What we look for in a partner.
We run a handful of partnerships at a time. The first conversation is mostly us working out whether we should say no - and that is the most useful hour either side will spend.
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- Synodic Studio
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Synodic does not take briefs the way an agency does. Our own products - MineClub, MCCatalog and one we have not announced yet - are built and kept running by the same people who designed them, and that is the standard anyone we work with gets too: a relationship measured in years rather than deliverables. It only works if we are careful at the start, so the first conversation is deliberately unromantic.
Three things we look for
- Someone who can decide. Not a committee that reports to a committee. The fastest projects we have run had one person on the other side who could say yes on a Tuesday.
- A product with users, or an honest plan for getting them. We are good at building things. We cannot manufacture demand that was never there, and we would rather say so in week one than in month nine.
- An appetite to keep running it. If the ambition ends at launch day, we are the wrong studio - we build for the years after, and that shows up in the budget as well as the architecture.
What the first month looks like
One thread, not five. A weekly call that starts with what shipped and ends with what is next. Decisions written down where both sides can find them later, because the most expensive conversation in any project is the one you have twice.
You will also meet the people doing the work immediately. There is no account layer at Synodic to relay your question to an engineer and the answer back to you - the studio is small on purpose, and that is the part clients notice first.
The most expensive conversation in any project is the one you have twice.
When we say no
Often, and early. Usually it is capacity: we keep several products running, and taking on a fourth badly serves nobody. Sometimes it is fit - fixed scope against a fixed date with a handover at the end is real, legitimate work, and there are studios who do it well. We are not one of them.
A no from us comes with the reasoning and, where we can, a pointer somewhere better. We would rather be the studio that turned you down clearly than the one that said yes and drifted.
If you think it is a fit
Tell us what you are building, who it is for, and what is currently in the way. You will get an honest read from someone who has run something similar - whether or not it ends with us working together.
Working on something that fits? Tell us about it.