Enterprise-grade software for mission-driven teams
We partner with nonprofits, climate and health organizations, schools, and impact-focused startups.
We believe that purpose-built, enterprise-grade tools should be available to every organization, not just those with deep pockets or their own engineering teams.
We started A Better World Studio to level the playing field, so that more of your time, energy, and resources can go toward the impact you exist to have.
Our services and process
ServicesWe help you figure out what to build, then build it with you. A lot of software fails because it solves the wrong problem, so we spend real time understanding your team's needs before we write any code, and stay involved until the tool is working in your hands.
Problem definition & product strategy
We turn a broad ambition into a concrete roadmap. We talk to your internal and external users, work out what will actually move the needle, and prioritize ruthlessly, so the first thing we ship is the thing that matters most.
Co-design & build
We work alongside your team until we understand your domain nearly as well as you do. The design and build process stays highly collaborative: you see working software early and often and help shape it the whole way through, rather than receiving a finished product at the end.
Rollout & iteration
Great tools almost never deliver their full potential in a v1. The value comes from iterating, from the first demo through pilots, launch, and the improvements that follow. We stay through that whole arc, putting the tool in front of real users and customers, and refining it until it delivers the outcome you set out to achieve.
Training & handoff
By the time we step back, your team should be able to keep improving the system on their own. If necessary, we upskill your team on AI-powered software development, and teach them to make changes to your codebase safely, with the right guardrails and support in place.
In some cases, you can accomplish your goals better and more cheaply another way, whether that's an off-the-shelf tool or a different vendor. When that's true, we'll tell you. Our aim is to be useful, even when that means pointing you somewhere else.
We're a small, senior, AI-native team, multiplied by the development tools we built ourselves. You work with senior people from start to finish, not an offshore team doing the work behind the scenes.
Meet our team
TeamEvery project is run by senior leaders with decades of experience building at scale, at Google, in enterprise, and as founders, on products used by hundreds of millions of people.
Hugh has been building software for more than thirty years, sixteen of them at Google as an engineering lead. At Google he helped build Google Classroom, then led the teams behind Forms, Lens, and Meet, which he helped scale through the surge in remote work, before running distributed compute on Google Earth Engine. Earlier in his career he was a founder and a financial-systems engineer, starting Simple Software and building trading and market-data platforms at Bloomberg, Reuters, and Merrill Lynch. He left Google to start A Better World, and wants to help teams harness AI to amplify their mission.
Dave has spent 25 years as a founder and operator, in CEO, CFO, CTO, and CPO roles across healthcare technology and financial services. He has built and scaled companies from idea through exit, including precision-medicine software for the newborn ICU at Astarte Medical and a long/short equity fund he co-founded as CFO. He also serves on the board of Miraka, a cardiac-care company. Dave knows what it looks like when technology serves the business versus when it holds it back.
Zach co-founded Google Classroom in 2013 and grew it into the most widely used learning platform in K-12, reaching more than 150 million students and teachers. As a Director of Product Management, he built and led the product team for Google for Education. He began his career as a math teacher, which still shapes how he thinks about building for the people who use these tools. He later left Google for climate tech, where he first fell in love with what AI is making possible in software development.
What it's like to work with us
How we workWe've designed the business so that our incentives stay pointed at your outcomes.
Paid for outcomes, not hours
We design our contracts around measurable outcomes and milestones, not hours spent. Most engagements are a fixed scope plus a success fee tied to a metric your team chooses, so we do well only when you do.
You own everything
Unless you'd rather we host it, every system we build runs in your own cloud account, on your database and your credentials. No shared tenants, no pooled data, no lock-in, and your data will never be used to train AI models.
We build capacity, not dependency
The way work gets done is changing fast, and the teams that thrive will keep improving their own tools rather than waiting on a vendor. We help your team develop that independence, so when we leave, you can keep adapting and extending what we made together.
A few partners at a time
We deliberately keep our roster small, so every partner gets our full attention and we can stay close to the work, rather than spread thin across many accounts.
Who we work with
Who we work withWe work with organizations of many kinds: nonprofits, climate-tech companies, health organizations, edtech startups, educational institutions, and the foundations and funders who support them.
Climate & Environment
Education
Health
What all our customers share: critically important work to do, tech that's getting in their way, and big ideas about how the right tools could accelerate their impact. If you're not sure whether we're the right fit, reach out anyway. We're always glad to talk it through.
Are legacy systems holding you back?
Rebuilding a brittle legacy system is a focused enough problem that we run it as its own practice, Simplifying Software. We modernize existing systems on a fixed timeline and deliver a modern codebase your team fully owns and understands.
The principles we hold ourselves to
ValuesData Sovereignty
Your data belongs to you, and it is never used to train AI models. We enforce that in the architecture, not just in a privacy policy.
Tied to your outcomes
We succeed only when you do, and our compensation reflects it.
Leave It Better
Your system should be easier to run, and your team more capable, than when we started.
Golden Rule
We treat your work, your data, and your team the way we'd want ours treated.
Have an idea you want to build, or a system that's getting in your way? Let's talk.
Tell us what you're working on and where software is getting in the way.