Some businesses need one costly process fixed. Others need something built that doesn't exist yet. We work out which, then engineer software that fits how the business actually operates, alongside the tools it already runs.
A small, senior software studio in Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas. Founded August 2022 by Mike Carpenter, with a decade of production engineering behind it. Engagements are led directly, with no agency layer and no junior delegation.
Contact: hello@duralabs.io · 214-702-1439
Small first. There is a great deal of ground between doing nothing and rebuilding a company on a platform, and most of the value for a budget-conscious owner is in that ground. One expensive process solved properly, with measurable return, earns the right to the next piece. The longest engagements here began as a single manual workflow that needed digitising.
Alongside what you already run. By now every business operates a stack of tools it depends on. Software that fits into that stack avoids the switching costs, the retraining and the sunk-cost resistance that sink most replacement projects. Integrating cleanly into a live system is also the part that is genuinely hard.
Diagnosis before code. The first question is what a problem is costing and whether software is even the right fix, not what to build. A shop that starts with "do you have an app idea?" is selling something different from a firm that starts with how the business runs.
Built to last. Production software that holds up over years, not a prototype that demonstrates well. Durability is in the name because it is the thing being sold.
Client identities and their data are not used in marketing. The mechanics and the scale of the work can be described without them.
Owner-operated businesses of roughly ten to fifty people feeling the drag of manual process; franchise and multi-location operators, where one broken process is the same problem multiplied across every site; and founders building something new who need real software rather than a disposable prototype.
The Quick Look is a short set of pointed questions about how a business runs, returning an immediate and specific read on where it is most likely leaking time and money. Three minutes, free, no email required to see the result.
Articles covers the problems themselves: what manual re-entry actually costs, how to vet a developer, what AI can and cannot do, and how to tell whether something needs building properly or not at all.
How we work and ways to work with us set out the process and the arrangements, including the ones that do not require a large cheque upfront.