "Hated it" to "Loved it"](/images/getrude/getrude-feedback-rating.png) ![Adjusting calibration settings by touch during a live session](/images/getrude/getrude-calibration-in-hand.png) ![The discovery-first "Finding Hotspots" flow, mapping the body by feel before any score appears](/images/getrude/getrude-hotspot-discovery.png) ![The personalised Pleasure Map and Bluetooth device pairing screen](/images/getrude/getrude-pleasure-map-pairing.png) ![Live session controls for pace, intensity and focus, alongside a session timeline from warm-up to rebuild](/images/getrude/getrude-session-controls.png) ![The technique library, teaching named motions like Edging, The Clock, and Rocking](/images/getrude/getrude-technique-library.png) ![The home dashboard, surfacing cycle-aware insights and guided courses](/images/getrude/getrude-home-dashboard.png) ![The live session control screen](/images/getrude/getrude-live-session-glow.png) --- # Gledelevering – Gift Automation > Gledelevering is a Norwegian gifting-automation platform for businesses, built around local suppliers. It automates flower, cake and breakfast-delivery gifts for birthdays, work anniversaries and other key dates, so gifts arrive fresh without anyone having to remember, plan, or place an order manually. URL: https://smpl.as/work/gledelevering # Gledelevering – Gift Automation Gledelevering is a Norwegian gifting-automation platform for businesses, built around local suppliers. It automates flower, cake, and breakfast-delivery gifts for birthdays, work anniversaries, and other key dates, sourced from local partners near the recipient (Euroflorist, Interflora, Morgenlevering.no), so gifts arrive fresh, without anyone having to remember, plan, or place an order manually. ## The Challenge - Serving two distinct audiences, employees and customers, with different data, occasions, and rules, without doubling setup effort - Multiple data input methods — upload, system integration, manual entry — needed to feel like one coherent step, not three separate features - Imported data is rarely clean, missing fields, duplicates, so problems needed to surface clearly before automation acts on bad data - Gift rules needed both a simple default budget and per-occasion overrides, without turning the rule-builder into a spreadsheet - Since the whole point is "no manual follow-up," the system needed to visibly prove the automation is actually working, not just run unseen ## Our Solution - A warm, illustrated visual language, colour palette and friendly characters, used consistently across onboarding, dashboard, and empty states to soften the "automation" feel - A single guided 6-step wizard, where later steps adapt based on earlier choices (e.g. skip customers, and those rules disappear) - One "connect data" screen with three clear, equal options: upload, system integration, or manual entry - A review-and-validate step showing missing-field and duplicate counts before import, catching issues early - A two-level budget system, one default budget, plus editable per-occasion overrides (amount, gift type, delivery location) - A warm completion screen and metrics dashboard (spend, time saved, upcoming occasions, delivery status) giving visible proof the automation is working ## The Result The clickable prototype gave the founders a tangible, intuitive product to show, turning an early-stage idea into something investors and first clients could actually experience and understand at a glance, rather than just hear described. This made the story easier to tell and more convincing in conversations with potential clients, and gave the founders a stronger asset to support fundraising efforts. ## Gallery ![Gledelevering's onboarding wizard, choosing whether gifts go to employees, customers, or both](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-audience-selection.png) ![Gledelevering's gift-type icon set: cakes, flowers, discount codes, coupons, breakfast delivery and gift cards](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-gift-type-icons.png) ![Editing an occasion's rule — budget, gift type and delivery location, all in one panel](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-occasion-editor.png) ![Gledelevering's warm, illustrated value propositions, shown consistently across onboarding and the dashboard](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-value-props.png) ![Connecting employee and customer data via CRM and HR system integrations, including HubSpot, Salesforce and Visma](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-data-integration.png) ![An estimated-spend widget tracking budget use and its distribution across the year](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-spend-widget.png) ![Occasion rule cards for Birthday and Holiday, each with its own budget, gift type and delivery rules](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-occasion-rules.png) ![A delivered gift email, sent to a customer with a personal note and discount code](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-delivered-gift-email.png) ![A warm "all set" completion screen confirming the gift automation is now active](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-setup-complete.png) ![A list of upcoming occasions, spanning birthdays, work anniversaries and customer milestones](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-upcoming-occasions.png) ![Gledelevering's dashboard overview, showing employees and customers covered, time