From Software Studio to AI Agency: 10 Years Building Digital Products
TL;DR
- I co-founded Devwiz, a software studio, in 2015. We have shipped more than 200 apps since.
- Along the way I built a fintech product, scaled it, and sold it.
- The Web3 years taught me how to build in hype cycles without getting burned by them.
- I have been implementing AI in businesses for 8+ years. In the end I went all-in on it.
- Today that work runs through The AI Orchestrators and Njin. This is the story and the lessons.
Where did the last 10 years start?
In 2015 I co-founded Devwiz, a software studio in Sydney. The pitch was simple: build digital products properly, for people who cannot afford to get it wrong.
Over the decade since, Devwiz has shipped more than 200 apps. SaaS platforms, mobile apps, marketplaces, internal tools. Startups on their first build, corporates on their fifth, government teams with requirements documents thicker than my laptop.
That volume is the foundation under everything I do now. You cannot ship 200+ products without learning what actually makes one succeed. Spoiler: it is almost never the technology.
What did 200+ app builds teach me?
Three lessons kept repeating, no matter the industry or the budget.
The product is never the business. We built technically brilliant apps that died because nobody validated demand. And we built plain, ordinary apps that printed money because they sat inside a working business model. The commercial engine matters more than the code.
Validation beats confidence. The founders who won were the ones who pre-sold before they built. I took that lesson personally and later generated $170K+ in presales for AI products before writing a line of them.
Small scope ships. Big scope slips. Every successful launch we did was a tight first version that did one thing well. That thinking eventually became The Power of One, the methodology I still run every engagement on.
I also had my own swing at product during these years. I built a fintech product, scaled it, and sold it. Going through a full cycle as a founder, not just a builder, changed how I advise. It is easy to have opinions about growth until the revenue is yours.
Why did I spend years in Web3?
Because for a while it was the frontier, and I wanted to build at the frontier.
I led product strategy for NFT and DeFi projects, worked on Web3 education platforms, and helped teams take crypto products to mainstream users. Some of that work I am proud of. Some of it taught me expensive lessons.
The biggest thing Web3 gave me was a hype filter. When a technology wave hits, money and noise arrive together. You learn to ask: what is the actual problem this solves, who pays for that, and does the unit economics survive when the excitement dies? Most projects failed those questions. The ones that passed are still here.
That filter turned out to be the perfect training for what came next.
When did AI enter the picture?
Earlier than most people assume. I have been implementing AI in businesses for more than 8 years, starting with automation and machine learning work well before the generative wave.
But the last few years changed the equation completely. The models got good enough to do real knowledge work. Agents got reliable enough to run whole processes. Suddenly the thing I had watched businesses struggle with for a decade, scaling delivery without scaling headcount, had a genuine answer.
And I noticed something familiar. Everyone was buying tools. Very few were building systems. The same pattern I had watched kill app projects for ten years was repeating with AI, which is exactly why most AI implementations fail. Businesses do not have an AI problem. They have an integration problem.
That gap has a name now: AI orchestration. Making the tools work together as one system. It is the work I had been circling my whole career.
Why run an agency and a programme at the same time?
Because the market needs both, and each one makes the other sharper.
The AI Orchestrators is the programme I founded for $1M+ online educators and consultants. They have proven IP and real audiences, and they are supply constrained. We turn their frameworks into AI-powered delivery so they can grow without burning out their team.
Njin is the agency I co-founded. It builds AI-powered sales operations for established businesses: follow-up systems, lead nurture, proposals, qualification. Revenue first, on the stack the business already runs. I broke down the method in how to build a sales automation system without a new tech stack.
Devwiz is still there too, now with an AI-first approach to every build. The studio handles the product engineering. The agency and the programme handle the business transformation. Ten years on, the pieces finally click together.
The full reasoning behind the pivot deserves its own post, and I wrote it: why we went all-in on AI orchestration.
What does 10 years of building actually teach you?
That the fundamentals do not move. Technology waves come through every few years. Mobile, SaaS, crypto, AI. The businesses that win each wave are the ones that hold the boring line: validate demand, scope small, ship, measure revenue, repeat.
AI is the biggest wave I have seen in my working life. It is also the most forgiving one for business owners, because you do not need to build anything from scratch to benefit. You need working processes and a system that connects AI to them.
That is the job now. Ten years of shipping products taught me how. The next ten are about doing it at scale.
FAQ
Who is James Killick?
An AI Orchestrator and entrepreneur with 10+ years building digital products. He co-founded the software studio Devwiz in 2015, built and sold a fintech product, founded The AI Orchestrators, and co-founded the AI sales operations agency Njin.
What is Devwiz?
A Sydney-based software development studio co-founded by James Killick in 2015. It has shipped more than 200 apps for startups, corporates, and government teams, and now takes an AI-first approach to every project.
What does an AI agency do differently from a software studio?
A studio builds products to a spec. An AI agency builds systems that change how the business runs: automated follow-up, AI-assisted delivery, orchestrated workflows. The output is measured in revenue and capacity, not features shipped.
Why did James move from Web3 to AI?
Web3 taught him to separate hype from substance in a technology wave. Applying that filter to AI showed a technology that solves real, immediate business problems. The demand followed the same conclusion.
The short version of all this lives on my profile, along with where else to find me. If your business is ready for the systems chapter, book a call.
About the Author
The AI Orchestrator
AI Orchestrator and entrepreneur with 10+ years building digital products. Helping $1M+ business owners scale with AI systems, automation, and implementation through The AI Orchestrators, Devwiz, and Njin.