One person, one workshop.
Bruce Labs is a tiny independent software studio. One person answers the email here, writes the PRDs, ships the code, and triages the bug reports. By design.
What this place is
Two practices, one workshop. The automate sub-site is for small business owners who'd benefit from custom software but never could before AI made it cheap enough to bother. The advisor sub-site is for funded founders who need a senior pair of eyes on architecture, hiring, or AI strategy.
Different buyers, different vocabulary, different rhythms. Splitting them is easier on everyone than mashing them together.
The 14-year version
I've spent fourteen years writing production software, mostly as a senior IC and engineering lead at startups you've heard of and a few you haven't. That work taught me two things that shape how the studio runs.
One: the gap between how a piece of software actually behaves and how its team thinks it behaves is wider than anyone is comfortable admitting. Closing that gap is most of the engineering work; everything else follows. Two: AI changed the math on small custom software. Ten years ago a small business owner asking for a custom tool was looking at a six-figure agency engagement. Today an engineer with a Claude subscription can ship the same thing in weeks. I'd rather pass that cost collapse on than pretend it didn't happen.
How I work
- Fixed price wherever possible. Hourly billing rewards the wrong thing.
- PRD-first. Short, plain-language doc. The PRD is the contract.
- You own the code. Plain stack, plain repos, written for the next dev.
- I answer my own email. No sales funnel, no SDR, no qualification call.
- Small client roster. Three to four founders + a couple of small-biz builds at a time. That's the only way the work stays useful.
The studio name
"Bruce Labs" is one person and a desk. The "Labs" part is aspirational — I genuinely do treat each engagement as an experiment in what one engineer can ship now that wasn't feasible a year ago. Sometimes the result is software, sometimes a written memo, sometimes a recommendation to not build the thing. All three are valid outcomes.
Want to talk? hello@brucelabs.io. I read every message and respond to most within a day.