Contact
Tell us what’s load-bearing.
One email, no form. Describe the part that breaks if it isn’t right. If it isn’t for us, you’ll get a straight no and a reason, usually within the week.
Details
hello@lockandmercer.com
- hello@lockandmercer.com
- Based in
- Nairobi, Kenya
- Hours
- Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 18:00 EAT
- Response
- Replies usually within the week
What to include
- What breaks if this isn’t right. The part that is actually load-bearing.
- What already exists: a live site, a legacy platform, an audience, a licence.
- The deadline, and what makes it one. If there isn’t a real reason, say so. That is a better answer than an invented date.
- Whether you want a build, an operator, or someone to tell you not to do it.
What happens next
- 01You get a reply from a person, usually within the week.
- 02If it isn’t for us you get a straight no and the reason. We would rather be useful in one paragraph than pleasant across three meetings.
- 03If it is, the next thing is a call to work out what the real constraint is, before anyone writes a proposal.
Not us
If your question is about a product rather than the studio, a listing, an account, a payment, it belongs with that product under its own name. The parent company cannot resolve it faster and will only add a step.
Questions
What is Lock & Mercer?
Lock & Mercer is a venture studio based in Nairobi, Kenya. It builds software for other people, and it builds, owns and operates its own products. It is independent and takes no outside capital. Its own ventures trade under their own names, so the parent company does not appear inside them.
Who founded Lock & Mercer?
Godwill Barasa founded Lock & Mercer and leads its technology. The studio is a team of ten across nine countries, covering technology, data, design, product, editorial systems, infrastructure, trust, delivery, accounts and legal. Its work includes SpaceYako, a property platform it owns and operates, and rebuilds for Business Report, Khendo FM and COFEK, the Consumers Federation of Kenya.
What is SpaceYako?
SpaceYako is a property platform for Kenya, built and operated by Lock & Mercer. It is designed around whether a listing can be believed. Agents pay to list, seekers never pay, and no money moves between users, which removes the mechanisms most property scams in the market depend on. Verification appears against an agent only while it can be substantiated and disappears when it cannot.
Where is Lock & Mercer based?
Nairobi, Kenya. The studio works primarily in Kenyan and East African markets, where its useful knowledge is concentrated: mobile money behaviour, Kenyan data protection, and building for users on mobile data and older devices.
What does Lock & Mercer charge?
The studio does not publish rates, because a rate quoted before the problem is understood is a guess dressed as a commitment. There are three shapes of arrangement: a fee, either fixed scope or a monthly retainer; equity in place of some or all of a fee, which the studio only takes where it would be willing to operate the product itself; or a venture it builds and owns outright. Which one is being proposed is written down before any work starts.
Are you an agency or a venture studio?
Both, and we would rather say so. Most weeks we are doing client work with budgets and deadlines, which is agency work. We also build and operate our own products, which is the studio half. The two feed each other: operating our own software is what we learn from, and client work is what funds it.
Do you work outside Kenya?
Yes, though our useful knowledge is concentrated here. We understand mobile money behaviour, Kenyan data protection and the realities of building for mobile data because we work in them daily. Somewhere we do not know, we will say so before you hire us.
Do you take equity instead of fees?
Sometimes. We take a stake in place of some or all of a fee where we would be willing to operate the product ourselves. We will tell you which arrangement we are proposing, and why, before any work starts.
Can you guarantee a search ranking or a traffic number?
No, and anyone who does is guessing. Position depends on competitors, on links nobody controls, and on an algorithm no outside party has seen. We can make a site legible to a crawler, give every intent its own page, and tell you honestly which of your goals is an engineering problem and which is a public relations one.
What do you refuse to build?
Verification badges with no process for removing them. Products that imply they hold funds in escrow when they do not. Marketplaces with no supply plan. Countdown timers that exist only to create pressure. Anything where we would have to state a number we cannot source.
How long does a project take?
A constraint review is one to two weeks. Proving the constraint can be answered is usually two to six weeks. A narrow first version is one to two quarters. We will not quote a build before the first stage, because a quote given without it is a guess dressed as a commitment.
What happens after launch?
Either we hand over to a team you have hired, with a written runbook and a named owner, or we keep operating it. We will not do the third thing, where a launch happens and nobody is on the hook for what comes after it.