Our journey began with a serendipitous meeting, where our mutual passion for startups, tech, open source, and business sparked the foundation of our partnership.  At the time,  I was immersed in my social media consultancy, while my husband was channeling his energy into his web development agency.  

In 2010, we embarked on a new chapter, merging our businesses to form Wixel Software Solutions — a boutique software development studio. Over the next decade, we navigated this dynamic landscape and had many adventures. Then, in early 2022, we started thinking about rebranding, emerging as Machine Republic. This marked a renewed focus on data, machine learning, AI, and a step back from angel investing and other projects. 

We have purposefully remained a boutique software development studio. While other studios focussed on growth, rapidly adding clients and staff, we limited the number of clients and projects we take on each year.  The choice to meticulously handpick and limit the number of projects has created a solid business foundation and immense team and customer happiness. 

We leaned into our strengths - as a team and company, we have a minimalistic style, a decent work ethic, a strong focus on quality and exceptional communication skills. We enjoy working with entrepreneurs and have taken great pride in crafting solutions for new products and early-stage businesses. Doing this early-stage work and often going along on their entrepreneurial journeys has meant we've been around a block (or two). We truly understand the frustrations and struggles of bringing ideas and new software products to life. From idea to launch,  we've often seen software go from zero to serving millions of users with thousands of servers. It's quite a ride. 

Software development is all about people.  As a company, we've been lucky to work with talented clients and assembled an exceptional team.  Our model of having a small core team and a supporting network of specialist contractors has meant that we remained agile and able to offer projects at great rates. Diversity is in our DNA,  as we have always been a remote-first company accommodating various cultures, countries, languages and public holidays!

What continues to inspire us today is finding common ground on the ability to create something from nothing between savvy entrepreneurs and skilled creators who bring their ideas to life.