saved, budget and upcoming occasions at a glance](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-dashboard-overview.png) ![A flower style picker sourced from local partners Euroflorist and Interflora](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-flower-picker.png) ![Choosing a customer occasion — purchase anniversary, new deal, milestone, or VIP loyalty gift](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-customer-occasion-dropdown.png) ![Gledelevering's brand tagline: the right attention, at the right time, fully automatic](/images/gledelevering/gledelevering-brand-tagline.png) --- # goalGetr – Sports Training > goalGetr is a multi-tenant youth ice hockey training platform connecting clubs, players and parents. We were goalGetr's end-to-end product and engineering partner — design, architecture, build, and ongoing operation. URL: https://smpl.as/work/goalgetr # goalGetr – Sports Training [goalGetr](https://goalgetr.co/en) keeps everyone connected to a young player's development — whether you're coaching, training, or cheering from the stands. It immediately garnered thousands of users upon launch with its multi-tiered approach: clubs and teams organise sessions and track development, players train with video guides and watch their skills progress, and parents follow schedules and their kids' progress. ## What did the client think? > "Thanks so much for creating a truly unique training platform. It's a pleasure to work with people who can bring your ideas to life and even improve them in the process." **Christian Dahl-Andersen** *Founder, goalGetr* ## The Challenge Build a multi-tenant youth ice hockey training platform from the ground up, including: - Elite-coach video content - Gamified player cards - Stripe subscriptions - Clerk authentication across six roles - Tiered parental consent - GDPR Article 17 erasure ## Our Solution SmplCo was goalGetr's end-to-end product and engineering partner, delivering design, architecture, build, and ongoing operation. Key elements of this complex platform include: - **Independently-branded instances on shared infrastructure.** Each club owns its players, sessions and progression data. Isolation is enforced through Clerk organisation membership at every request, plus a teamId filter on every document in MongoDB, plus explicit E2E tests that authenticate as one team and assert zero leak from another. - **Dual-funnel acquisition.** Players arrive either through their club (magic-link onboarding, branded experience, revenue share back to the club) or directly from families buying the Summer Pass via Stripe Checkout. Both populations land in the same backend, with attribution captured per signup. - **Elite coach content** authored by specialist international coaches, with sessions dropping into each player's calendar weekly. - **Challenge tracking**, where players log their results against the coaches' baselines. - **Founding Cards** — limited collectible variants — adding a brand reward layer on top of the Digital Player Card. - **User-generated video**, in active build: players record and upload challenge clips through the full pipeline — client-side compression, direct upload, moderation queue, and CDN delivery via Vercel Blob Storage with signed token access and role-based access control. ## Gallery ![goalGetr's club dashboard, showing team roster, coach-authored drill video, and the shared session calendar](/images/goalgetr/goalgetr-club-dashboard.png) ![goalGetr's limited-edition Founding Cards, a collectible reward layer on top of the Digital Player Card](/images/goalgetr/goalgetr-founding-cards.png) ![Editing a player's Digital Player Card — photo, background colour and layout, all customisable](/images/goalgetr/goalgetr-card-editor.png) ![A player card's front and back, showing gamified stats and earned badges like Captain, Dangler and Sniper](/images/goalgetr/goalgetr-player-card-stats.png) ![A player's session calendar spanning multiple clubs, with sessions to accept or decline](/images/goalgetr/goalgetr-player-calendar.png) ![An elite coach card from goalGetr's specialist content library, featuring a scoring clinic](/images/goalgetr/goalgetr-elite-coach.png) ![goalGetr's sport iconography, used throughout drills, sessions and player stats](/images/goalgetr/goalgetr-sport-icons.png) ![A coach-assigned training session with embedded video guide, ready for players to complete](/images/goalgetr/goalgetr-training-video.png) ![goalGetr's session game board, letting coaches build full-ice practice plans station by station with an equipment checklist](/images/goalgetr/goalgetr-session-planner.png) ![A player's skill progression rings, tracking Skating, Shooting, Puck Skills, Fitness, Game Sense and Character](/images/goalgetr/goalgetr-skill-progress.png) ![A coaching nudge prompting a player to balance shooting practice with game sense drills](/images/goalgetr/goalgetr-coaching-nudge.png) --- # Nucase – Home Renovation > NuCase takes the surprises out of planning home renovations, making the process fast and effortless. URL: https://smpl.as/work/nucase # Nucase — Home Renovation **NuCase** takes the (unpleasant!) surprises out of planning home renovations, making the process fast and effortless. We took Nucase from concept to market in just 5 weeks, using our **5-Day Prototype**, **Strategic Business Advisory**, and **Digital Design as a Service**. The platform smashed its launch targets, building a solid market presence and hitting 10,000 visitors in just over a