A Phoenix-based software development company is expanding its services and executive team to help more entrepreneurs start or grow their businesses.
Founders Workshop recently announced it has transformed into a full-service innovation app builder and artificial intelligence studio, aimed at small- to medium-sized businesses.
The company’s expanded offerings include market validation research, value proposition development, go-to-market strategies and branding packages. It also provides robotic process automation, and generative and conversational AI services.
What’s more, Founders Workshop added two new executives, both of whom are entrepreneurs who have held leadership roles at startups.
Wayne Neale joined Founders Workshop as chief product officer and Michael Vanderslice is chief operating officer.
Vincent Serpico, CEO of Founders Workshop, told AZ Inno the company’s expansion was prompted in part by requests from clients for assistance with marketing strategies, pitch deck creation and customer validation.
“Based on my availability, I helped out here and there,” he said. "I met Wayne about a year and a half ago and he has done customer validation as well as business strategy for our clients at Founders Workshop from time to time. So I said to Wayne, 'Hey, let's just formalize this. Come on board and let's offer this whole suite of services that our clients have been asking for.'"
Wayne Neale: Turning ideas into prototypes
Neale is a serial entrepreneur who has been involved in more than 10 startups as a founder or part of their early-stage executive teams. He is looking forward to bringing his wealth of experience to Founders Workshop to help other entrepreneurs.
“We put all these services together to help clients — whether it be a startup or a small-to-medium-sized enterprise — to expand on their ideas and do market validation research to understand, ‘Is the idea going to achieve product-market fit?’ Do we have any traction? Because that's what a lot of investors or internal budgeting teams look for,” Neale said. "Then, we take ideas, prototype them, test them and take those into the market."
Entrepreneurs don’t necessarily need to have a deep background in technology to benefit from services at Founders Workshop, Serpico said.
“All you need to know is what app you want to build … You see a solution to a problem out there, but you don't know anything about tech. So we'll take care of that 100% and we can help you from beginning to end," he said.
Serpico launched Founders Workshop in 2009. Since its inception, the company has built web and mobile apps and other software for more than 200 clients.
Founders Workshop works with more than a dozen clients and is gearing up to launch a new platform, DreamBuild, which will integrate AI into all processes within the company, Serpico said.
“We're implementing it in every single aspect, which means that product development across the board is being sped up 30%, 40%, even 50% at times at Founders Workshop,” Serpico said.
DreamBuild includes smart AI integration, plug and play code libraries, feature scope suggestions and custom code generation to reduce app development time for entrepreneurs. It will be available in a private beta in the third quarter of this year, Serpico added.
“We're really excited about the AI DreamBuild platform. We’ve already seen huge gains internally,” he said. “Once we have tightened it up, I'm excited about making it a private beta and getting feedback from others and letting others use it.”
This article was updated Aug. 19 to reflect Founders Workshop's current executive team.
