Introducing aegi

An operating system for the work between service businesses and their clients.

Today we are sharing aegi, a new system for managing client relationships, delivery, and revenue in one connected environment.

Service businesses currently operate across fragmented software. Client records live in CRMs, projects in Asana or ClickUp, files in Google Drive or Dropbox, knowledge in Notion, communication across email and Slack, time in Harvest, agreements in DocuSign, accounting in QuickBooks or Xero, and payments in Stripe.

Each product holds one part of the business. None represents the business as a whole.

aegi is being developed to provide that missing operating layer.

The problem

Client work is connected by nature.

A new relationship may produce a contract, a project, a set of tasks, shared files, tracked time, invoices, payments, requests, and ongoing services. These records describe different parts of the same relationship, yet most software treats them as unrelated objects.

As a result, businesses maintain the connections manually.

Information is copied between systems. Context is reconstructed from messages and documents. Billing is reconciled against delivery after the fact. Clients move between unrelated portals, links, and email threads to understand what is happening.

Our team experienced this fragmentation directly. We initially looked for a better combination of existing tools. Over time, we concluded that the problem was not the absence of another specialized application. It was the absence of a shared model beneath them.

A growing part of the economy

Independent and professional service businesses are not a marginal category.

The U.S. Census Bureau recorded more than 30.4 million businesses without paid employees in 2023. These businesses include sole proprietors, independent professionals, partnerships, and other organizations operating without a traditional employee structure. U.S. Census Bureau

Professional, scientific, and technical services alone accounted for more than four million nonemployer businesses and $229.4 billion in receipts in 2022. It was the largest nonemployer sector measured by the Census Bureau. U.S. Census Bureau

The category is also expected to continue expanding. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects professional, scientific, and technical services to add approximately 812,500 jobs between 2024 and 2034, making it the country’s second-fastest-growing major employment sector over that period. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Freelance work extends the category further. A 2023 study conducted by Edelman Data & Intelligence for Upwork estimated that 64 million Americans performed freelance work during the year—four million more than in 2022. Nearly half provided knowledge services such as programming, marketing, IT, and business consulting. Upwork Freelance Forward 2023

These businesses are becoming more capable, more distributed, and more important to the broader economy. Yet much of their operating software is still assembled from products designed to solve isolated tasks.

We believe this category warrants infrastructure designed around how it actually works.

Our approach

The central idea behind aegi is that the client relationship should be the durable context for the business.

Projects, tasks, files, contracts, invoices, subscriptions, requests, and communications remain distinct records. They are not collapsed into one universal workflow. Instead, they share a common foundation that preserves their relationship to the client, the organization, and one another.

This allows different forms of work to coexist.

A client may have several projects or no project at all. Work may be billed hourly, at a fixed price, or through a recurring service. Files may belong to a project, a contract, a request, or the broader client relationship. Internal operations and client-visible information may describe the same work while requiring different levels of access.

aegi is designed to represent these differences without fragmenting the underlying context.

The initial system includes:

• Client relationships and contacts

• Projects, tasks, and delivery workflows

• Time and work records

• Contracts and files

• Invoices, subscriptions, and payments

• Requests, approvals, and updates

• A separate client-facing portal

These capabilities are being developed on a shared foundation for identity, permissions, workflow state, client context, and commercial records.

Private beta

aegi is now entering private beta.

The first phase will make the platform available to a controlled group of service businesses. This is the next stage in validating the system under real operating conditions and establishing the foundation for wider access.

The private beta will focus on five areas:

• Preserving client context across delivery and commercial workflows

• Supporting different operating models without fragmenting the system

• Maintaining precise boundaries between internal and client-facing information

• Consolidating existing tools without sacrificing operational depth

• Ensuring the platform remains dependable as organizations, clients, and records grow

The direction of aegi is established. The private beta is designed to strengthen its execution: improving reliability, refining workflows, identifying high-leverage additions, and understanding where the platform can remove the most operational work.

Developing aegi with its users

The people using aegi will have a direct role in its development.

Private-beta participants will be able to share what works, identify friction, and influence which problems the platform addresses next. Their experience will help us understand how different businesses structure client relationships, where existing systems create unnecessary work, and which workflows benefit most from a shared operating foundation.

This feedback loop is a core part of how we intend to build aegi.

The product thesis is not being crowdsourced. aegi will remain centered on a clear model: the client relationship is the durable context, operational records should remain connected, and internal work must stay distinct from the client experience.

User participation will help us apply that model to a wider range of businesses and operating conditions. Repeated feedback will inform priorities, while the architecture and long-term direction of the platform remain coherent.

The result is a development process that combines a strong product position with direct evidence from the organizations the system is designed to serve.

We will continue sharing what we build and what we learn through these updates.

What comes next

Our immediate priority is to complete the core platform, validate it through private beta, and prepare aegi for broader availability.

From there, we will expand the range of work that can be operated through aegi: acquiring clients, coordinating teams, delivering services, managing commercial relationships, and understanding business performance.

Specialized infrastructure—including payments, banking, communication, and storage—will become part of a connected operating environment. Businesses may continue to rely on underlying providers, but aegi will provide the system through which that infrastructure is organized and operated.

Our long-term goal is for aegi to become the system of record for the service economy: a reliable replacement for the fragmented application layer currently used to run client work.

The private beta is the first stage of that expansion. It gives participants an opportunity to influence the platform early—and gives us the operational evidence required to build it at scale.