FAQ: The Questions You Really Meant to Ask.

Goji Labs is a strategy-led digital product agency based in Los Angeles. We design and build AI-powered products, custom software, mobile and web applications, and the UX behind them for enterprise teams, private equity-backed portfolio companies, and startups. Our four service pillars are AI Product Development, App & Software Development, UI/UX Design, and Product Strategy Consulting.

Goji Labs was founded in 2014 and has been in business for over 12 years. In that time we have launched more than 500 products, supported over 25 million users, and worked with clients who have collectively raised more than $1 billion.

Goji Labs is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. We are a US-based agency with team members across multiple cities, and we serve clients nationwide through dedicated regional pages for Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Jose, San Antonio, and Chicago.

Goji Labs has launched more than 500 products over 12+ years in business. Those products have collectively supported over 25 million users and have helped client companies raise more than $1 billion in funding.

Goji Labs has shipped products across 20 industries, including AI, SaaS, fintech, healthcare and fitness, education, ecommerce and retail, energy and sustainability, government, gaming, HR and recruiting, insurance, legal and regulation tech, logistics and transportation, media and entertainment, nonprofit, private equity, real estate, social media, and travel and hospitality.

Goji Labs made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in America for 3 years in a row, and has been named the top-reviewed UX agency in Los Angeles by The Manifest. We hold a top 1% Clutch rating among digital product agencies and were recognized in the 2024 New York Product Design Awards.

Goji Labs has built products for clients including KCRW, WWF, the World Health Organization (WHO), Mural, Animoca Brands, PredictionStrike, k-ID, Hard Assets Alliance, the Educated Choices Program, BYOU, TGS, Gaido, Kabata, Fitness Pact, Wayfarer, and ADAK.

Yes. Goji Labs is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, contracts under US legal frameworks, and works primarily in US time zones.

Goji Labs is strategy-led, not feature-led. We bring product strategy, UX, engineering, and AI under one team, so the roadmap, the experience, and the architecture are coordinated from day one. Clients choose Goji when they want a partner who pushes back on the brief when the brief is wrong.

Choose Goji Labs when you need a senior team that engages directly with the work, faster decision cycles, and strategy-led thinking without enterprise consultancy overhead. Larger agencies excel at multi-year transformation programs; Goji is built for focused product engagements where speed and clarity matter more than scale of headcount.

Choose Goji Labs when you need a coordinated team across product strategy, design, engineering, QA, and project management, not a single discipline. Freelancers work for narrow tasks; product builds require all those disciplines moving together against one roadmap and one accountability point.

Choose Goji Labs when you need to move faster than a hiring cycle, validate a direction before committing to permanent headcount, or fill a gap that does not justify a full-time hire. Many clients use Goji to ship the first version, then transition to an internal team once the direction is proven.

Strategy-first means we define what should be built, who it serves, and why it creates value before any screen is designed or any code is written. The result: design and development time invested only where it creates real value, not on features that get cut later.

Most digital products are never truly finished. Clients return because launches are followed by feature expansion, optimization, and adaptation as the business evolves, and Goji Labs’s maintenance, post-launch support, and AI Optimization engagements are built for that ongoing work.

Yes. We partner with organizations across industries and maturity stages. Our strategy-first approach adapts to the needs of scaling startups, enterprise teams navigating complexity, and PE groups managing product portfolios.

Timelines depend on scope, complexity, and the level of strategy needed. Simpler projects can move quickly, while full product builds typically range from several weeks to several months. The best way to get an accurate timeline is to schedule a discovery call so we can understand your goals and requirements.

Costs vary based on scope, functionality, platform, and level of strategy required. We take a blended-rate approach that covers design, development, quality assurance, and project management. After understanding your needs, we provide a clear estimate so you know exactly what to expect.

Every project begins with discovery—aligning on goals, users, and requirements. From there, we move into design, where we shape the product experience. Then development brings those designs to life, followed by QA and launch. Each step is intentional and designed to reduce risk and move the product forward with clarity.

We’ve partnered across healthcare, finance, energy, logistics, retail, entertainment, HR tech, government, real estate, and more. Our strength is applying strategy, design, and engineering fundamentals to any product category with clarity and precision.

We’ll ask about your business goals, success metrics, users, existing assets, technical requirements, and any constraints or timelines. The more clarity you bring early, the more efficiently we can move through design and development.

Our work is designed to deliver strategic, measurable outcomes—not just polished interfaces. That includes improved user experience, clearer product direction, reduced complexity, stronger adoption, and digital products that support your business goals long after launch.

We move through structured phases: discovery, design, development, QA, launch, and post-launch optimization. Each phase is collaborative and transparent, ensuring that what we build is aligned with the strategic direction established at the start.

