# Our mission
# Who are we?
We are a full-service, start-to-finish digital agency and product incubator with a ton of experience and a long history of doing awesome shit. And, while we've done a lot over that long history here are a few of the things we've done that we are most proud of:
- Built big, complex start-to-finish projects like poets.org (opens new window) and the University of San Francisco (opens new window)
- Provided high quality and super-fast support for companies like GoHealth (opens new window) and CSI (opens new window)
- Created popular open source tools and products like Lando (opens new window) and Kalabox (opens new window)
- Partnered with great companies like Pantheon (opens new window) and Platform.sh (opens new window)
- Trained premier orgs like Aten (opens new window) and Revolution Messaging (opens new window)
- Helped organize community events like DrupalCon (opens new window) and BADCamp (opens new window)
- Started and run other successful agencies like Kalamuna (opens new window)
And through it all we've had a great time!!!
# Why do we exist?
So cool! (opens new window) but agency-incubators like 37Signals (opens new window) are not a super unique thing. What makes Tandem different?
Tandem exists as an agency because it believes clients don't want to buy hours, they want to buy results. This is to say clients prefer to pay for stuff instead of the time to make said stuff.
Tandem exists as a product incubator because it believes the best products come from a team that does things on its own terms, chooses its own destiny, and is not beholden to the will of venture capital overlords.
As both agency and incubator, Tandem believes that client work inspires great product ideas and that clients get more value from great products.
To that end we strive to reach the singularity (opens new window) where our client work and products slowly move towards one another until they eventually combine, go supernova, and thereafter become indistinguishable from one another.
# What do we do?
In order to collapse client work and products into the singularity you need to transform repeatable parts of client work into products; things that can be done consistently in a given amount of time.
The more you do this, the more you can bill clients for value (what they actually get) instead of time (how long it took to deliver it). Focusing on value means the agency generates higher revenue per hour and the client sees significantly reduced costs, eg everyone wins.
Higher agency revenue per hour means more free time. More free time means more products. More products means higher agency revenue per hour. Positive feedback loop established.
Of course this process only succeeds if we do it right.