A studio built to be deliberately small.
Go Between is three founding partners, full-stack across design and code, who love finding the small product hiding inside a tangled business problem. We started in 2021 because we kept watching feature factories ship the work and leave someone else to live with it. We’re the studio that stays.
The expensive mistakes are rarely the code.
They come from building the wrong thing: the feature nobody asked for, the rewrite that bought nothing, the week spent on a problem that a conversation would have dissolved.
So we built a studio small enough to care whether what we make moves your business.
Strategically small
Three full-stack engineers, three different roads here: product, engineering leadership, a CTO seat. Your problem gets three angles instead of one opinion three times.
Shockingly efficient
We’ve built across enough domains that the patterns come with us: useful software in weeks, not quarters. The same people stay on your work, so week ten moves faster than week one.
Remarkably thoughtful
We write down what we think the problem is before we build, so you can tell us where we’re wrong. Editing in ink is cheaper than editing in code.
How we work
Four things you can hold us to.
We’ll tell you what not to build.
The most useful thing we say is often no. If the feature you came in wanting isn’t what your product needs, we make that case early, even when it shrinks our own contract.
You get partners from day one.
Nobody here sells the work and then hands it to strangers. The people in your kickoff are writing the code months later, and the hard problems get all three of us.
We work with your team, not around it.
We build in the open with your engineers: same repo, same reviews, same arguments over tradeoffs. When we roll off, the reasoning stays with your team, not in our heads.
We keep the software small.
Every feature has a carrying cost, and we scope yours as if we had to pay it. Expect us to argue for fewer moving parts, and to finish it before starting three more.
In practice
We’ve been held to all four.
Financial Services
Extending Above Lending’s platform
They planned to build loan originations on an off-the-shelf CRM. We surfaced the limits of that plan early, changed direction together, and shipped the new platform in four months, then stayed two more years to grow it.
Read the case studyEducation
Scaling Synthesis through a pivot
We joined to build a design system and stayed to lead product and engineering through the pivot, shipping the features their new engagement model ran on.
Read the case studyFinancial Services
Clarifying Beyond Finance’s architecture
Engineering leadership could name their problems but not locate them in the codebase. We built FeatureMap, and an opaque system became one they could plan against.
Read the case studyThe partners
Everyone who works here.
Dan Lavin
Founding partner
Ran product in a past life, and it shows: he listens first and names the tension everyone else is working around. Stayed in Chicago for the freezing winters and amazing restaurants, he claims. His three kids may also be a factor.
Harrison Strowd
Founding partner
Consulted solo for five years before writing the pitch document that talked the other two into starting Go Between. Thinks in tradeoffs, writes everything down, and defends the right kind of lazy. Now on the California coast.
Truman Shuck
Founding partner
Knows when a boring answer beats a clever one, which is most of the time. Moved to Michigan to be near family, and shows up to every company summit with a new board game. Owns the hat that keeps Go Between from changing its name.
The first week is mostly listening.
Before a line of code, we sit with your team, your roadmap, and the decision you’re actually trying to make. By Friday we usually have a sharper version of the problem, and a short, honest list of what’s worth doing about it. It’s rarely the list anyone walked in with.
- doneSit in on standups
- doneRead the support tickets
- in progressWrite up the problem
- to doScope the support chatbot
If this sounds like the team you’ve been trying to hire, let’s talk.
It’s a 30-minute call with one of the three of us. We’ll tell you plainly whether we’re the right partners for the work in front of you.