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Our story · New York City · Since 2011

Built in New York. Since 2011.

Purplecones was founded in 2011 in New York City as a young consulting agency, building data integrations for city agencies that help keep New Yorkers safer. Today we are a product studio for founders and companies, with 15 years of shipping production software and 6 products of our own live, including Lentil.

Where we come from

Our founding members began their careers working for New York City agencies. The job was connecting data between systems that were never meant to talk to each other, so the people keeping the city safe could see what they needed, when they needed it.

It was not glamorous work. It was the kind where a mistake matters. That is where our standards come from.

What public safety work taught us

Four lessons we kept.

  1. Reliability is not optional.

    When a system supports public safety, downtime is not an inconvenience. We still build everything as if someone depends on it.

  2. The data has to be right.

    Joining records across agencies taught us to validate, reconcile and trace every field. Wrong data is worse than no data.

  3. Security from day one.

    Sensitive records, strict access rules, real audits. We never learned to bolt security on later, and never will.

  4. Build for the person on shift.

    The best integration is the one a busy person can trust at 3am without thinking about it.

The question we still start with

Who depends on this working, and what happens to them if it doesn't?

We learned to ask it on city systems. We ask it on every project now.

Work with us

Bring us something that matters.

Fifteen years on, we still take on work where getting it right is the whole point.

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