247 Labs

The biggest myth is that more features mean more value. Companies spend months building everything they can imagine, then launch to users who need only a few of those things. Instead, find the one problem that costs you the most, solve it well, and put it in front of real users fast. Then let their behaviour decide what comes next.

If I could track only three metrics, they would be:

• Adoption: are people actually using it?
• Time to value: how quickly does it make a real difference?
• Business impact: did it move revenue, cost, or capacity?

If those three look good, everything else tends to follow.

We saw companies getting software that technically worked but didn’t change anything for the business. Agencies built what they were told to build, without asking why. The turning point for us came from seeing clients arrive after a failed project with a finished product and the same problems they started with. The code wasn’t the issue. Nobody had asked the right questions before they started.

Starting from scratch today, I would:

1. Pick one industry and learn its problems better than anyone else.
2. Solve one painful problem for one client, almost at cost, and document the results.
3. Share what we learned openly, every week. Trust builds faster through useful ideas than through ads.

The hardest calls happen when a client needs to launch fast, and the budget is fixed. In those moments, we cut scope, never quality. We would rather launch three features that work perfectly than ten that break under real use. It can be an uncomfortable conversation at the start, but no client has ever thanked us for shipping something on time that failed in front of their customers.

Projects usually fail before any code is written. The goal is unclear, there’s no internal owner, or the requirements describe a solution instead of a problem. When companies spend real time on discovery and assign someone inside the business to own the outcome, projects get faster, cheaper, and far less stressful.

The surprising pattern for us: the projects that succeed most aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones where the client stays involved every week. Engagement predicts success better than money does.

In the first year, clients usually see work that used to take days start taking minutes, teams handling more volume without adding staff, and customers getting a noticeably better experience. Those gains often pay for the project.

Our best clients treat technology as part of the business, not as an IT side project. They make decisions quickly, give us access to real users, and measure success by business results, not by the number of features delivered.

An International student insurance provider was running on a rigid legacy platform. It couldn’t support customized products, so sales slowed down. Staff were buried under claims, which led to errors, delays, and frustrated customers.

We rebuilt the platform from the ground up in the cloud. They can now design custom plans for each institution. We built a claims system with AI that guides applicants through filing and classifies claims automatically, and we connected more than 20 systems, including their CRM and call centre. We also launched a mobile app for students.

The results: claims capacity grew three to four times with the same team. Around 60% of claims are now approved and paid instantly, and turnaround dropped from days to minutes. Students told us they wished the app had existed sooner.

Quality is built in from the start, not checked at the end. That means clear acceptance criteria before development, peer code review, automated and manual testing, and client demos at every stage, so nothing surprises anyone at launch.

We will never compromise on security, data privacy, or accessibility, even if a client asks us to. Many of our clients work in healthcare and the public sector, where these are responsibilities to the people who will use the product, not just features.

On scope creep, we never treat a new idea as a problem. We make the trade-off visible: “We can add this. Here is what it changes in time and cost, or here is what we could swap out.” When clients can see the trade-off, they make good decisions, and the relationship stays strong.

Our ideal client knows what problem they need to solve, even if they don’t yet know the solution. They are open to being challenged, have someone internally who owns the outcome, and see us as a partner rather than a vendor. They usually have an established business and are ready to invest in growing it.

We step back from clients who want us to take orders without questions, who see discovery as wasted time, or whose budget doesn’t match their ambitions. We also don’t work in gambling, alcohol, or adult entertainment. Saying no early is kinder than failing later.

We are investing in AI agents that run whole workflows, not just answer questions: processing a claim, preparing a quote, or handling a request from start to finish, with people stepping in only where judgment is needed. Most companies are still experimenting with chatbots. Within a few years, they will want AI that actually does the work.

What stays human is judgment and trust. AI can write code and analyze data, but it can’t decide what’s worth building, understand the politics inside an organization, or take responsibility when something goes wrong. Clients don’t hire us for code. They hire us for people they can trust with their business.

For us, Goodfirms works more as a credibility check than a lead source. Most of our clients come through referrals and long-term relationships. Before they sign, though, buyers do their homework, and independent reviews carry weight that our own marketing can’t. Having a verified profile with real client feedback helps confirm what they’ve already heard about us. The platform has been straightforward to work with, and refreshing our story in 2026 helps keep that first impression up to date.