month. ## Services Delivered - UI/UX Design - Branding - Prototype - Illustration ## Gallery ![Home Screen UI](/images/nucase/home-screen-ui.jpg) ![Modal Beaver](/images/nucase/modal-beaver.png) ![Modal Entrance](/images/nucase/modal-entrance.jpg) ![3D Building Model](/images/nucase/building-box.jpg) ![Screen UI](/images/nucase/screen-ui-2.jpg) ![Beaver Nap](/images/nucase/beaver-nap.jpg) ![Can We Fix It](/images/nucase/can-we-fix-it.jpg) ![Phone Mockup](/images/nucase/phone-mockup.jpg) ## Review > "SmplCo delivered my product, Nucase, seamlessly." **Petter Støldal** *Founder, Nucase* ## Related Work Explore more success stories: - [Tilsig – Energy / Flow Monitoring](/work/tilsig) - [Share50 – Ad Revenue](/work/share50) --- # Orli – Mental Health > Orli is tackling the UK's mental health crisis with an AI-driven emotional support platform, backed by science and built to unlock children's potential. URL: https://smpl.as/work/orli # Orli – Mental Health **Orli** is helping alleviate the UK's mental health crisis, using an AI-driven, emotional support platform that is backed by science and built to unlock children's potential. Using our **5-Day Prototype** service, we designed an intuitive platform that not only helps kids, but gives Orli multiple opportunities to engage with partners & customers, ranging from schools, to local authorities, and the NHS. As a result of our work together, Orli landed investment and a place on the UK's highly-regarded Bethnal Green Ventures accelerator programme. ## Services Delivered - UI/UX Design - Branding - Prototype - Illustration ## Gallery ![Orli UI Pink](/images/orli/orli-ui-pink.jpg) ![School Card UI](/images/orli/school-card-ui.jpg) ![Social Card UI](/images/orli/social-card-ui.jpg) ![Orli UI Green](/images/orli/orli-ui-green.jpg) ![Orli Feature Cards](/images/orli/orli-cards.jpg) ![Dashboard Analytics](/images/orli/dashboard-1.jpg) ![UI Elements](/images/orli/ui-elements-1.jpg) ![UI Elements 2](/images/orli/ui-elements-2.jpg) ## Review > "Their ability to listen, communicate and transform complex ideas into reality meant that we came away from our project as very happy bunnies - especially as our prototype played a huge role in us securing investment." **Dr. Mark Cox** *Co-founder Orli* ## Related Work Explore more success stories: - [Tilsig – Energy / Flow Monitoring](/work/tilsig) - [Share50 – Ad Revenue](/work/share50) --- # Paperdrop – For Contractors > PaperDrop is the market-leading software for contractors who want to cut paperwork and simplify everyday tasks like job management, quoting, and invoicing. URL: https://smpl.as/work/paperdrop # Paperdrop – For Contractors [**PaperDrop**](https://paperdrop.com/) is the market-leading software for contractors who want to cut paperwork and simplify everyday tasks like job management, quoting, and invoicing. The firm needed a superior product experience to align with the real-world workflows of contractors. They also needed to refresh their outdated brand, creating a more modern, approachable identity. Our **UX,UI and Brand Design Experts** went to work, designing a streamlined, user-friendly platform. The result was a dramatic boost in sales for PaperDrop. ## Services Delivered - UI/UX Design - Branding - Illustrations ## Gallery ![Paperdrop UI](/images/paperdrop/paperdrop-ui-1.jpg) ![Paperdrop Interface](/images/paperdrop/paperdrop-ui-2.jpg) ![Paperdrop Dashboard](/images/paperdrop/paperdrop-ui-3.jpg) ![Paperdrop Detail](/images/paperdrop/paperdrop-ui-4.jpg) ![Paperdrop Brand](/images/paperdrop/paperdrop-brand-1.jpg) ![Paperdrop Identity](/images/paperdrop/paperdrop-brand-2.jpg) ![Paperdrop Mockup](/images/paperdrop/paperdrop-mockup-1.jpg) ![Paperdrop Device Mockup](/images/paperdrop/paperdrop-mockup-2.jpg) ## Related Work Explore more success stories: - [Tilsig – Energy / Flow Monitoring](/work/tilsig) - [Share50 – Ad Revenue](/work/share50) --- # PEVio – Private Equity Due Diligence > PEVio is decision infrastructure for private markets investors. We designed the full due diligence workflow end-to-end, turning scattered institutional knowledge into a structured, evidence-backed system. URL: https://smpl.as/work/pevio # PEVio – Private Equity Due Diligence [PEVio](https://pevio.ai/) is decision infrastructure for private markets investors. It helps sophisticated investment teams make better, more consistent, more transparent investment decisions, turning scattered knowledge into a structured, repeatable system. ## What did the client think? > "SMPL helped us transform an ambitious vision into a working prototype. They quickly understood the complexity behind PEVio and created an intuitive experience that laid the foundation for what has since evolved into decision infrastructure for private markets." **Christian A. Hvamstad** *Founder & CEO, PEVio* ## The Challenge Private equity firms don't lack data; they lack a structured way to capture institutional knowledge and apply it consistently across every deal. Every investment committee generates valuable intelligence through its questions and judgements, but that intelligence rarely gets retained or reused. The design challenge was twofold: - Translate a genuinely complex workflow involving thousands of documents, multiple AI models, and sophisticated decision logic into an intuitive user experience. - Serve two very different users in one system: analysts who need to work evidence line by line, and partners who need to grasp risk and status in seconds. Depth on one side, clarity