About us
We build for the businesses everyone else builds down to.
Arcane Growth Inc. is small, paid for by the people who use our software, and planning to still be here in ten years rather than to be bought in two.
Why we do this
Small businesses get handed the leftovers.
If you employ three people you get sold a tool designed for a company of five hundred, with the useful parts taken out and the price divided by ten. It still assumes you have somebody whose whole job is keeping it fed.
You do not. You are the person who does the work, and then does the invoicing at nine in the evening. What would actually help is not a tidier filing cabinet. It is somebody to do the filing.
For most of the history of software that could not be built at a price you would pay. It can now. So we are building the back office as something that gets on with the work while you are doing the real job, and comes to you for the handful of decisions that genuinely need a person.
- Where we are
- Arcane Growth Inc., Canada, since 2014.
- How we are paid
- By customers. No outside investors, and not looking.
- How big
- Small enough that whoever answers your email helped write the thing you are asking about.
- Our own machines
- We own the computers, including the ones the AI runs on.
- Who we build for
- One-person businesses and small teams, in the US and Canada.
- What we make
- ArcaneBooks, ArcaneDesk, ArcaneReach.
How we work
Four promises we would rather be held to than praised for.
- We tell you what it cannot do. Every product page says where the gaps are. You should find out from us, not two months in.
- We do not describe things we have not built. If something on our sites claims a feature that is not there, that is a mistake and we want to hear about it.
- We will not build on AI we cannot run ourselves. Depending on another company’s AI would make their outage your outage and their price rise your price rise.
- Leaving is easy on purpose. Export everything, whenever you want, without a phone call from somebody trying to talk you out of it.
We would rather be small and straight with you than big and vague.
Questions
The ones we get asked most.
What does Arcane Growth actually sell?
Nothing directly. We build and run three products, and each one is bought on its own: ArcaneBooks for your books, ArcaneDesk for customer support, and ArcaneReach for keeping up with leads. This site is here so you can see who is behind them.
Do I have to buy all three?
No, and most people should not. They are separate products with separate prices and separate sign-ups. Start with whichever job is eating the most of your week. If it does not earn its keep, you have not committed to anything else.
Is this going to be a big project to set up?
It should not be. You connect your bank or your inbox, and the assistant starts working through the backlog while you watch. If you find yourself in a six week onboarding, something has gone wrong and we want to hear about it.
What if the AI gets something wrong?
It will, sometimes, which is why nothing important happens without you saying yes, and why every number can be opened up to show where it came from. You are always the one who decides, and you can always see the reasoning rather than being asked to trust it.
Whose AI is it?
Ours. We start from AI that is published openly, train it ourselves for each job, and run it on our own computers. Your information is not sent to another company to be read, and it is never used to teach the AI.
Can I use my own software with it?
Yes. Each product can be driven by other programs, doing the same jobs the built-in assistant does. You choose what your software is allowed to touch and you can take that back at any time. There is more detail on the how it works page.
Are you hiring, or raising money?
We are small and paid for by customers rather than investors, and we are not raising. If you build this kind of software and that sounds interesting rather than alarming, write to us anyway.
Have a look at what we have built.
Three products, each of which will tell you honestly what it cannot do yet.