Where it all began
Hoot Originals started as a straightforward web agency. We build websites and web apps for our customers and have been doing that for the last (almost) 6 years.
We started with small projects, but as time went by, we started taking on more and more ambitious projects, during which time we saw a wide range of customers and their needs. The more time we spent "out there", the more we realised how many tools let people down. Not because the tools are necessarily bad, though sometimes they are, but often because they're too complicated and cluttered.
As a friend said recently, "I'm often left feeling either overwhelmed or underwhelmed". I believe this sums up a lot of modern software on the internet.
This excites us because it means there's room for us to step into this gap and build software that's “comfortable” to use. Like spending time with an old friend. You know them through and through and love spending time with them. It's familiar. There are no surprises. It's fun. It's uncomplicated.
Where we're headed
To get started on this journey, what better place to start than where we've been working and servicing customers, that is, building websites.
We've already built one developer focused product (xform media), which is a service for resizing and optimising images on the fly (useful when you're building websites😃). We're currently building a second product (PixelPaper), which is a website builder. We're making some good progress, so keep an eye open for news about the release. Perhaps you'd consider signing up to our newsletter for updates?
On that note (subscribing to our newsletter), we promise never to spam you. We recognise that life is busy and we all get bombarded by information and people trying to sell us something. We value and respect your time and promise to never get spammy. We've taken a lot of inspiration from Basecamp and 37Signals about the sort of business we want to be.
What we believe
It feels like this is a great place to segue into what we believe. I don’t want this to start sounding like a page from a corporate web site, so we’ll keep it short and simple.
Hoot Originals is an owner-run business. Our goal is to build a business that sustains us (the owners and employees) and our family. We believe in doing good. We believe in doing what we can to leave the world a better place. We believe in being fair. We believe in running an ethical business. We believe in offering our customers good value for their hard earned money. We believe in believing! We believe in dreaming.
If you’d like to read a bit more about me and the journey to building PixelPaper, feel free to read this post
I’d love to spend more time on this post, so I will probably come back to this, but right now, we need to get back to shipping, so that we can share PixelPaper with the world.
Until next time!