TheOtherCompany
Build useful things. Leave things better.
Q2.Describe your company in one sentence.
We bring AI, software engineering, product development, research and business thinking together to turn meaningful problems into useful technology. We build our own products, work with businesses, explore what is new, and contribute to the open-source projects we depend on.
We tried. It took two.
Q3.What do you do? Select all that apply.
AI & applied researchPractical AI systems, built where they create real value.
- Agentic, tool-using systems
- Retrieval and knowledge systems
- Model integration, orchestration and evaluation
- Model-agnostic architectures
- Evaluating open models
- Prototypes that grow into production
Software & full-stack engineeringFrom first architecture to the tenth deploy, and the maintenance after.
- Web, desktop and backend services
- APIs, data systems and integrations
- Infrastructure, DevOps and CI/CD
- Developer tools and internal platforms
- Observability, reliability, security
Product developmentWe start with the problem, not the technology or the feature list.
- Problem discovery and customer research
- Strategy, positioning and requirements
- UX research, prototyping and validation
- MVPs and feedback-driven iteration
- Analytics, documentation and launch
Business development & partnershipsGetting useful technology to the people who need it, sustainably.
- Customer discovery
- Business models and go-to-market experiments
- Technical partnerships
- Selected client engagements
- Founders, businesses and investors
Open source & communityImproving the tools that make our work possible.
- Upstream code, fixes and tests
- Documentation and examples
- Maintaining public repositories
- Releasing reusable libraries and tools
- Writing up what we learn
Yes. All of them.
Q4.How does work move through here?
- 01
Discover
Find a meaningful problem, user need or technical opening.
- 02
Understand
Study the context, existing solutions, constraints and likely impact.
- 03
Define
Agree the problem statement, scope and what success looks like.
- 04
Design
Shape the product direction, the experience and the architecture.
- 05
Build
Implement, test assumptions, wire the systems together.
- 06
Validate
Check it with users, data, tests and real conditions.
- 07
Ship
Release the product, deliver the outcome or publish the research.
- 08
Improve
Watch how it performs, listen, fix what falls short.
- 09
Share
Write down what we learned and give reusable work back.
Small experiments skip a few. That's fine.
Q5.What do you believe? Initial each.
Build, don’t just talk
Working software, documented findings and tangible outcomes beat claims without evidence.
Understand before building
Technology is a means. First the problem, the people, the constraints.
Leave things better
Clearer docs, better processes, a fix sent upstream. Value beyond the task.
Open by default, responsible by design
We share where it is right, and respect privacy, security, IP and licences.
Own the outcome
Shipping is not the end. Maintenance, reliability and the people using it are ours too.
Stay curious
We explore new things to understand them, not to chase every trend.
Substance over hype
Honest about results and limits. The work should speak for itself.
Make things together
Engineering, design, research, product, business and the people who use it.
Q6.Share of working time given back to open source.
10%
Intended policy. Roughly four hours a week, on company time. It may evolve as we grow.
Q6b.What changes?
maintain a private fork forever- contribute upstream to the projects we depend on
give back in your spare time- protected working hours for open source
keep every lesson internal- build in public where it helps and we are free to
count commits- measure usefulness and quality
ignore the licence file- respect licences, governance and contributors
publish and vanish- document releases, state maintenance and limits
Q7.How does this pay for itself?
- Our own products
- Software we own, for problems we have validated.
- Engineering engagements
- AI, software, infrastructure and product work with selected businesses.
- Research & prototyping
- Feasibility studies and promising ideas turned into working prototypes.
- Product partnerships
- Building, improving and launching products with founders.
- Open-source projects
- Public tools, sustainable where possible, never at the community’s cost.
Who should fill in the rest of this form?
- Founders building technically ambitious products
- Businesses looking for practical uses of AI
- Teams that need engineering and product help
- Researchers and developers trying new things
- Open-source maintainers and communities
- Organisations that value long-term engineering
- Partners and investors curious about where this goes