at a glance on the other. ## Our Solution We designed the prototype workflow end-to-end, from fund setup to final investment decision, combining proprietary due diligence frameworks with explainable AI so every output is transparent and evidence-backed. Auditability and governance sit at the core: every conclusion traces back to its source. Key elements included: - A guided fund setup flow that turns investment criteria and due diligence standards into structured, reusable frameworks - AI-assisted data ingestion, connecting directly to a firm's existing data room or accepting direct uploads, with analysis starting immediately - A fund-level dashboard tracking every company by stage, from Under Consideration through to Invested, giving teams a full pipeline view at a glance - A multi-dimensional due diligence dashboard spanning Finance, Legal, Technology, Commercial, ESG and more, each scored and progress-tracked, with Top Opportunities and Deal Stoppers always linked back to evidence - A detailed analyst review interface surfacing AI-flagged anomalies by severity and matching them to source documents - A partner-facing summary that triggers instantly on review completion, so partners get the full picture without redoing the analyst's work ## Gallery ![PEVio's multi-dimensional due diligence dashboard scoring Finance, Legal, Technology, Commercial and more, with Top Opportunities and Deal Stoppers](/images/pevio/pevio-due-diligence-dashboard.png) ![Analyst-facing assessment cards tracking due diligence progress across Finance, Legal and Commercial workstreams](/images/pevio/pevio-analyst-review.png) ![The full range of due diligence categories tracked, from Technology and Commercial to Risk, Tax, Cybersecurity and Operations](/images/pevio/pevio-due-diligence-categories.png) ![PEVio's fund-level pipeline dashboard, tracking companies by stage from Under Consideration through to Invested](/images/pevio/pevio-portfolio-dashboard.gif) ![PEVio's sign-in screen](/images/pevio/pevio-sign-in.png) ![PEVio's guided fund setup flow, connecting a data room and defining due diligence criteria](/images/pevio/pevio-fund-setup.png) ![Fund cards showing each fund's pipeline of companies under consideration, in due diligence and invested](/images/pevio/pevio-fund-cards.png) ![Partner-facing summary comparing aggregate due diligence scores across companies](/images/pevio/pevio-partner-summary.png) --- # Resani – Hygiene > Resani monitors hand hygiene in healthcare settings. SmplCo enhanced their system with a 5-Day Prototype for intuitive, data-driven tracking. URL: https://smpl.as/work/resani # Resani – Hygiene Resani's existing platform focused on **hand hygiene monitoring** in healthcare settings. We worked with them to enhance their system, creating a more intuitive, data-driven prototype that improved how healthcare facilities track and manage hygiene practices. Our 5 Day Prototype enhanced the **visual representation** of hand hygiene data, providing clearer insights into compliance and performance. ## Services Delivered - UI/UX Design - Prototyping - Branding - Illustration ## Gallery ![Resani Top Mockup](/images/resani/resani-top-mockup.jpg) ![Woman](/images/resani/woman.jpg) ![Woman Side Pose](/images/resani/woman-side-pose.jpg) ![Woman Look Into Camera](/images/resani/woman-look-camera.jpg) ![Resani Home Screen](/images/resani/resani-home-screen.jpg) ![Resani Illustration](/images/resani/resani-illustration.jpg) ![Resani UI 3](/images/resani/resani-ui-3.jpg) ![Resani UI 4](/images/resani/resani-ui-4.jpg) ## Review > "Our 5 Day Prototype helped us finally see something we had been dreaming of, and allowed us to understand how our digital future could look, feel and work." **Andrew Smith** *Senior Designer, Resani* > "The 5-day prototype with SmplCo played a key role in shaping the core value of the company. The visual effects kick started a new journey for us, which is differentiating us from our competitors." **Kine Norland** *Head of Growth* ## Related Work Explore more success stories: - [Tilsig – Energy / Flow Monitoring](/work/tilsig) - [Share50 – Ad Revenue](/work/share50) --- # Share50 – Ad Revenue > Share50 makes it easy for local organisations to raise money without selling anything, asking for donations, or asking more from their volunteers. URL: https://smpl.as/work/share50 # Share50 – Ad Revenue **Share50** makes it easy for local organisations, from sports clubs to charities, to raise money, and do it without selling anything, asking for donations, or asking more from their volunteers. We began by using our **5-Day Prototype** service to define the digital vision, value proposition, and key user journeys needed to create an intuitive, engaging experience for users. This vision became the basis of Share50's MVP, which turned ad views into meaningful financial support for local communities, while giving advertisers access to a highly targeted and engaged audience. ## Services Delivered - UI/UX Design - Branding - Illustration - Prototype ## Gallery ![Man Walking](/images/share50/man-walking.jpg) ![Man Riding EV](/images/share50/man-riding-ev.jpg) ![Woman Running](/images/share50/woman-running.jpg) ![ODEON Partnership](/images/share50/odeon-section.jpg) ![Woman In Garden](/images/share50/woman-in-garden.jpg) ![Woman Night View](/images/share50/woman-night-view.jpg) ![Features](/images/share50/features-1.jpg) ![Dashboard Features](/images/share50/features-1.jpg) ![Leaderboard Features](/images/share50/features-2.jpg) ## Related