You should own your software
The source code, the data, the documentation and the hosting account. Ownership is what keeps a supplier honest, including us.
✦ About Haystak
Software consultants who build, not just advise
Most B2B businesses run on tools that nearly fit. Haystak exists to close that gap: we do the software consulting, then we build the thing, then we keep it running.
✦ Why we exist
The gap between the tool and the job
Walk into most B2B businesses and you will find the same picture. There is a system of record that does about 70% of what is needed, and around it a ring of spreadsheets, shared inboxes, WhatsApp groups and one person who knows how the macro works.
Nobody chose that. It grew. The tool was bought when the company was a different shape, the process moved on, and the gap got filled by people being resourceful.
The usual advice is to buy a bigger product and change how you work to suit it. Sometimes that is right. Often it means paying more, every year, to be slightly less good at the thing you are actually good at.
Haystak is the other option: software built around the process you already run well, owned by you, maintained for a predictable monthly fee.
✦ What we believe
Four principles we actually apply
Build for the process, not the vendor
If your process is a competitive advantage, bending it to fit a product roadmap throws that advantage away to save on a licence.
Boring technology
We pick tools with long support horizons and a large pool of developers who know them. You should never be locked in by our taste in frameworks.
Small teams, direct access
You talk to the people writing the code. No account manager relaying questions, no delivery layer between you and the work.
✦ Fit
Who we work with - and who we don't
Good fit
B2B businesses, typically 10 to 250 people, with an operational process that is core to how they make money and currently held together by a generic tool or a spreadsheet.
Also a good fit
Companies stuck on a system nobody supports any more, and founders who need a first B2B product built properly rather than prototyped and thrown away.
Not a good fit
Anyone who needs a brochure website, a marketplace app with no clear buyer, or software to replace accounting, payroll or email. Those are solved problems; buy the product.
Also not a good fit
Projects where nobody internally can make a decision within a week, or where the real problem is a process that needs fixing before any software is written. We will say so on the first call.
✦ How we're structured
A small team, deliberately
Haystak runs as a small senior team rather than a pyramid with a thin layer of experience at the top. The person who scopes your project is involved in building it, and the people who build it are the people who support it afterwards.
That shape puts a ceiling on how many projects we can run at once. We would rather turn work down than staff it with people who have never seen the inside of your industry.
[NEEDS INPUT: team size, named people, locations and any company registration details you want published here.]
✦ Questions we get asked
About us, briefly
Are you a software consultancy or a development agency?
Both, in that order. We do the consulting work - mapping the process, deciding what should and should not be built - and then we build and run the result. Advice we do not have to implement is cheap to give and easy to get wrong.
Do you work outside the UK?
Yes. Most of the work is remote regardless of location, with the scoping session done in person or over video depending on where you are.
What sectors do you know best?
Operational B2B: manufacturing, construction, distribution, field service and professional services. The common thread is a business where a process, not a product catalogue, is the thing that makes money.
Can you take over software someone else built?
Often, yes. We start with a short review of the code, the hosting and the data, then tell you honestly whether it is worth keeping, worth refactoring, or cheaper to replace.
Think we might fit? We'll tell you what we'd build.
Tell us about the process that keeps breaking. We will tell you whether it needs software, a smaller change, or nothing from us at all.
No pitch deck · We map your process · You own the software