About us
We are a small team that builds and runs software for other small teams. This page is the short version: how the studio started, what it cost us to learn what we know, and the five people you actually reach when you write to us. Back to Fractera.
How a rented back room became a studio
Four moments that decided what this company is — and what it refuses to be.
2019 — Two people and one radiator
We started in a room behind a bakery, with one window and a radiator that only worked in summer. The first job was a booking form for the bakery downstairs, and for two months it paid in bread. We still think that was a fair rate.
2021 — The rewrite that taught us to say no
A customer asked for everything at once and we agreed to all of it. Nine months later we threw the result away and rebuilt it in six weeks with a third of the features. Every proposal we send now opens with the list of things we are not going to build.
2023 — From projects to a product
Four customers in a row asked for the same thing in four different vocabularies. We stopped billing by the hour, turned that thing into a product, and moved the whole team onto it.
2026 — Five people, five cities
We are still five. We ship on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we answer support ourselves, and there is nobody to hand the difficult letter to. That is the point.
The five people behind it
Everyone here builds, and everyone here answers the mail.
Mara Ellison — founder
Wrote the bakery booking form in 2019 and has written the release notes ever since. Mara reads every support letter before anyone answers it, which is why our roadmap is shorter than most and finishes more often.
Tomas Reiner — engineering
Joined after the 2021 rewrite and quietly deleted a third of the code in his first month. Tomas keeps a list called "things that broke at 3 a.m."; nothing ships until the new thing cannot join it.
Aiko Nakamura — design
Came from print, and it shows: she measures a screen the way a typesetter measures a page. Aiko is the reason every button here says what happens next instead of saying "Submit".
Daniel Okoye — customer support
Was our second customer, complained precisely enough that we hired him, and now replies faster than any of us. Daniel turns confused letters into one-line bug reports, which is a rarer skill than it sounds.
Sofia Marchetti — operations
Runs contracts, invoices and the calendar, and is the only person allowed to say "no, that week is full". Sofia joined in 2023 and the studio has not missed a delivery date since — the two facts are not a coincidence.
- 2019
The year we started
- 5
People on the team
- 11
Countries our customers work in
- 24 h
How long a first reply takes
We never set out to build a product.“We set out to stop rebuilding the same thing for the fourth customer. The product is what was left when we finally admitted that.”
Small on purpose: the people who build this are the people who answer the mail about it.