Yes. We frequently work alongside internal teams—founders, CTOs, PMs, engineers—and plug into your existing workflow. Our role is to bring clarity, reduce uncertainty, and help your organization move faster with strategic alignment.

Absolutely. Through discovery sprints, user interviews, and rapid prototyping, we help you test concepts quickly and cost-effectively. The goal is to validate core assumptions early so you can move forward with confidence—and avoid expensive pivots later.

Yes. We conduct qualitative and quantitative research, competitor audits, and market analysis to understand user behaviors and opportunities in your space. This gives your team data-driven insights that strengthen positioning, reduce assumptions, and guide smarter product decisions.

Yes. Our strategy sprints bring your team and ours together to define goals, unpack user needs, map core flows, and align on success metrics. These workshops compress weeks of decision-making into focused sessions that create clarity and unlock momentum.

Depending on scope, deliverables may include user personas, journey maps, feature prioritization, competitive landscape analysis, technical feasibility assessments, and a strategic roadmap. These become the foundation for design and development, ensuring the product is built right.

Product strategy clarifies what you’re building, who it serves, and why it matters—before a single screen is designed. It reduces risk by aligning your business goals, user needs, and technical constraints into a clear plan. The result is a focused roadmap that ensures design and development time is invested where it creates real value.

Yes. Goji Labs provides fractional product leadership for companies that need senior product judgment without committing to a full-time hire, paired with the design and engineering capability to ship the work.

Yes. Goji Labs’s product strategy work includes go-to-market positioning, customer segmentation, pricing strategy, and launch planning where relevant. We do not replace a dedicated marketing agency, but we ensure the product is built to support the GTM motion the business is pursuing.

AI product development at Goji Labs is the work of designing and building AI-powered products, copilots, assistants, and workflows that produce measurable business outcomes. We treat AI as part of the product system, not as a feature layered on top. Every engagement is grounded in a clear use case, a defined data strategy, and a path from prototype to production.

It makes sense when the use case has a clear business outcome, a usable data foundation, and a user workflow AI can meaningfully improve. It does not when AI is being added for novelty or when the problem can be solved more reliably with conventional software. Goji Labs runs a 2-to-4 week AI Strategy & Opportunity Mapping engagement to answer this question with specifics.

Cost depends on scope, data complexity, and whether you are building net-new or enhancing an existing product. Goji Labs uses a blended rate covering strategy, design, development, QA, and project management. A focused AI prototype runs 2 to 6 weeks; a full AI product build typically spans several months.

Goji Labs AI engagements follow a phased timeline: 2 to 4 weeks for AI Strategy & Opportunity Mapping, 2 to 6 weeks for AI Prototyping & Rapid Validation, and several months for full design, build, and launch. Phasing reduces risk by validating feasibility before committing to full development.

An AI data layer is the infrastructure that connects AI models to your proprietary data through retrieval pipelines, vector databases, and orchestration logic. It matters because AI outputs are only as accurate as the data the model can access. Without a structured data layer, AI systems produce inconsistent results, hallucinate information, and lose value over time. Goji Labs designs the data layer that makes AI accurate, reliable, and grounded in your business context.

In-house makes sense when you have an established ML team and a long AI roadmap. An agency like Goji Labs makes sense when you need to move fast, validate before hiring, or build AI capability without committing to a full internal team. Many clients use Goji to ship the first production version, then hand off ongoing work to their internal team.

Both, depending on the use case. Most AI products are best served by integrating leading foundation models from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google through APIs, then layering RAG, prompt design, and orchestration on top. Custom or fine-tuned models are reserved for cases where accuracy, latency, cost, or data sovereignty genuinely require it.

We treat accuracy as a system property, not a model property. Goji Labs designs evaluation frameworks, validation layers, structured data connections, and user feedback loops that improve outputs over time. AI Optimization & Continuous Improvement is a dedicated service for monitoring production performance, refining prompts, and expanding capability.

Trust in AI is a UX problem more often than a model problem. Goji Labs designs interaction patterns that set clear expectations, communicate uncertainty, surface explainable outputs, and incorporate human-in-the-loop checkpoints where appropriate. Users should always understand what the system will do next and how to correct it when it is wrong.

Yes. AI Strategy & Opportunity Mapping is a 2-to-4 week engagement designed for this question. The deliverable is a prioritized roadmap of what to build, in what order, and what not to build at all.

Yes. For larger products or teams, we build scalable component libraries to maintain consistency across screens, features, and future iterations.

You can explore pages through the sidebar, leave comments by pressing “C,” and review prototypes with interactive flows. If you ever need help navigating or reviewing the work, your design team will walk you through everything.

You have full decision-making power. We bring recommendations based on best practices, research, and user behavior—but the final direction is always yours.

