Bolmia · Since 2017
Some decisions only surface when the project is yours too.
Since 2017 we have worked for companies that want to grow. Along the way we had to build a product of our own and keep it running: maintaining it, billing for it and answering for it when something breaks on a Tuesday morning. That second seat is what has changed the way we work more than anything else.
2017
Bolmia starts
Building for clients
- Acquisition, websites, content and development for companies.
- Relationships measured in years, not in deliverables.
Building our own
- Konevent: a product to decide on and build.
- And then maintain, bill for and keep running every month.
Bolmia today
The judgement of people who have had to keep one running, and the hands to build it.
Both sides of the table
The questions are the same. The answers are not.
This is not a criticism of anyone who does good work from the first side: we have been there since 2017. It is what happens when, on top of that, you stop handing a project over and start living with one.
| La pregunta | When the project is someone else’s | When the project is yours |
|---|---|---|
| What gets built? | Whatever was asked for and signed off. | Whatever you will still be able to maintain in a year. |
| When is it finished? | On delivery. | Never. It is still there on Monday. |
| What if it breaks? | You report it and you fix it. | Your client’s client rings you. |
| What does it really cost? | Whatever the quote says. | Whatever it costs every month it keeps running. |
| What gets left out? | Whatever falls outside the scope. | Whatever you will not be able to sustain, even if they ask for it. |
None of the answers on the right are learned by reading. They are learned by paying for them.
The first side
We have spent years inside businesses that are not ours.
Client work is the older half of Bolmia and it is still the main one. What has changed over time is not what we do, but how long we stay.
Obrescat
Renovation company
More than four years. We started with acquisition in Barcelona, and today the custom panel they open every day to run clients, quotes, projects and financial control is ours as well.
RadioTaxi033
Taxi service
Two years alongside an expansion that started from a local operation in Barcelona and today covers 23 cities from a single acquisition strategy.
And alongside them
- Law firms
- Restaurants
- Physiotherapy
- Education
- Service companies
None of those relationships started out as what they are today. Every one of them started with a single piece, and they stayed because there was still someone there after we delivered it.
The second side
Konevent is not here as a case study.
Konevent is a booking and operations SaaS that we designed, built and still maintain. We did not hand it over: we own it. And owning it forces decisions that a client brief never forces at all.
What it forces you to decide
- 01
What does not get built
A feature one single company asks for does not go in just because it can be done. Everything that goes in has to be maintained for the rest of the product’s life, and that bill is not paid by whoever asked for it.
- 02
What comes before a new feature
Before the next feature we had to sort out billing, reminders and what happens when a company stops paying. None of that shows in a demo, and without any of it there is no product.
- 03
What happens after launch
Not much happens on launch day. What happens is the month after: support, cases nobody had anticipated, and real data that breaks assumptions that looked perfectly reasonable.
- 04
Where marketing ends and operations begin
Bringing companies to Konevent is worth very little if sign-up, daily use and billing cannot hold what the campaign promises. It is the same sentence we say to our clients; here we are the ones paying for it.
+200 companiesuse Konevent every month. It is not here as a shop window: it is here because it is the reason we know what hurts after launch.
What changes in your project
The judgement of people who have kept one going. And the hands to build it.
Having a product of our own does not make us better in the abstract. It does three specific things, and all three show before anything is signed.
We say no before we bill for it
If a tool that already exists solves the problem, we say so, even when building one would have been a project for us. A build nobody will be able to maintain is an expense with an expiry date already on it.
We count what it will cost in year two
A project does not cost what it costs to build: it costs what it costs to keep running. We would rather say that at the start, while there is still time to decide something else.
We stay after launch
What we learned from keeping our own running is that a project starts when it goes live. That is where the real data turns up, and where it is genuinely decided whether the thing works.
How we decide where to start on a specific project does not fit here, and it has a page of its own.
How we decide what to doBolmia today
A digital and technology partner. Not a full-service agency.
We do acquisition, experience, technology and automation. We do not sell all four at once: what goes in is what solves the problem, and it connects to whatever was already working.
We think and we also build. That is the practical difference from a supplier that only advises and from one that only executes: we can decide what needs doing and we can do it, and when we do, we know what it costs to keep it running, because we keep our own running.
On the relationship side, we would rather talk to whoever knows the problem than to whoever can only describe it, think before we propose, and still be there after we deliver. It is not a service slogan: it is what we have needed ourselves as the owners of a product.
Today that experience is organised into four capabilities
- Growth
- Experience
- Technology
- Intelligence
What each one does, when it comes in and why there are four rather than one is explained in Approach. Here we only say where they came from.See the approach
Let’s talk
Tell us what you want to build or improve.
You do not need to know whether the answer is a website, a campaign, a build or stopping doing something. Tell us what you want to happen and where you are starting from.