About
A production company that writes software.
Slatebook started as an internal tool. We were losing an afternoon a week to coordination and a few thousand a year to mistakes that were nobody’s fault. Every feature here exists because a shoot went wrong without it.
01
Software should be boring
A production tool competes with a spreadsheet that already works. It earns its place by being faster on a Tuesday, not by being novel.
02
Freelancers are not seats
The people you book twice a year are the ones most likely to be missing from a system. Charging for them guarantees an incomplete record.
03
Give the method away
The Playbook is free and ungated. If you can run it on paper, do. We would rather earn the subscription than gate the thinking.
How we build
- CADENCE
- Ship weekly, small. No quarterly releases and no big-bang migrations.
- TESTING
- Every feature runs on one of our own productions before it reaches a customer.
- ROADMAP
- Public. If we are not building the thing you need, you can see that without asking.
- SUPPORT
- Answered by people who have been on a shoot day. Four-hour response when you are shooting.
Still a production company
We still shoot. Around forty productions a year — corporate interviews, a podcast on retainer, branded films. It is not a legacy business we are winding down; it is the test environment.
Every release runs on a real job before it reaches you. If we would not take it on a shoot day, it does not ship.