One founder, many worlds: how I run an app studio with AI agents
I started Commercium to answer one question: how far can one person go, now that software can be built with so much leverage? The studio's north star is the short version of that question.
Make what should not be possible for one person.
Commercium is an independent app studio in London. It has one founder, and it ships apps that each live in their own world: a card duel in a night temple, a calm daily writing ritual, a presentation maker. This is how the work actually gets done.
Start with the idea, not the team
A small studio used to mean a small ambition. You could have one good idea, or you could have a team. Today, much of the work that once needed a team can be described precisely enough for a machine to do it: writing and refactoring code, running tests, preparing releases, checking that a page works on a phone at 320 pixels wide.
So I start from the idea and ask what it needs, not who I would have to hire. AI coding agents do most of the systematic work. An internal orchestration layer keeps track of every project, ticket and decision, so that context survives from one working session to the next and nothing depends on memory. Every task is written as a self-contained runbook: what to do, how to check it, and what counts as done.
Measure before I assume
I trained as a statistician, and it shows in how the studio works. Every app is instrumented from its first release. A launch is not the end of the process; it is the first honest source of information. The numbers decide what gets built next, and when the evidence disagrees with my instinct, the evidence usually wins.
I learned this the hard way before Commercium. At an independent mobile app studio in London that I co-founded, we scaled the flagship product to more than 100,000 downloads and more than $50,000 in monthly revenue. The lesson I kept was not a growth trick. It was the habit of measuring honestly and early.
What never gets delegated
Machines are leverage, not the point. Some things stay with me, always:
- What to build. Choosing the problem is the most important decision, and it is not a task.
- What good looks like. The look, the voice and the feel of each app are judgement calls.
- Responsibility. My name is on the company and on every release. Privacy, store review and the promises we make to people who use the apps are mine to keep.
Small, sharp and finished
Leverage makes it tempting to build everything. The discipline is the opposite: keep each app to one clear job and finish it properly. That is why every Commercium app gets its own world, with its own colours, type and characters, instead of a shared template. Small scope is what lets one person hold the quality bar high.
Why say all this out loud
Because it is the honest description, and because it is the interesting part. Commercium is not pretending to be a fifty-person company. It is one founder and a set of very capable tools, and the apps are the proof of what that combination can do. If you want to see them, start at thecommercium.com. If you want to talk, write to me.