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The Closson Labs manifesto

Software should cost less.
Intelligence should earn its keep.

We believe the value in business software is moving toward the work intelligence can do inside it. Here is how we’re building around that shift, with the people who know the work.

Read the manifesto

01The application

The application is becoming the foundation

A great deal of business software organizes familiar things: people, inventory, time, documents, and the work that connects them. Those jobs matter. The patterns for building them are increasingly reusable.

Our bet is that AI-assisted development and shared foundations will keep pushing down the cost of producing this layer. We want that change to show up in what customers pay.

Reliable software still takes engineering, hosting, maintenance, and support. We intend to price that foundation simply, make it accessible to the whole team, and build our business around the useful work intelligence can do on top.

02The intelligence

Intelligence should earn its keep

An inventory record tells you what is on hand. A timesheet records where the hours went. The next opportunity is to use that information to help people get the work done.

As we move into construction presales, that could mean helping turn a set of plans into quantities an estimator can review, or preparing an estimate from the information the business already holds. The value is in a useful result that saves someone real effort.

We want intelligence to have a clear job and a result a person can check. It should fit the workflow, use the right context, and leave important decisions with the people responsible for them. That is what it needs to earn its place in the bill.

The value moves from access to an application toward the work it helps you finish

03The economics

One company. One base fee.

That belief should be visible in the way we charge. Our planned platform model is a flat monthly base for the company, with unlimited users and an included allowance for hosting and intelligence.

The base stays the same as the team grows. Usage draws from the included credit, with additional credits purchased when needed. A larger team can work together without adding another software license for every person.

This is the direction we are building toward. The distinction matters: unlimited users means the whole team can participate; hosting and intelligence are paid for through usage credits.

04Industry knowledge

The scarce thing is knowing what to build

Choosing the right problem takes operating knowledge. The person doing the job knows the exception that happens every week, the spreadsheet that keeps the process moving, and the feature everyone works around. That experience belongs in product development.

Our design partners work directly with the engineers building the product. They help shape priorities, walk through real workflows, and use working versions early enough to change the result.

We fund development and take the product to the wider market. Partners bring industry knowledge and time with the team. Some partnerships may include an advisory role with equity in the product business, considered case by case.

05Shared foundations

Build the foundations together

We are developing a shared platform and design system for the products we build. Accounts, permissions, documents, billing, and consistent interfaces have a common foundation, so more of our attention can go into what makes an industry different.

Each product still needs careful testing, security decisions, integrations, and ongoing support. Shared foundations let us carry engineering work forward, improve it across products, and make deliberate choices about the parts we share.

The opportunity is to combine repeatable engineering with specific industry knowledge. That is how we intend to build software that fits the work and can keep improving.

06Construction first

Start with the work. Build toward the whole job.

Construction is our first industry focus. We are building toward an end-to-end construction system, starting with inventory management and time tracking. Presales workflows, including estimating and takeoffs, come next.

Building in useful stages gives people something concrete to work with and us something concrete to learn from. The goal is a connected system shaped by the way the industry operates.

This work is in development. It is where we are putting the approach into practice: a shared foundation, industry input, and intelligence introduced where it can do a useful job.

07Our position

The software is the starting point

We believe conventional business software should become more affordable as the tools for building it improve. We want teams to have a dependable place to work, and intelligence that is worth paying for because of what it helps them do.

Industry knowledge tells us which work matters. Close collaboration with the people doing it tells us whether the product is useful. That is the business we want to build, starting with construction and open to people who know what needs fixing in other industries.

Better software starts with people who know the work

08An invitation

What should your industry’s software do next?

Tell us the market you know, what the existing tools get wrong, and what you would change first. We’d like to build something useful with you.