Hi, I'm Ewan, a software engineer building lean, SaaS solutions targeted primarily at SMEs, startups and indie builders.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Kukri Labs is a change I want to see in the world. To achieve this, I am taking a different approach to building SaaS projects by adopting a handful of clear principals:

1. Keep things simple;
2. Avoid 'feature bloat';
3. Provide transparency into the business;
4. Pay what you want;
5. Play fair;

These points - which I expand upon below - guide every project released by Kukri Labs.

A future filled with small SaaS businesses

Small businesses have always been the backbone of modern society, innovating, creating jobs and providing experiences that larger corporations cannot compete with. I believe the same will happen for SaaS businesses as solo founders and small teams deliver alternatives with better service and more innovation.

Working with a "mom 'n pop" SaaS should offer lower costs, better support (from the founding team who made it) and fresh opportunities for people to build independent businesses.

Kukri Labs is both building an independent SaaS and is one of those opportunities for me personally.

Guiding principals

Keep it simple

Simple means low-time, low-maintenance and - accordingly - low cost.

Kukri Labs projects focus on doing one thing very well without over-engineering. This means lower costs to you - our customer - and stable, easy to maintain products for us. We know that there are cons that also come with this territory so it's also important to us that we manage your expectations of us.

By choosing mature, battle tested technologies, and not the latest hype or unfamiliar tech, the aim is to deliver an excellent product experience.

Avoid feature bloat

Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new "features".
- The Unix Philosophy

SaaS solutions commonly ask for a subscription to develop new features. Once new features are developed the price increases as the product is now worth more. Whether you use the features or not, your bill increases. For smaller businesses this hurts and increases the barrier to entry for new customers.

Our products will define a lean roadmap up-front. Once we deliver the roadmap our project will receive stability and security updates only and enter maintenance mode. This way we avoid both feature and price bloat.

Transparency

Trust, responsibility and accountability are important pillars to us when building our business.

Dashboards

We're building public information & dashboards for the following:

• Revenue;
• Expenses;
• Per project metrics
  • Number of users
  • Average monthly subscription cost
  • Up time
  • Average response times (excluding network latency)
  • Average response times (including network latency from various geolocations)
• Pay what you want metrics
  • Average (by project)
  • Complete list of companies and how much they pay (open information)
  • Top paying company of all time (by project)
    • Free advertising for them
  • Top paying company of this month (by project)
    • Free advertising for them

Pay what you want

Money should not be a barrier to entry - regardless of geography or stage of business. If you think our projects can deliver value to you and your business you should be able to use them.

Choose what you what and what you can afford to pay; with no minimum. Change it more or less at any time to help with managing your costs. Payment is collected after a 14 day trial period where you can cancel your subscription at any time with no cost.

Payment statistics - including your company name and spend - are made public as part of our transparency principal.

Play fair

Our business is nothing without customers and they deserve to be treated with respect. We will:

• Make clear what you can expect from us:
  • The feature roadmap;
  • Availability and downtime;
• Avoid vendor lock in:
  • We know you may outgrow our solutions, all of our projects allow you to export a copy of your data at any time;
  • Should any project be shut down, you will have a reasonable grace period to be able to access your data;
• Be honest:
  • I'm a solo engineer looking for a healthy work/life balance;
  • If you need something that isn't on the roadmap or you are unhappy, please contact me directly;
• Acknowledge the great ideas we build on:
  • We stand on the shoulders of giants. Share those accomplishments and contribute back to them when we can.