We like making cool things. Conveniently, businesses need cool things.
Curveball is Troy's studio. We design the experience, then we build the systems behind it: the website, and the bookings, quotes and invoices it hands off to. We are small on purpose. One person answers for every project, and a designer, developer, writer or animator joins when the job genuinely needs one. You will always know who is on your job.
Troy
Founder / Creative Technology
- Systems thinking
- 94
- Design obsession
- 91
- Ability to leave well enough alone
- 7
- Currently obsessed with
- Forms that don't need instructions.
- Browser tabs currently open
- 61. A personal best.
A note from Troy
I started Curveball because I kept watching good businesses run on heroic spreadsheets and a phone that never stopped ringing. The people were excellent. The tools were making them work harder than they needed to.
I like building the thing that fixes that. I also like it when the thing is a little bit beautiful, because nobody said a booking system has to look like a tax form.
If you work with Curveball, you work with me. I'm the one asking the annoying questions in the first call, the one building it, and the one who answers when something breaks.
Troy
when good software already exists.
when your systems need to talk.
when a human is doing a script's job.
when nothing else fits. Then properly.
In that order of preference, and we'll show you our reasoning.
Small on purpose.
Fig. S1. Collaborators join when a project needs them. Edges are straight on purpose.
Exhibit A.
A spreadsheet that ran a business for six years. Retired with honours. Illustrated, but you have one just like it.
We keep this here as a reminder. The old spreadsheet was doing its best. It deserved a system to hand things to. That is usually the whole job.
Why the two halves live together.
A beautiful site that hands a customer to a broken process is a nicer way to lose them. A tidy back office nobody can find does not help either. Designing one without the other is how most of this goes wrong, so we do not split them.
is written down before anything is built, and it says what is not included too.
happen at agreed points. You see it, you say yes, we carry on.
we stay on a monthly plan, or we hand over with plain instructions.
of your content, data and project deliverables is set out in the agreement.
Licensed third party services and reusable Curveball tools are listed separately, so you always know which is which.
Working with us.
Twenty minutes. No deck. Bring the spreadsheet. We'll tell you which of the four verbs you need before you pay us to find out.