Work Explore more success stories: - [Tilsig – Energy / Flow Monitoring](/work/tilsig) - [Nucase – Home Renovation](/work/nucase) --- # Tilsig – Energy / Flow Monitoring > Tilsig specialises in real-time water monitoring for hydropower, enabling customers to reliably capture and analyse essential water level data. URL: https://smpl.as/work/tilsig # Tilsig – Energy / Flow Monitoring Tilsig specialises in real-time water monitoring for the hydropower industry, enabling customers to reliably and accurately capture, then analyse, essential water level data. In just **five days**, we helped Tilsig **prototype** a comprehensive vision for a solution to integrate robust IoT sensors and encrypted data transmission into an intuitive digital product. ## Services Delivered - UI/UX Design - Prototyping - Branding - Energy - Landing Page ## Gallery ![Dashboard Cover](/images/tilsig/dashboard-cover.jpg) ![Unit Status](/images/tilsig/unit-status.jpg) ![Water Depth](/images/tilsig/water-depth.jpg) ![System Schematics](/images/tilsig/schematics.jpg) ![Analytics Dashboard](/images/tilsig/dalen-2.jpg) ![Weather Forecast](/images/tilsig/weather-forecast.jpg) ![Control Icons](/images/tilsig/icons.jpg) ## Related Work Explore more success stories: - [Share50 – Ad Revenue](/work/share50) - [Nucase – Home Renovation](/work/nucase) --- # Webinars & talks # Effectively integrate AI into your product Date: 2026-04-29 · Tags: AI, Product strategy, Webinar, Barclays Eagle Labs, Founder advice > How do you turn AI from a risky expense into a scalable product advantage? Andreas and Mike on AI-as-build-tool vs AI-in-product, costs, and defensibility. URL: https://smpl.as/webinars/effectively-integrate-ai-into-your-product YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8dAJ1O4WRg ## What this webinar covers Andreas Melvær and Michael Millar of [SmplCo](https://smpl.as) joined Luke Hampson of Barclays Eagle Labs for a one-hour webinar aimed at founders and product teams trying to integrate AI without burning cash or shipping fragile software. The talk is built around a question every product team is wrestling with right now: **how do you turn AI from a risky expense into a scalable product advantage?** ## Key takeaways ### 1. AI to *build with* is not the same as AI *inside* your product A lot of founders conflate "we use AI" with "our product is an AI product". They are completely different decisions, with completely different costs and risks. Andreas walked through two SmplCo-built examples: - **A coaching tool for kids' hockey training** — built with Claude Code, but if AI disappeared tomorrow the product would still work. The technology underneath is conventional: a CMS, a database, a frontend. AI was the construction tool, not the engine. - **A platform that writes coaching plans on demand** — uses Gemini under the hood with carefully tuned prompts. Without AI, the core service does not exist. Both are valid. They just have different cost profiles, different risks, and different defensibility questions. Conflating them leads to poor strategy. ### 2. Tokens cost money — every single one When AI is *inside* your product, the model serves users at runtime, and every interaction costs tokens. Andreas was direct: **"Tokens cost money. You've got to be really careful how you do this."** Volume play matters. A free feature that calls a model on every keystroke is a different proposition from a paid premium feature that calls it once per session. Map your usage before you ship — not after. ### 3. Plan before you "vibe-code" Vibe coding (talking to an agent and letting it build) is real and it works. But it works *much* better when you plan first: data model, system architecture, user journeys, where the data flows, which services are involved. The most common SmplCo sees: founders bringing in vibe-coded prototypes that look fabulous on the dashboard but are spaghetti underneath. Untangling that is expensive. The fix is cheap: spend an hour writing the data model and architecture down (AI can help draft it) before the live coding starts. ### 4. Guardrails, governance and the "sleep at night" test If AI is in your product, it is an attack surface. Andreas covered the practical risks: prompt injection, token-bill abuse, exposure of unintended endpoints, hallucinations and bias. The mitigations are well understood — guardrails on what the model is allowed to discuss, scoped credentials, rate-limiting, evals on outputs — but they need someone owning them. SmplCo works with security specialists for client production deployments, and recommends the same for any team putting an LLM in front of users. The test Mike came back to: **how well do you sleep at night?** If you cannot answer that question about your own AI product, you have not done enough. ### 5. Defensibility when everyone can code When everyone can vibe-code an MVP in a weekend, "we built it" is no longer a moat. The investor question — *what's your differentiator?