Build
Our products.
We design, build, and ship our own AI-native software. Glacier, SkillsFrame, Ambrogio, NanaShift, Philini.
● Open for projectsFounded 2026
BlackBear
Small batch. Serious craft.
Milan · Barcelona
A senior product team that ships— Q4 2026
A product studio for the AI-native era.
We build, we partner, we teach — in that order.
Glacier and SkillsFrame live. Currently building Ambrogio and NanaShift.
- Stellantis
- Ferrari
- Prada
- Vodafone
- Edison
- Springer Nature
- Status.im
- Gitcoin
— What we do
Build. Partner. Teach.
Partner
Custom builds for select clients.
When a problem fits how we work, we build it with you — full ownership, no fixed-cost team.
Teach
Advisory & training.
For senior teams who want to build AI-native products well: architecture, setup, hands-on workshops.
— How we scale
We scale by choosing, not hiring.
The permanent core is two co-founders. Around them, a hand-picked collective we bring in when the work calls for it.
Every product we take on, every engagement, every collaborator is a deliberate choice — not capacity we need to fill.
No fixed costs to feed. No headcount to justify. Just product builders who care about what ships.
— What we ship
Products we own & operate.
Every product is ours — designed, built, and run in-house. We stay with what we ship.
SkillsFrame
Career intelligence for senior professionals.
Live · paying users · Stripe-integrated career intelligence.
Match score87%
“Senior operator who ships AI products.”
Glacier
AI-native workspace for technical teams.
MCP-first · self-serve · on-premise option for enterprise.
Backlog
Auth integration
Dashboard v2
In progress
MCP connector
Search API
Done
Initial setup
NanaShift
Shift management that runs on WhatsApp.
WhatsApp-native scheduling · no app install · in build.
N
NanaShift BotHi Rosa! You’re scheduled Tue 08:00–16:00. Confirm?
Yes, confirmed ✓Marco requested a swap on Thursday. Accept?
Sure, works for meAmbrogio
Your AI butler for marketing and growth.
WhatsApp-delivered morning brief · Claude API · in build.
A
AmbrogioBuongiorno. Here is your Monday brief.
● Urgent — Competitor launched new pricing. Summary ready.
● Reddit · 142 upvotes — Thread on r/ExperiencedDevs. Draft reply ready.
Approve allReviewA studio, not an agency.
Every product starts with AI as infrastructure, not feature.
BlackBear is a permanent core of senior builders — direct access to the people who build, no layers, no handoffs, no account managers.
We move fast because we build with discipline — test-driven, lean, and AI-accelerated. Each product starts small, ships early, and earns its way to scale.
Small batch. Serious craft. That’s not a tagline — it’s how we operate.
— How we build
Explore. Build. Operate.
One loop. Three modes. Same team end-to-end.
01 — Explore
Find the real problem.
We start with the problem, not the solution. Deep domain research, fast prototyping, and direct access to the people who'll use it.
02 — Build
Ship early, iterate fast.
Test-driven, lean, and AI-accelerated. We ship early, get real feedback, and iterate fast — without accumulating debt.
03 — Operate
Stay with what we ship.
We stay with what we ship. Monitoring, support, and continuous improvement — not just a handoff.
— How a typical engagement runs
| Week 0 | Discovery call | 30-min conversation. Frame the problem. No commitment. |
| Week 1 | Problem framing | Deep dive on the actual problem behind the brief. Ends with a written framing doc. Go/no-go decision. |
| Week 2–4 | First shippable build | Smallest version that earns feedback. Test-driven, lean. Real users from day 1. |
| Week 5–12 | Iterate with users | Weekly ship cadence. Demo every other Friday. Direct user feedback loop. |
| Ongoing | Operate | Monitoring, support, continuous improvement. We stay with what we ship. |
This is a default shape — every engagement adapts. Some compress to 4 weeks total, some run 6 months. The shape stays the same; the duration follows the problem.
— How we think
Principles we actually follow.
I.
Validate first.
Every product starts as an experiment with real users before any significant investment.
II.
Test-driven by default.
TDD, continuous integration, collective code ownership. We ship fast because we build with discipline.
III.
Flow over ceremonies.
Kanban, WIP limits, pull systems. No standups for the sake of standups.
IV.
AI-accelerated.
Claude Code as primary dev tool. Specialized sub-agents for code review, test generation, and exploration.
V.
Kill early.
Ideas that don't earn the right to continue get killed. No sunk cost attachment.
— Who builds
Who builds.
Diego Franciosi
Co-Founder · Builder
From code to teams and back. Now I build the products I wish those teams had.
Developer and tech lead turned product and delivery lead. Built software for Prada, Ferrari and Springer Nature; led transformation at Vodafone and Stellantis. ICF PCC coach.
Andrea Franz
Co-Founder · Builder
Twenty years building production software. The systems behind every BlackBear product.
Distributed systems, open-source tools with thousands of GitHub stars, engineering team leadership. Production code in Go, Ruby, Elixir, TypeScript.
Based in Milan & BarcelonaFounded January 2026
— Journal
Thinking in public.
What we think while we ship.
- Kanban Wasn't Built for Agents. Here's What Changes.
Most Kanban practitioners are asking: how do we use AI to improve our boards? Auto-generate cards, summarize columns, predict cycle time. Useful, but it treats AI as a feature you bolt onto a human system.
→ Read on Substack
Build notes, manifestos, retros.
— Latest
Ship log.
What shipped, when. Updated as we go.
Sep 29, 2026ambrogioAmbrogio v0.7 — one dashboard across a portfolio of products
Sep 29, 2026nanashiftNanaShift v0.2 — every roster change confirmed before it happens
Aug 28, 2026skillsframeSkillsFrame v1.5 — /compare/jobscan and a rewritten, verifiable homepage
Jun 2, 2026glacierGlacier v1.0 "Open Water" — general availability, self-serve billing, Horizons
— Follow the build
We ship
in public.
Follow BlackBear on LinkedIn, or reach out if you want to talk.