One person, deliberately.
Rabblepop is a product studio in London. The person who works out what to build is the person who builds it — which is unusual, and is the whole reason it exists.
Both halves of the job, in one head.
The founderI’m head of product at a large international software agency, where I’ve spent years deciding what gets built and watching what happens next. I’m also an engineer, and I write the code on everything Rabblepop ships.
Most agencies split those two roles across different people, and the gap between them is where projects go wrong: a strategist who can’t assess feasibility writes a plan, and a delivery team who weren’t in the room have to interpret it. Every misunderstanding in that handover costs money, and none of them are anyone’s fault. Rabblepop removes the handover.
How we work
Commitments- ✦You talk to the person building itNo account manager, no relay, no briefing document that loses half its meaning in transit.
- ✦Scope before codeWe won’t start building until we both understand what we’re building, and we’ll charge you for that work because it deserves to be taken seriously.
- ✦Bad news travels fastIf something has slipped or turned out harder than expected, you hear it the same week — not in a status report at the end of the month.
- ✦Built to be handed overConventional stack, documented decisions, no proprietary anything. You should be able to fire us without it being a crisis.
- ✦We’ll tell you not to build itIf the answer is that the project shouldn’t happen, or shouldn’t happen yet, we’ll say so. It has happened.
What we won’t do
Being straight about it- ✦Take on more than one large build at a timeCapacity is the honest constraint of a studio this size, and pretending otherwise is how deadlines get missed.
- ✦Body-shop developersWe’re not a staffing agency and we don’t sell headcount by the month.
- ✦Quote a build we haven’t scopedAny number given before the work is understood is a guess with a decimal point on it.
- ✦Build something we think is a bad ideaYou’re welcome to disagree and go elsewhere — but you’ll know what we thought.
Tell me what you’re trying to build.
Half an hour. No deck, no discovery theatre. Bring an idea on the back of an envelope or a system that is falling over — either way you will leave the call knowing what I think it takes, and whether I’m the right person to do it.
Zeki Mirza — Founder
Every call is with the person who does the work