We design and build AI that changes what people can do.

A tool is only interesting when something is different on the other side of it. That difference is what we build around.

Discuss the problem See the work

02 / Proof

Retail

EdTech

Insurance

Psychometrics

Banking

03 / Work

EdTech / Multi-year01

Feedback in minutes, not weeks.

Umuzi trains software engineers and data scientists from backgrounds the industry tends to miss. Their bottleneck used to be marking. Careful human feedback was slow and expensive, and learners waited days for the response that would have helped them most in the first hour.

We built the AI system that gives learners instant, specific feedback on their submissions, modelled on how Umuzi's coaches actually mark. It's been live for over a year.

14+ months live

Retail / 202302

20,000 people made art with a supermarket.

Checkers wanted a festive campaign with AI art at the centre, which in 2023, when DALL·E 2 had just landed, was new ground for almost everyone. We built the app: prompts that produced something good, safety that quietly held the line, and a gallery that could carry the weight when twenty thousand people showed up to make things.

Generative AI was unfamiliar to most of the country at the time. The work was making it feel like play.

MMA Smarties South Africa Gold Award for XR Technology

MMA Smarties South Africa Silver Award for Experimental and Innovation Technology

20,000+ artworks

Behavioural / Live03

A course that can talk back.

42courses teaches creativity, behavioural science, and brand. The reading is excellent. The practice, where people actually try what they've read, is where most learners quietly stop.

We built the AI companion that sits inside the course, knows the material, and helps people work through the hard part: trying it themselves. Behind the scenes, we build other systems: lesson personalisation, correspondence, course generation. They keep the product moving without slowing the team down.

In-product / live

Psychometrics / Live04

Psychometric assessments, finally personal.

Resonance has a rigorous leadership archetype model. The way it reached the people taking it was a spreadsheet and a generic PDF. The same output every time, regardless of who took the test.

We built the system that scores against their archetypes and writes a report and growth plan to the person, not about them. We also built the coach that lets readers talk through their own archetype and how to work with the others. The science stayed theirs. What landed on the reader's screen changed.

Scoring + AI coach

04 / How

(01)

Founder-led

You talk to the person doing the work.

(02)

Greenfield or rebuild

Start clean, or reshape what already exists.

(03)

After launch

Stay close, iterate, hand over when ready.

The best projects for us are the ones where AI is the means, not the point. We're better at making real things happen than decorating dashboards.

05 / Studio

Dan / Founder

The interesting part of AI is not what it automates. It's what it makes possible.

What gets noticed. What gets learned. What gets made. Who someone becomes when the right tool is in their hands.

Twenty-five years building software. Recombinary is what I do now, with AI at the centre.

DanFounder