hvylft:~$ whois heavyliftventures.com
A studio that builds, runs, holds, and has fun doing it.
Heavy Lift Ventures builds products, runs them as businesses, and holds them until they are ready to stand on their own, as a spin-out or a sale.
Founded in 2021 as Pulpo Partners Inc.; Heavy Lift Ventures is its operating name. It works out of the Mission District in San Francisco. It owns and runs Projectagram, builds and operates @plate, and built fccfOS, the software Fog City Community Fitness runs on. The people who build the products are the people who run them.
The name is the thesis. Work that used to take a regional chain, a six-month cycle or a thirty-person team is now within reach of a few people with the right tools. What was once a heavy lift is lighter now.
And lighter is more fun. We pick problems we’d happily talk about over dinner, and people we’d happily have dinner with. Serious about the work, not so much about ourselves.
Who
Gordon Whitehouse
Founder · President and CEO
Builds and runs the products. Twenty-plus years building technology across automation, high-scale data platforms and marketing operations.
How we operate
--operateOperate, don't just own.
Every product gets real attention, not just a cap table.
--lighter-liftPrefer the lighter lift.
The same outcome with one fewer team, one shorter cycle, one less layer.
--stay-closeStay close to the work.
We answer our own support email and sweep our own floors.
--long-runBuild for the long run.
We hold a product until it is what it should be, then decide whether it stands alone.
--stay-curiousFollow the odd question.
Some of the best things we've made started as “wait, why can't you just…?”
--have-funHave fun with it.
If a project stops being any fun, that's usually the first sign it's the wrong project.
Bring us a heavy lift. We’ll make it light.
Let’s build.