* — gets sharper, not softer, in an AI world. Some real moats Andreas and Mike covered: proprietary data, distribution, brand, deep domain expertise, regulated workflow integrations. Some non-moats: "we used GPT-5", "we have a clever prompt", "we wrap a foundation model". If you are reselling Anthropic tokens, that is a feature, not a defence. ### 6. AI for the *business*, not just the product The conversation everyone has is about putting AI in the product. The bigger near-term ROI for most founders is putting AI inside their *business*: replacing the SaaS stack they only use 10% of with internal tools they own. SmplCo replaced most of its own internal tooling — including a custom CRM Andreas built — with AI-built systems. That stuff used to require an engineering team and a six-figure SaaS bill. Today it is a weekend of focused work for a non-engineer who knows what they want. This is also covered in detail in the [Build Your Own Internal Tools guide](/build-guide). ## Useful links - The full [AI Integration Playbook](/ai-playbook) — the framework Andreas and Mike walked through - The [Build Your Own Internal Tools guide](/build-guide) — for the "AI for your business" theme - [Free 25%-off discovery offer](/eaglelabs) for Eagle Labs members ## Want to talk about your AI strategy? If you are figuring out where AI fits in your product or your business, [book a call](/book) — we will help you map it out without the hype. --- # Successful fundraising in 2026 Date: 2026-03-25 · Tags: Fundraising, Investor pitch, Webinar, Barclays Eagle Labs, Founder advice > Investors are backing fewer companies but writing bigger cheques. Mike Millar and Neil Wood on what the UK angel + VC market actually wants in 2026. URL: https://smpl.as/webinars/successful-fundraising-in-2026 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJzeJmunyUg ## What this webinar covers [Michael Millar](https://smpl.as/about) of [SmplCo](https://smpl.as) and Neil Wood of Wood Associates London — a UK corporate finance house with deep ties into HNW, VC, PE and family-office networks — ran a packed Barclays Eagle Labs session for 300+ founders on what's actually working in fundraising right now. The blunt summary: investors are backing **fewer** companies, but writing **bigger** cheques for the ones that truly stand out. Knowing what makes one company stand out and another get filed under "interesting, not now" is the whole game in 2026. ## Key takeaways ### 1. The UK angel market is "cautiously optimistic" — and concentrated Neil walked through the shape of the market: roughly **15,000 angel investors in the UK**, deploying around £1bn a year. Most of that goes into early-stage, pre-revenue ventures — driven heavily by SEIS / EIS tax relief. What's hot in 2026: **AI, health tech, fintech, and energy**. What's not: anything that looks like a *me-too* SaaS play with no clear technical or distribution moat. ### 2. Profitability is back — even at seed The dominant message from Neil's investor network: **profitability and robust business plans now beat high-valuation growth stories.** This is a real shift from 2021–22 thinking. Founders pitching "we'll be profitable eventually" are getting filed; founders showing a credible path to break-even are getting term sheets. If your pitch deck doesn't have a clear answer to *"when do you stop needing our money?"*, fix that before the next meeting. ### 3. Stop blanket-approaching investors Mike's pet peeve, and Neil agreed strongly: founders sending the same generic deck to every investor on a list. It is the single most common mistake — and the most fixable. Before you approach anyone, you should know: - Why are *they* specifically going to be interested in *you*? - What's their stage, sector and cheque-size focus? - What's in their portfolio that signals fit? - How will you reach them — warm intro, conference, fund mailer? A small list of well-qualified investors converts ten times better than a big list of generic ones. ### 4. Prototypes change the conversation Mike kept coming back to one point: a prototype changes the meeting. Investors can read a deck and stay neutral. They can see a working prototype and *feel* the product. That feeling is what gets you a second meeting. This is the same logic behind SmplCo's [5-day prototype service](/services) — by the time you walk into the next round of investor meetings, you have something they can click, react to, and remember after the call. ### 5. Investor due diligence is more linear than founders expect A lot of founders pitch as if "yes" means "here's the money". It doesn't. After the first meeting, expect a sequence: deeper meeting → due diligence → reference calls → term sheet → legals → close. Each step has a typical failure mode. Plan for them. Going in with a positive mindset matters too: **if an investor has agreed to deeper diligence, they want to find a way to back you.** Treat them as on your side until proven otherwise. ### 6. The pitch fundamentals that still apply Mike walked through the pitch parameters that matter most: clarity of problem, defensibility of solution, market size that's credible (not "it's a $50bn TAM"), traction that's *real* (paying customers > waitlist sign-ups), and a team narrative that explains why *you* are the right people for this. Plus: don't try to do all of this from memory under pressure. Frameworks help. SmplCo's [Pitch Prep Guide](/pitch-prep) is the toolkit Mike walks founders through before live pitches. ## Already wrote about this There's a longer-form blog version of this session: [Successful Fundraising in 2026: What Investors Actually Want](/blog/successful-fundraising-2026). ## Useful links - [Pitch Prep Guide](/pitch-prep) — frameworks for storytelling, positioning, and thinking like an investor - [5-Day Prototype service](/services) — the prototype-to-investor-meeting accelerator - [25% off SmplCo for Eagle Labs members](/eaglelabs) ## Raising soon and want a second opinion? If you're heading into a round and want help with deck, story, or