A small practice run by the people doing the work. The whole org chart, on one line.
— On the shop, since 2019
Six principals, two cities, one letterhead. No account managers, no growth team, no quarterly OKRs. A small practice run by the people doing the work — and that, deliberately, is the entire org chart.
We started qberi in 2019 because the shape of the work we wanted to do didn't have a name. Brand agency was too narrow. Dev shop was too narrow in the other direction. Studiowas about right but had too many connotations of furniture and lattes. So we made up a word, registered the entity, and started taking the kind of clients we'd always wanted — founders with a complete problem, and the patience to let one team solve all of it.
Six years on, that thesis has held. The shop has grown to six people, deliberately, slowly, by adding principals — not employees. We don't have a growth team because we don't grow on a curve; we add a client when a slot opens and a fit appears, and we cap at twelve active engagements because that's the number two principals can hold in their head without dropping anything.
The work has gotten quieter as it's gotten better. Most of our clients now come from referrals. Most of our public surface is this website. Most of the noise the industry makes — the awards, the conferences, the LinkedIn essays — happens around us, not through us. We think that's correct.
// Each principal is reachable by name · firstinitial-lastname@qberi.com
Boulder, Colorado— incorporated, mailing, and the principal-on-call rotation. A small office above Pearl Street, three desks, a flat file for the proofs, a kettle that's older than the company. Half the shop is here on any given Wednesday.
Pune, India — a converted bungalow in Koregaon Park, the engineering anchor and the night-shift pager. The other half of the shop is here, and the timezone overlap is what makes the 2 a.m. number always answer in five minutes regardless of who you call.
We fly principals between offices roughly every six weeks. Quietly, of course. Carbon-conscious where it can be, business-class where it can't, we don't claim to be saints about it.
Dupless Inc. — Boulder, Colorado. The construction-tech holding entity that owns Seamview. Common shareholders, separate cap table, separate engineering team. We disclose the relationship on every Seamview-adjacent page.
Qberi Pty Ltd. — Stellenbosch, South Africa. The legal home for our African engagements (Gemoedsrus, principally). Common shareholders, separate registration, separate VAT.
We don't take sister-company work without disclosure, and we don't price it differently than third-party work. Both are line items on this site for a reason: the relationships are an asset, but only if they're transparent. If you can't read the disclosure, the disclosure isn't doing its job.
Massimo Vignelli's Canon. Frank Chimero's The Shape of Design. Christopher Alexander, mostly the Pattern Language but occasionally Notes on the Synthesis of Form when a client is being unreasonable. Beirut, Bierut, Sagmeister, Heller, in that order. The 1962 Wim Crouwel monograph that S. inherited from her father.
Less obviously: Ursula K. Le Guin's Steering the Craft. The Bell Labs Practice of Programming. The Federalist Papers. The Wirecutter, every Sunday, religiously. A house style is a reading list.
A small practice run by the people doing the work. The whole org chart, on one line.
— On the shop, since 2019
If the shape looks right, write to us.
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