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We're a creative agency and product lab.

We do brands, stories, GTM strategy, and AI workflows for founders, companies, and funds. We also ship tools and products we like using.

Start a conversationSee the products

We build.

  1. Kerouac

    Your whole writing career, on one graph.

    Visit Kerouac
  2. Laterware

    AI and robotics, curated in real time.

    Visit Laterware
  3. Post Through It

    A solo microblogging tool.

    Visit Post Through It

Studio.

Senior creative work for ambitious technical teams.

  • AI Strategy
  • Agentic workflows
  • Branding
  • Messaging
  • Storytelling
  • GTM
  • Media
  • Naming

We work with founders, thinkers and operators, sharpen what they want to build, and create the systems that take them to market and help them scale.

This is for

  • Technical founders and operators who need their work to be legible to customers, candidates, and capital
  • AI labs, deep tech, developer tools, enterprise SaaS, robotics, biotech, climate tech, and venture firms
  • Teams that want a senior partner, weeks not quarters, and no junior handoffs

This is not for

  • Volume content, social media management, or performance media buying
  • Agencies shopping for white-label labor or committees that want process theatre
  • Anyone looking for the cheapest option or the largest team in the room

How we work.

  1. Founder-led. Senior-only.

    No account managers. No junior handoffs.

  2. Weeks, not quarters.

    Ambition without the calendar bloat.

  3. Async-first.

    Clear writing beats status meetings. We respond within 24 hours.

  4. No process theatre.

    No decks for the sake of decks. Judgment in, systems out.

  5. AI accelerates craft.

    We use AI to move faster without hollowing out the work. We believe in AI disclosures and tools that scale.

  6. Everything compounds.

    Brand, messaging, story, and workflows should stack.

Selected work

  1. Discourse

    “JA is a legend.”

    Within weeks they turned our team of extremely reticent writers into willing and excited contributors, something we’d been trying to do for years, with little success. Their ability to uncover an interesting angle on a story and make it enjoyable to research and write has been fundamental to helping us find our voice.

    Hawk, CEO, Discourse

  2. Exponentially

    “Sharp, direct, and incredibly actionable.”

    They cut through the noise and zeroed in on what really matters, the heart of the product and service. Excellent work.

    Leslie, CEO, Exponentially.com

Also

  • Hop Labs
  • Cloudset
  • r.Potential
  • Sentinel

In public.

Millions of words across hundreds of publications. Featured in Wired, TIME, The New York Times, The Australian Financial Review, and The Next Web.

  • Wired
  • The Verge
  • TIME
  • The New York Times
  • AFR
  • The Next Web
  • Substack

Thinking.

Essays, experiments, and the ideas that shape the studio are published on Substack.

  1. The Heretic's Guide to Conviction

    Everyone in tech is running the same playbook. This is about the people who refuse to, and why conviction, not consensus, is the only real moat left. Stop selling your skills. Become a heretic for hire.

    Read essay
  2. Why 500 Words Beats 5,000 in the Age of AI

    SEO slop farms crowded the internet with volume. Then AI made volume free. Short is the new long: the work that cuts through is the work that still required judgment.

    Read essay
  3. Don't Become a Productivity Tourist

    Switching systems feels like progress. It is usually a quagmire. If your workflow bores you, it is working. Tools should accelerate craft, not become the craft.

    Read essay
  4. Epictetus Ran a Better Productivity System Than Any App You've Bought

    Most productivity systems assume you are an intellectual delinquent. Capturing a task makes it yours. That is the whole scam. The useful systems start with judgment, not another inbox.

    Read essay
Read more on Substack

Working together.

  1. Project or retainer

    Outcomes and outputs focused. No templates, no hourly billing.

  2. Limited capacity

    We take on a limited number of engagements at a time. Selectivity is core to our process.

  3. Response time

    Expect a reply within 24 hours. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.

  4. Not a traditional agency

    Traditional agencies scale by adding headcount and delegating strategy. We scale by being selective. You get senior thinking, not a team of coordinators managing a process.

Start a conversation.

The best work starts with an ambitious problem.

Email and send a brief.

hello@thisisstudioself.com