Deliverables may include wireframes, user flows, prototypes, high-fidelity screens, design systems, and documented interaction patterns. These assets ensure the development team can implement the product with clarity and precision.

Designs are built to match real content, so differences often come from updated text, images, or layout variations. If you’re ever unsure, talk to your project team—we’ll help ensure the design accommodates how your content will evolve.

Figma is our primary collaborative design platform. It’s where we build your product’s visual system, flows, and prototypes. You’ll have full access as designs evolve, giving you real-time visibility into every screen and interaction.

Usability testing evaluates prototypes with real users to validate whether the design is intuitive and functional. It helps identify friction early—before development—saving time, effort, and cost down the line.

User research helps us understand your users’ needs, motivations, and behaviors before designing solutions. This data drives more intuitive experiences, reduces redesign costs, and improves product performance after launch.

Design establishes the visual and experiential foundation for your product. It eliminates ambiguity, aligns teams, and ensures the end experience is cohesive and user-friendly. Once the design is approved, development executes it exactly as shown.

Yes. Goji Labs handles brand identity and visual design as part of product engagements where needed, including design systems, logo and brand mark development, typography, and visual language. The work is integrated with product UX so brand and experience stay coherent.

We scope research to fit the decision it needs to inform. For early-stage products, that means rapid discovery sprints and lightweight user interviews; for mature products, structured research, competitive analysis, and analytics review. We invest in research where it materially reduces risk, not as a default checkbox.

Absolutely. We regularly work alongside internal developers, CTOs, and product managers. Our development approach is flexible and designed to complement existing technical teams.

Yes. We can build custom APIs tailored to your product, or integrate third-party solutions such as payment gateways, authentication systems, data services, analytics, or external tools.

Yes. We work in iterative sprints, prioritize transparency, and deliver ongoing updates. This allows us to adapt quickly, reduce risk, and keep development aligned with your goals and timeline.

Yes. For products that require continuous delivery or complex environments, we support automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and scalable infrastructure to ensure stability and reliability.

QA happens continuously throughout development. Our team tests functionality, performance, accessibility, and responsiveness across devices. Before launch, we run a full test cycle and invite you to evaluate the product as well.

We scope the update, build it on staging, run QA, review it with you, then deploy it to production. This process ensures changes are tested, stable, and aligned with the product roadmap.

Development translates design into a working product. We build features, implement functionality, integrate APIs, test components, and share progress weekly. You’ll be able to review each step as the product comes together.

Yes. For clients who need ongoing capacity rather than a defined project, Goji Labs provides dedicated development teams that operate as an extension of the client’s internal team, with team composition tailored to the work.

A typical Goji Labs team includes a product strategist, UX designer, project manager, and one to several engineers. Larger engagements add specialized roles such as AI engineers, mobile developers, or QA specialists, and every project is led by a senior team member as the client’s single point of accountability.

Goji Labs works with PE-backed companies in four engagement models: single portfolio builds, multi-portfolio preferred partner arrangements, pre-acquisition due diligence, and post-acquisition or exit-readiness work. The right model depends on portfolio strategy and company maturity.

Yes. Goji Labs runs focused product and technical due diligence for PE firms evaluating acquisition targets, including a product audit, architecture review, UX risk assessment, and the post-acquisition investment estimate needed to bring the product to portfolio standards.

Yes. We work with the operating partner and the acquired company’s leadership to align the product to the broader portfolio thesis, stabilize technical debt, and accelerate roadmap delivery to hit value-creation targets.

Yes. Goji Labs operates as a preferred product partner for several PE firms, supporting multiple portfolio companies under a single relationship while letting each company engage on the specific scope it needs.

We reduce technical debt, harden the product against scrutiny in technical due diligence, document product strengths, and address UX or architecture issues sophisticated buyers will flag. The goal is to remove product-side friction from the exit process.

Enterprise engagements involve more stakeholders, longer decision cycles, and higher documentation, security, and compliance requirements. Startups prioritize speed and validation. Goji Labs adapts process to organizational maturity: more strategic framing and alignment for enterprises, faster iteration for early-stage teams.

Yes. For enterprise engagements, Goji Labs attends steering committees, provides weekly status reporting, and supports change-management workflows that bring internal stakeholders along with the project.

Goji Labs offers four engagement models: project-based engagements with defined scope, ongoing retainers, discovery or strategy sprints, and dedicated development teams that operate as an extension of the client’s internal team. The right model depends on scope, timeline, and existing in-house product capability.

Yes. Many engagements start with a focused 2-to-4 week sprint such as AI Strategy & Opportunity Mapping, a Product Strategy Sprint, or a Digital Product Audit, with no commitment to follow-on design and development work.

