Not the usual software company.

Most software companies serving an industry are staffed by developers who studied it from the outside. Picky is the other way round — operators who eventually learned to write code.

For over twelve years we ran an auction delivery business — the people in between the auction house and the buyer. Days picking lots at the auctioneer's, evenings loading them for the buyer, Sunday nights doing the paperwork for both. That's where Picky came from: not from studying either trade, but from being the one carrying items across the door between them.

Every trade has its own vocabulary and its own rhythms. An auction house talks about lots and buyer numbers and paddles; a removals firm thinks in loads, zones, and porters. Off-the-shelf CRMs ask both of them to flatten what they do into contacts and deals. That works for a while, and then it doesn't.

“We make the tools we couldn't find.”

How we work

We don't need a research phase in your business — we've been in ours for over a decade, at both ends of the aisle. The platforms already reflect thousands of Monday mornings, difficult customers, unpaid invoices, and vans that broke down at the worst possible moment. That's the foundation. From there, we keep the work close to the people using it — a short line between the operator's day and the person who can change the software the next day.

It's a genuinely different starting point. Most developers guess at the operator's world. We started in it.

The name

Picky has two meanings, and both of them fit.

First, the obvious one: we're picky about the details. About typography, about wording, about how a form behaves when someone tabs through it in a hurry. About what happens when a page is empty and what happens when it's full. About the difference between software that works and software that a team is actually glad to open on a Monday morning.

Second, the one from the trade: picking is what our platforms do. Auction houses pick items ready for their buyers. Removals crews pick loads ready for the van. Every day, on both sides of the aisle, someone is picking. That's the work we came from — so it's the verb the software is built around.