A few months ago we quietly launched a something called “76labs”. What is it? Well, it’s a sandbox of sorts.

After attending SXSW in Austin in the spring, Brett and I came back with a bit of an itch to try new things. We saw companies like 37signals and SkinnyCorp tell us how they’d gone from being service-based firms to product-based ones after something they’d tinkered with evenings and weekends just took off - Basecamp and Threadless, respectively. Totally unexpected in both cases. It literally turned their companies upside down.

When we came up with the idea for 76labs we wanted a place where we could experiment with ideas. A place where we could screw up and it was no big deal. A place where we could try stuff without worrying if it even worked or not. But hey, that’s not a very lofty goal so we came up with a short list of objectives for work we do within “the lab” so that we can get something out of the time we put into it. In no particular order, we’re trying to accomplish three things: learn new skills, promote the company and make some money. I know I said they were in no particular order but making money out of our lab work is probably the least important thing to us. Heck, we’re probably going to be giving away a lot of it for free. But we’re excited to get these ideas out there and give something back. We’re not trying to turn 76design upside down but there is a certain level of excitement around the notion that one of our ideas could change our business completely.

So why introduce 76labs now? We’ve been working away behind the scenes on a few different projects and ideas and we’re getting pretty close to launching our debut offering to the world developed at 76labs. I won’t get into too much detail about it at this point but I’ll just say that it’s a nifty little web-based tool to help you organize stuff. Pretty vague, I know. But it’s really cool, trust me.

76labs: a place where we can play and learn. Sounds like kindergarten a bit, I know. I guess it kind of is, in a way. Juice and cookies and toys.