Most businesses run on WhatsApp threads, three spreadsheets and somebody's memory. It works, until it doesn't.
11
Open loops
0
Paid this week
R 0
Follow-ups
Automatic
“Did you send the invoice?”
A client is waiting
3Booking sheet
Which bookings are actually confirmed?
Three people edit it
Desk reminder
Call Marius back — Tuesday?
Easy to miss
Inbox
47 unread. Which three matter?
Everything looks urgent
47Paper diary
The cottage is booked twice.
Two calendars
Downloads
Where is that proof of payment?
proof_FINAL (2).pdf
The kind of system we design, build and keep running.
What copy-paste, spreadsheets and chasing people cost a business, from published research. Every number links to its source.
4 h
a week lost getting back on track after switching between apps.
Harvard Business Review, 2022Measured app use across 137 people at three large companies89.5 h
a year South African small businesses spend chasing late payments.
Xero, State of Late Payments (South Africa), 2019Survey of 500+ South African SMEs94%
of business spreadsheets checked in detailed audits contained errors.
Raymond Panko, EuSpRIG proceedings, 2015Academic review of spreadsheet audits7×
as likely to qualify a lead when you reply within an hour.
Harvard Business Review, 20111.25 million leads at 42 companies59%
of small businesses have invoices more than 30 days overdue.
Intuit QuickBooks, Small Business Late Payments Report, 2026United States small businesses62%
of South African small businesses had cash-flow trouble in the past year.
Xero, State of South African Small Business, 2026427 South African businesses562
hours back a year
70
working days
R101 200
of time, every year
70 of 230 working days in a year, given back.
An estimate from your inputs, not a promise. The starting hours come from the UiPath Office Worker Survey, 2021: 4,500 office workers estimated the hours they lose each week to tasks they think could be automated. The share a system gives back is an assumption; we measure the real one with you.
Pick the one that sounds like your week. Each demo shows the kind of thing we design, build and run.
A product or service should exist, but there is no internal team to define and deliver it end to end.
How we approach itImportant work is manual, fragmented, difficult to see, or dependent on repeated follow-up.
How we approach itExisting tools do not communicate, almost fit, or fail at the rule that matters most to the business.
And anything else with an API: Paystack, Yoco, PayFast, Microsoft 365, Slack, Twilio, Postmark, OpenAI.
It's live. Now it needs a clear owner for hosting, providers and fixes, and a team that keeps finding what to build next.
The problem, what we built, and what got better.
All 29 projectsShubble
Shubble runs pre-booked family rides across the Western Cape with its own fleet, and it ran on phone calls and WhatsApp.
What we built
Moteef
Moteef gives a business one place to plan, create, review and publish its marketing.
What we built
Custom Point of Sale
A biltong shop that sells by weight ran its stock on paper and in Excel, and its cash-up by hand.
What we built
ENGEL HOUSE
ENGEL HOUSE is a Cape Town studio photographing hotels, interiors and food.
What we built
Explore Hub
Explore Hub sells websites, content and digital growth to hospitality, travel and transport brands, so its own website had to be the first proof.
What we built
We spent our time coordinating instead of growing the business. x Create solved all of that, and more.
Counted from our own repos, client files and release feeds on 11 October 2026. Every number shows what it counts.
88
Projects built since 2020
Counted from our repos and client files, to 11 October 2026; includes pilots and internal tools
4083
Changes shipped this year
Every commit across our 2026 projects, by month
19
In-depth case studies
Real screens, real decisions
68
Updates to Headroom in 9 days
Shipped to its users, from its public release feed
Products we run ourselves
We live with what we build, so we build it to last.
You always know what we're building, why it matters, and what happens next. And you see it working early.
How we work, in fullStart here
You don't need a spec. Message us, or get introduced by someone we've built for. We talk it through on a call, recorded with your OK, and tell you straight whether we're the right fit.
Brief & price
We write up a short brief, look at anything that already exists, and send a proposal: what the first version includes, the fixed price, the payment split and the monthly plan. Bigger ideas are split into phases, so Phase 1 ships first.
Build & launch
About a week after the deposit you get a preview link. Send feedback however suits you, voice notes included; simple changes often land the same day. Every journey is tested end to end before launch, and you choose the launch date.
Keep it improving
Most clients stay on a monthly plan: we host it, fix it and send a regular report, and we keep looking at how it's used and bringing ideas to grow it. Bigger products get a Product Partnership, with monthly time to keep building. Prefer to run it yourself? Take a clean handover. What the plan covers is written into your proposal.
Senior people and AI-assisted delivery change what a project costs and how fast it moves. Here is the difference, line by line.
2 days
From idea to a working town app prototype
Magaliesburg town app
5 days
From the first line of code to a live pilot
Roomwise, AI inspection reports
19 days
From the first line of code to a signed Mac beta
Headroom
Dates from our own repositories. Every project is different; yours get written into the proposal.
x Create is founder-led. Rijn Hartman leads every project from the first conversation to a system running in your business, with partners in South Africa and the US behind the work: the decisions, the design and the build.
Rijn Hartman
Founder & Solutions Architect
4 083 changes
We need help to , and we'd like to start .
Tap the lime words to change them. It takes you to a short brief; no pitch deck needed.
Headroom
Seshat
