Áthstac

code, ship, joy.

Start a project or, read how we work

·  THE STUDIO

A small team for startups and scale-ups. We help founders work out what to build, what to leave alone, and how to get there without losing the plot.

Sometimes that means writing code. Sometimes it means asking the hard questions before anyone else does. Most of the time it's both. Whatever shape the work takes, we stay close to it, and close to the people doing it.

We work where performance matters. Our craft was forged in sports technology — an environment where every gain counts and there are no second takes. The standards travelled with us.

·  WHAT WE DO

Three things,
done with depth.

  1. I.

    AI engineering

    Models that earn their place in production, with the evaluations and tooling to keep them honest. Built so the people who own them can change them.

    • Evaluations
    • Retrieval
    • Agents
    • Inference
  2. II.

    App development

    Native iOS and Android, web apps, and the boring infrastructure that makes them all work. We ship product, not platforms.

    • Mobile
    • Web
    • Backend
    • DevOps
  3. III.

    Consultancy

    Technical strategy, architecture, and hiring for founders and CTOs at startups and scale-ups. We come in, raise the floor, and leave the team more capable than we found it.

    • Strategy
    • Architecture
    • Hiring
    • Reviews

·  HOW WE WORK

Five rules
we work by.

  1. Optimize for joy.

    A company that's joyful to build is a company that survives the hard years. Joy isn't a luxury — it's how good products, good teams, and good outcomes happen.

  2. Have an opinion. Hold it lightly.

    Most decisions are made by a kind of mutual hedging — everyone half-agreeing, no one quite committed. We bring a point of view to the work. We'll tell you what we think and why. We'll change our minds when there's a good reason to. Either way, you'll know where we stand.

  3. Less, almost always.

    Every feature, every hire, every process is something the company agrees to carry. We tend to suggest fewer of all of them. The work we're proudest of often includes the things we helped you decide not to do.

  4. The thinking is the work.

    The look of a product, the words on the page, the tone of an email, the first hire — none of these get good by accident. They get good by being thought about until they're right. Most studios bill for the doing. We try to charge for the thinking, and let the doing follow naturally.

  5. The details are everything.

    It's almost always the small things that decide how something turns out. The decisions that look minor at the time tend to be the ones people remember. We pay attention to them because they're where the work actually lives.

·  CONTACT

Tell us what
you're working on.

We reply within two business days. Briefer is better.
Or write to us directly at hello@athstac.com.