2018 — 2026 · A fond farewell

Every chapter has an end.
This one is a happy one.

77 Labs began as an idea on a whim and became something much bigger: a small but mighty fund and holding company built on ownership, experimentation, and operational conviction. Over eight years we owned and operated 11 businesses, and we turned around 70% of them. That's a result we're deeply proud of, and it happened alongside the investors, partners, operators, and founders who backed the hard decisions. By the end of 2025 we'd narrowed the portfolio to five. Today, four remain.

Those years taught us the same lesson again and again: the value was never in the software alone. It was in the problem being solved, the operations behind it, and staying close to the people who actually use what you build.

That truth has only sharpened. AI is pushing the cost of building software toward zero, and it's reshaping the moats that defined the last decade of SaaS. Features are becoming commodities, and markets that once took years to consolidate now shift in months. We'd rather move with that current than hold onto a version of the market that's already changing.

So we're exiting deliberately, on our terms. We're handing these companies into their next chapters while they're strong, and closing ours with the same spirit that built 77 Labs in the first place: curiosity, conviction, and a belief that the best businesses are built closest to the real world.

11 businesses owned & operated · 70% turned around · 5 at the end of 2025 · 4 remain today
The record behind it

Eight years.
One hundred and thirty-six repositories.

From image-classification microservices to AI-native desktop apps — a quiet record of what the team has built, shipped, and kept alive.

136
Repositories
8
Years building
16
Languages
1.0 GB
Of code
Then & Now

Where we started. Where we are.

The first commits and the latest — same team, same instincts, vastly different surface area.

Chapter 1 · The Origin
2018

Computer vision, scrapers, classification services

Python microservices that looked at images and decided what they were. The team was building parts of a pipeline.

  • Bag Classification Service
  • Color Detection Service
  • Brand Classification Service
  • Model Classification Service
  • Scrapers— Set of scrapers for specific sites
  • Markup Tool Backend
  • Retail Dashboard Backend — still pushed in 2026
Chapter 6 · Today
2026

AI-native products, end-to-end

Full-stack TypeScript and Rust shipping desktop apps, marketing sites, APIs, and dashboards — owned end to end.

  • Starforce AI App — Tauri + Rust monitoring desktop
  • Clara Patient App
  • Journey
  • Buy Sell Studios Dashboard
  • Japan Activist Engine
  • Find Luxury Japan
  • Clara Health
The Story · Six Chapters

Every era left something we still ship.

The team didn't pivot — it compounded. Each chapter is built on the muscle of the one before it.

2018 — 2019

Computer Vision Origins

Image classification, brand & model detection, the first scrapers. Built the discipline of small, single-purpose services.

28 repos · Python era
2020 — 2021

E-commerce Platforms

Multi-tenant storefronts and our first SMB and retail platforms. The team learned to ship customer-facing surface, not just APIs.

21 repos · JS + Kotlin
2022 — 2023

Marketplace Data Layer

We became the team that owned and operated integrations across many of the largest resale and marketplace platforms in Japan, Europe, and the US.

32 repos · TS dominant
2024

Mobile + Multi-Product

Consumer apps, healthcare platforms, retail analytics dashboards, AI-powered purchasing tools, and e-commerce experiences. The team evolved into a multi-disciplinary product organization operating across several parallel initiatives.

21 repos · mobile launches
2025

The ERP & Infra Pivot

Operational systems, infrastructure automation, mobile commerce tools, and next-generation analytics platforms. We finally built the operational backbone we had been talking about for years.

13 repos · Terraform + service mesh
2026 — Now

AI-Native Products

Workflow automation and learning agents, healthcare systems, discovery experiences, cross-border commerce products, and marketplace tools. AI evolved from being a supporting feature into the foundation of the entire product experience.

21 repos in 5 months
The Timeline

Every repository, plotted in time.

Each dot is a repo, positioned by when it was created and colored by primary language. Open dots are archived chapters; filled ones are still alive.

Tech Evolution

The stack told its own story.

Python carried the early CV work. JavaScript and Kotlin powered the storefront era. TypeScript took over once we owned product. Rust shows up the moment we ship desktop software.

Three eras, three stacks

Python dominated 2018–2019 — classification services, scrapers, data tooling.

JavaScript & Kotlin took 2020–2021 when we shipped storefronts and mobile apps.

TypeScript became the default from 2022 onward — and is still ~70% of everything new.

Rust arrived in 2026. We finally needed it.

Cumulative Output

The curve never stopped going up.

Total repositories created, year over year. Eight years in, the team is still shipping new ground at the highest rate it ever has.

Still Standing

Four repositories from the earliest era are still pushed today.

Most teams' early work gets archived. Ours got compounded. These repos crossed 5+ years of continuous evolution — the longest, Retail Dashboard Backend, has been receiving commits for 8 years straight.

Retail Dashboard Backend
2018 → 2026 · 8 years
Retail Dashboard Frontend
2018 → 2025 · 7 years
Retail Backend Marketplaces
2020 → 2025 · 5 years
Pricing Data
2020 → 2025 · 5 years
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From scraping pages to building autonomous systems.

Same team. Same instincts. Vastly bigger surface area. Here's to the next eight.