Yes. Goji Labs provides fractional product leadership for companies that need senior product judgment without a full-time hire, paired with the design and engineering capability to translate strategy into shipped work.

Yes. Retainer engagements typically begin after launch and cover ongoing development, optimization, and maintenance. Most clients start at 10 to 30 hours per month and scale down to 3 to 10 hours once the product stabilizes.

Most Goji Labs engagements run $50,000 to $1,000,000 in total investment with a 30-to-90 day buying cycle and several months of delivery. Smaller engagements like AI Strategy & Opportunity Mapping or a Product Strategy Sprint complete in 2 to 4 weeks.

The smallest Goji Labs engagement is typically a 2-to-4 week discovery, audit, or strategy sprint scoped to deliver one specific outcome. These often serve as the first phase of a longer relationship.

After launch, you receive a maintenance document detailing each task, who completed it, time spent, and status. This ensures complete visibility into how your hours are used.

We use a blended rate that covers strategy, design, development, QA, and project management. You’re only billed for the time spent building your product and achieving project outcomes.

We assess the update, build it on staging, test it, verify mobile compatibility, then deploy it to production. Each step is logged with clear hour tracking to maintain full transparency.

Most clients begin with 10–30 hours per month following launch and scale down to 3–10 hours once the product stabilizes. You can adjust hours monthly based on your needs.

Your designer will create the updated asset, you’ll approve it, and then our development team will implement it. Updates can be covered under maintenance hours or billed separately.

Goji Labs offers many hosting and maintenance solutions that are customized to fit your needs. Setting up a recurrent maintenance package guarantees that we have resources set aside for you at a reduced rate.

Goji Labs engagements typically range from $50,000 to $1,000,000, depending on scope, complexity, and the level of strategy required. Smaller focused engagements such as audits, strategy sprints, or AI Strategy & Opportunity Mapping start at lower price points. We provide a clear estimate after a discovery call.

Goji Labs uses a blended-rate, time-and-materials model for most engagements because product work involves discovery and iteration that fixed bids tend to penalize. For tightly scoped deliverables like audits or strategy sprints, we can structure fixed-fee pricing.

Yes. Goji Labs signs mutual non-disclosure agreements as standard practice before any substantive discussion of confidential product, business, or technical information.

You do. Under Goji Labs’s standard engagement terms, the client owns all code, designs, and intellectual property delivered as part of the work. We retain rights only to general methodologies and reusable internal tools.

Yes. Goji Labs has built healthcare products requiring HIPAA-compliant architecture and PHI handling, and we can execute Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) where engagement scope requires it.

Goji Labs treats client business information as confidential by default. Access is limited to the engagement team, communication runs through controlled channels, and we operate under signed NDAs throughout. Additional controls can be added for elevated security requirements.

Yes. We can analyze product usage, identify improvement opportunities, refine UX patterns, and enhance performance. This ensures your product continues to evolve with user needs and business goals.

Yes. We can set up analytics, monitoring tools, and dashboards to help track performance, user behavior, uptime, and system health.

Yes. We offer hosting for many partners, including production and staging environments, routine updates, and maintenance support. Packages are tailored based on traffic, performance needs, and security requirements.

Contact us immediately. We prioritize uptime and will resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Outages can stem from hosting, third-party services, or code changes, and we help address all scenarios.

We cover any post-launch bugs related to our work for the first week. After that period—or for issues caused by new plugins, integrations, or external changes—we provide fixes using your maintenance hours or at an agreed-upon rate.

The product is considered complete at launch, but digital products are never truly finished. We support improvements, updates, and feature expansions as your business evolves.

Yes. We support native development for iOS (Swift/SwiftUI) and Android (Kotlin), as well as cross-platform frameworks when appropriate. The choice depends on your users, roadmap, and long-term technical needs.

Yes. We design and develop to meet modern accessibility best practices and WCAG guidelines, ensuring your product is usable by a wider audience and compliant with industry standards.

Yes. We can integrate AI-powered features such as recommendations, natural language processing, automations, and custom ML logic—based on what aligns with your product and users.

We evaluate your product goals, performance requirements, scalability needs, team constraints, and long-term roadmap. Then we select a stack that balances flexibility, reliability, and cost efficiency.

We work with modern frameworks like React, Next.js, Vue, and other ecosystem tools. These technologies allow us to build fast, reliable, and scalable user interfaces across web and mobile platforms.

Open-source libraries have been tested at scale by thousands of developers, reducing risk and development time. They allow us to focus on building the unique parts of your product—where innovation and differentiation matter most.

We use Go for backend development because it helps us build fast, dependable products that can grow with our clients’ needs. It delivers strong performance without adding unnecessary complexity, which means the systems we build are easier to maintain, improve, and scale over time.