Software for owner-run businesses · Austin, TX

Your operations,
running themselves.

I build the website your customers see, and the back-office software you shouldn't still be running by hand. I start by watching how the work actually happens, in your office, on your paper.

Running now Hokoku· Live demo· Jazzapedia

quotes invoices scheduling the system sent done
Who I work with

You already know which task eats your Monday.

Restaurants and hospitality. General contractors and the trades. Clinics and practices. Owner-run places where the office work lands on the owner because there's nobody else to hand it to. If you've got an IT department, I'm probably not your person.

01 / services

Three problems I take off your plate

The line between them blurs on most jobs. Tell me what's eating the week and I'll tell you which one it is.

See example jobs for each →

02 / proof

What's running right now

No numbers I can't back up. A real client system you can read about, a demo you can click into, and a platform I run myself.

Client work · in progress · public demo

Hokoku, a restaurant platform that knows what every menu item costs this week

A restaurant platform that reads the vendor invoices, recosts every recipe, and tells the owner each Monday which menu items drifted out of food-cost target and what to charge instead. Built for a two-store owner in Mississippi. Public demo you can try; a one-time code to your email opens it, and nothing else is asked.

  • Vendor invoices arrive by email or a daily pull from the distributor's portal. Ingredient costs update themselves; big moves wait for the owner.
  • Every Monday, a brief of the menu items that drifted out of food-cost target, with a suggested price for each.
  • Weekly inventory counts against what the sales say should have left the shelf. The gap is shrink, tracked over time.
  • Two stores, one owner view. Staff enter counts and daily sales from a phone.
  • Public demo with three fictional restaurants and a full operating week.
03 / how it goes

Two engagements, run differently

Every job so far has gone differently. The constant is that you see the thing working, on your own numbers, before you have to imagine anything.

The contractor

Two weeks in a contractor's office and on his job sites before I wrote anything: watching the day, riding along, learning which paper mattered. Three weeks later the office was looking at its own selections and job paperwork running in a browser, and telling me what was wrong with it.

The restaurant

A store visit, and photos of the paper forms he had been costing his menu on for years. I built for about a week, then opened the next meeting with a working app running his own numbers. My week on site came after, once there was something real to sit with.

What you walk away with

  • A straight read on which task is worth doing first, and which one is not worth paying anyone for.
  • A written price and a timeline, or the name of someone better suited.
  • No invoice either way.
Book a call Free, thirty minutes, and an honest no is a fine outcome. Questions about cost or timing? →
Maxwell Falk Erlich
The whole studio is one person

I'm Maxwell. When you hire FalkCritical, you get me, start to finish.

Software engineer in Austin. I spent years building systems inside companies. Now I build them for owners who'd rather not hire an agency to get one person's work done.

More about me →

Tell me what's eating your week.

Thirty minutes, free. Bring the task you'd pay to never do again.