Studio
Most of this is agency work.
Worth being accurate about: most weeks, Lock & Mercer is doing work for other people. This year that has meant rebuilding an independent business publication, a radio station in Western Kenya, and the country’s consumer federation. Those were briefs, with budgets and deadlines, from clients. Calling that something other than agency work is selling you a word.
The difference is narrower than a positioning line would like it to be, and it is this. We also build our own products, and then we keep them. SpaceYako is ours. We answer its support email, we chase the payment that failed at the gateway, and we take down the listing that turns out to be a scam. Living inside a product changes what we build into somebody else’s, because we already know which decisions turn into someone’s Saturday.
Where it makes sense we take equity instead of a fee and carry the thing ourselves. When we do, it trades under its own name. Lock & Mercer belongs on the contract and the invoice, not on a product a customer is still deciding whether to trust.
- Base
- Nairobi, Kenya
- Model
- Build, own, operate
- Ownership
- Independent, no outside capital
- Client work
- Ongoing
The model
How the work actually runs.
Four stages. The first one is the one people skip, and skipping it is what makes the other three expensive.
Find the constraint
One to two weeks
Before any proposal. What has to be true for this to work, and which of those things is least certain. Sometimes it is demand. In these markets it is more often trust, a licence, or whether money can actually move the way the model assumes. Naming it wrong here is what produces a beautiful product nobody can use.
Answer it cheaply
Two to six weeks
The answer is frequently not software. It is a conversation with a regulator, a spreadsheet, or thirty phone calls to the people you believe will pay. We would rather spend a month proving the thing is possible than six months building something that assumes it.
Build the narrow version
One to two quarters
Small, real, and in front of actual users, with the operator tooling included rather than deferred. Instrumented so the next decision gets made on what happened instead of what was hoped for. A scope that fits in a quarter is not a compromise. It is the only kind that gets tested.
Carry it
Ongoing, or handed over
Somebody runs it daily. Either we hand over to a team you have hired, with the runbook written and a named owner, or we keep operating it ourselves. Both are fine. What is not fine is the third option, where a launch happens and nobody is on the hook.
How we charge
- Fee
- A fixed scope for a fixed price, or a monthly retainer where the work is continuous. You own everything. We carry no risk, which means we will tell you when we think you are wrong and then build what you asked for.
- Equity
- We take a stake instead of some or all of the fee, and we operate alongside you. This changes the relationship: we are exposed to the same outcome, so we will argue harder and refuse more. We only do it where we would be willing to run the thing ourselves.
- Ours
- Occasionally the answer is that the venture should be ours. It gets built here, it trades under its own name, and Lock & Mercer does not appear inside it.
Next
The rules underneath all of this are written down, including what each one costs us.
Read the doctrine