“We reached a certain point where I realized we had this mature product, kind of running under its own steam, and while we continue to improve and update it, we

“We reached a certain point where I realized we had this mature product, kind of running under its own steam, and while we continue to improve and update it, we could take eight people off of FogBugz,” Mr. Spolsky added. Those eight employees were split into teams of two and given the freedom to spend three months building something that interested them. “I like to think of this place as an idea factory,” said Mr. Spolsky, echoing a sentiment betaworks co-founder John Borthwick has shared with Betabeat. “They have some time to work on something and if its great, we might scale. If not, we pivot, or kill the project and try something totally new,” explained Mr. Spolsky.