TheSparseLabs

We take ideas from across the globe and turn them into real products

TheSparseLabs is a small product lab. We find what quietly ruins a workday and build the smallest thing that stops it.

Bring us an ideaSee our work

Nothing ships that can’t ship in 15 days. That isn’t a schedule. It’s a filter — if an idea can’t survive being that small, it isn’t the right idea yet.

Most software arrives too late to matter.

How fifteen days works

Four steps. We run them again the moment we’re done.

  1. Notice

    We start from friction, not from ideas. Someone doing real work hits the same wall for the fourth time and works around it instead of complaining. That workaround is the brief.

  2. Cut

    Then we take things away. What is the smallest version that actually ends the problem? If the answer needs a roadmap, it’s the wrong problem or we haven’t understood it yet.

  3. Ship

    Fifteen days, and it goes out. Small enough to finish, real enough to use. Not a beta list, not a waitlist — a thing you can open.

  4. Listen

    Then we find out whether we were right. People use it or they don’t, and both answers are useful. Some products get a second fifteen days. Some get put down.

We run them again the moment we’re done.

Whatever shape the problem is

The loop doesn’t care what form the answer takes. Some problems need an application. Some need one endpoint. Some need a command you type once and forget about.

a product that lives in a browser

Web applications

Full products that live in a browser. Real software, not a landing page with a form behind it.

Mobile apps

For the problems that only happen away from a desk. Shops, sites, vans, waiting rooms.

reading invoices
wrote invoices.csv
done

Command-line tools

Sometimes the honest answer to a problem is forty lines you run in a terminal. No dashboard, no account, no onboarding — it just does the thing and exits.

{
  "results": [...],
  "coverage": "partial"
}

API endpoints

Infrastructure for other people’s software. If the thing that hurts is something your own product needs and can’t get, we’ll build the service rather than the interface.

one thing, one tab

Micro-browser products

Small, single-purpose tools that open in a tab and solve exactly one thing. No signup, no install. You use it, it works, you close it.

a product that lives in a browser

Web applications

Full products that live in a browser. Real software, not a landing page with a form behind it.

Mobile apps

For the problems that only happen away from a desk. Shops, sites, vans, waiting rooms.

reading invoices
wrote invoices.csv
done

Command-line tools

Sometimes the honest answer to a problem is forty lines you run in a terminal. No dashboard, no account, no onboarding — it just does the thing and exits.

{
  "results": [...],
  "coverage": "partial"
}

API endpoints

Infrastructure for other people’s software. If the thing that hurts is something your own product needs and can’t get, we’ll build the service rather than the interface.

one thing, one tab

Micro-browser products

Small, single-purpose tools that open in a tab and solve exactly one thing. No signup, no install. You use it, it works, you close it.

We pick the shape after we understand the problem, never before. Deciding you’re building a mobile app and then going looking for a reason is how the year-long roadmaps start.

What we’ve built so far

Three products, three different shapes. A whiteboard, a shop till, and a search API. What they have in common is the loop, not the category.

A closer look at Godraw

The ledger shows the cadence. This shows the work.

Godraw with four tables, customers, products, invoices and invoice lines, drawn in crow’s-foot notation with their keys and relationships.
godraw.app
Godraw’s Export SQL dialog showing the same tables as Postgres CREATE TABLE statements.
A four-table schema pasted into Godraw, drawn back as a diagram in crow’s-foot notation, then exported out again as Postgres.

Every developer has drawn the same database twice. Once in the diagramming tool, to think. Once in SQL, to build. Then the schema changes and only one of them gets updated, so the picture on the wall slowly becomes fiction.

Godraw collapses that into one step. Draw the tables, the columns, the keys and the relationships in proper crow’s-foot notation, and export DDL that runs on Postgres, MySQL or SQLite. Already have a schema? Import it and get a diagram that matches reality, because it came from reality.

Around that sits an ordinary, good infinite canvas — freehand, shapes, arrows that route themselves, sticky notes, mind maps, code blocks, math. Live cursors and voice chat when you’re working with someone. A presentation mode for when the sketch becomes the meeting. And it works offline, syncing when you’re back.

“Free and always will be. If it saved you time, a small tip funds the servers and the next feature.”
Godraw’s own line, from its pricing.
Open Godraw