prototype before you go, [book a call](/book). --- # Go from idea to product with AI vibe coding Date: 2026-02-26 · Tags: AI, Vibe coding, Prototyping, MVP, Webinar, Barclays Eagle Labs > Andreas and Line walk through the prototype → POC → MVP ladder, the workflow they use (Figma, Claude, GitHub), and where vibe-coding turns into rebuild work. URL: https://smpl.as/webinars/go-from-idea-to-product-with-ai-vibe-coding YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kltU6DgkJW0 ## What this webinar covers [Andreas Melvær](https://smpl.as/about) and Line Hjartarson — both multi-award-winning AI-assisted product designers at [SmplCo](https://smpl.as) — joined Barclays Eagle Labs to walk founders through how to actually take an idea, vibe-code it into a working product, and avoid the traps that turn a fast prototype into a pile of regrets six months in. ## Key takeaways ### 1. Get the vocabulary right: prototype vs proof of concept vs MVP These three words get used interchangeably. They are not the same thing. - **A prototype** is a clickable user interface for testing a concept with stakeholders. Usually no real code under the hood. - **A proof of concept** has real code, lives on the internet, and tests whether the idea works *technically* — sometimes at scale. Not for public use. - **An MVP** — minimum viable product — is the smallest version of your product *someone would actually pay for*. The "actually pay" part is what most teams skip. If nobody is paying, it's a prototype with extra steps. ### 2. The right number of users to test with is "diverse, not many" Founders ask Andreas this constantly: how many users should I test with? His answer: it depends, but less is almost always more. Three to ten of the *right* people, with diverse perspectives, will give you better signal than fifty people drawn from your existing echo chamber. The pitfall to avoid: only testing with people who already love you. ### 3. The vibe-coding workflow that actually ships Line walked through the stack she and Andreas use for fast, shippable AI-assisted builds: - **Figma** for design and the source of truth — works as a canvas you can collaborate inside, plus its built-in AI-coding capability for prototyping - **Claude (Code)** for planning and building — Claude's planning mode lets you reason through architecture in steps before generating code - **GitHub** for version control once you have something worth keeping - **Gemini Nano Banana** for image and illustration generation - **Resend / Stripe / standard SaaS** for the boring-but-essential parts: emails, payments, auth The pattern: prototype in design tools first, plan in Claude with full context, then code with version control. Not the other way round. ### 4. AI tools need context, or they hallucinate plans A lot of founders open Claude or Cursor and just start typing. Line was emphatic: AI tools need context to plan well. That means feeding the model documents, prompts, and constraints *before* asking it to design the system. The plan you get out is only as good as the input you put in. This is why she often uses one AI session to generate the planning artefacts, then feeds those into another AI session to do the actual build. Layered prompting, not single-shot prompting. ### 5. Don't ship a prototype that looks like duct tape When you're vibe-coding, the front-end can look polished from day one. There is no excuse in 2026 for handing a stakeholder a prototype with placeholder JPEGs, lorem ipsum, and three different button styles. That used to be acceptable. It isn't any more. Investors, customers, and partners now expect the surface to look real even when the back-end is held together with binder clips. The good news: AI tooling makes the polished surface fast and cheap. ## Useful links - The full [AI Integration Playbook](/ai-playbook) — the framework Andreas and Mike use with founders - [Build Your Own Internal Tools guide](/build-guide) — for the "AI for your business" angle - [25%-off discovery offer for Eagle Labs members](/eaglelabs) ## Want a second pair of eyes on your prototype? If you're partway through a vibe-coded build and want a sanity check before pouring more time in, [book a call](/book) — happy to look at it without a pitch. --- # Prototyping to land investment and win customers Date: 2025-03-12 · Tags: Prototyping, Investor pitch, 5-day prototype, Webinar, Barclays Eagle Labs > How a digital prototype can help you raise capital, sign partners, and land first customers — long before you have a finished product. Mike and Andreas, live. URL: https://smpl.as/webinars/prototyping-to-land-investment-and-win-customers YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk1xYlV-394 ## What this webinar covers This is the original Barclays Eagle Labs webinar that kicked off SmplCo's partnership with Eagle Labs. [Michael Millar](https://smpl.as/about) and [Andreas Melvær](https://smpl.as/about) walked Eagle Labs members through how a properly-built digital prototype can do the heavy lifting in three different conversations at once — investors, partners, and first customers — and often delivers results long before a finished product exists. If you've heard about SmplCo's [5-day prototype service](/services), this is the source material. ## Key takeaways ### 1. A prototype's real job is to align stakeholders, not to "test the design" Mike opened with a reframe most founders miss: **the prototype is not primarily a design exercise. It's an alignment tool.** It helps everyone — founders, co-founders, investors, partners, customers — agree on what the thing actually is, who it's for, and why it matters. When that alignment is in place early, every later step is faster, cheaper, and less stressful. If your team can't agree on the prototype, you have a much bigger problem than the prototype. ### 2. There is no excuse for an ugly prototype in 2026 Andreas was direct: *"There's absolutely no reason to get a prototype and hand it to people that looks like it's being held together with duct tape. There's no excuse for that."* Cheap, fast, polished — pick all three. Modern AI-assisted design tooling makes high-fidelity prototypes accessible to any founder. Anyone telling you "well, this is just a quick mock-up" with placeholder JPEGs is offering you 2018 work at 2026 prices. ### 3. Investors want feasibility, viability, and *defensibility* Andreas and Mike walked through what investors actually look for when they see a prototype: - **Market size** — credible and grounded, not made up - **Business model** — clear path to revenue - **Differentiation** — how is this different from what already exists - **Defensibility** — *what stops someone copying you the moment you ship?* The defensibility question is the one founders most often skip. A great prototype shows the value proposition; a *winning* prototype also signals the moat (proprietary data, distribution, regulated workflow, deep domain expertise). ### 4. Build the "golden user journey" — and only that A frequent mistake Mike and Andreas see: founders trying to prototype the entire product. That kills the timeline, blows the budget, and produces something nobody can react to clearly. The fix: identify the **golden user journey**. The single, high-stakes path through the product where the value is most obvious. Build that. Make it beautiful. Skip the rest. Investors will get the picture, customers will recognise themselves, partners will see the opportunity. ### 5. Don't create a monster Andreas's recurring framing: *"Always ask yourself — am I creating a monster?"* Scope creep, clever-but-unnecessary features, premature flexibility — these don't make a prototype better, they make it slower, uglier, and harder to change. The most effective prototypes are aggressively scoped. This is the same lesson Andreas comes back to in our newer "Build with AI without building a monster" playbook — the same discipline applies whether you're prototyping for investors or shipping production AI features. ### 6. The prototype shortens *every* later step The biggest argument for prototyping first: the prototype isn't replaced by the product, it accelerates it. The artefacts you produce — wireframes, decisions, copy, design system, golden journey — feed directly into design and development. Skipping the prototype doesn't save time; it just moves the cost to the more expensive phases. ## Useful links - The [5-Day Prototype service](/services) — the productised version of this approach - [25% off SmplCo for Eagle Labs members](/eaglelabs) - [Pitch Prep Guide](/pitch-prep) — the framework Mike uses for investor positioning - [The AI Integration Playbook](/ai-playbook) — the newer "don't build a monster" framework ## Got an idea you want to validate fast? If you have an idea and want to know whether a prototype could move the needle on funding or first customers, [book a call](/book) — happy to talk it through. --- # Open-source tools # PoGo MCP Date: 2026-05-30 · Tags: MCP, PowerOffice Go, Accounting, TypeScript > An open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for PowerOffice Go. Connect Claude, Cursor or any MCP client to your accounting data — query customers, invoices and products, and draft new records — in plain language. URL: https://smpl.as/tools/pogo-mcp PoGo MCP is the connector we built so our own AI tools could talk to PowerOffice Go safely. We're open-sourcing it so you can do the same — and if you'd like it wired into your stack, we can help. --- # Meta Publisher Date: 2026-05-29 · Tags: Meta API, Advertising, Automation, TypeScript > An open-source toolkit for programmatically creating, scheduling and publishing campaigns and content to Facebook and Instagram via the Meta Marketing API — version-controlled, repeatable, and out of the ad-manager clickfest. URL: https://smpl.as/tools/meta-publisher Meta Publisher is how we take the manual clicking out of running Meta campaigns. Open source and free — and we'll happily adapt it to your accounts and workflow. --- # Google Ads Publisher Date: 2026-05-28 · Tags: Google Ads, Advertising, Automation > An open-source toolkit for building, launching and updating Google Ads campaigns through the Google Ads API — keywords, ad groups and creatives defined as code instead of clicked together by hand. URL: https://smpl.as/tools/adwords-publisher Google Ads Publisher is our answer to managing search campaigns at scale without the manual grind. Free and open source — and we can tailor it to your account structure. --- # Performance Center Date: 2026-05-27 · Tags: Analytics, Dashboard, Marketing, Reporting > An open-source dashboard that pulls Meta, Google and more into a single performance view — spend, results and trends in one place, instead of a dozen browser tabs. URL: https://smpl.as/tools/performance-center Performance Center is the dashboard we built so we — and our clients — never have to reconcile a dozen ad platforms by hand. Open source and free; we can connect it to your channels and stack.