Ten is a venture studio that builds and operates premium consumer software.

In 2005, Garry Kasparov held an open, online chess tournament, filled with elite grandmasters and the most powerful chess supercomputer of the time, the Hydra. What’s interesting is that the ultimate winner of the tournament was a team of two amateurs, Steven Cramton and Zachary Stephen, assisted by three computers.

What this tournament proved is now known as the centaur principle: a team of people with great software will always beat a team of just software and a team of great talent and bad software.

Those in the tech industry know that one of the best ways to develop great software is through the forward deployed model. It brings engineers into communities that have problems, and those engineers build alongside the community until their problems are solved. This model produces highly customized software tailored exactly to users’ needs, but it is time-consuming, which is why it has so far been reserved for enterprise.

For years, the economics of consumer software rewarded engagement-driven products that maximized attention. High development, distribution, and maintenance costs justified this model, and also biased software companies towards mass-market adoption. Building hyper-specialized product experiences for niche communities was unprofitable, because the business model couldn’t scale.

AI changed the cost structure. Software for tens or hundreds of users is now viable. This creates the potential for great consumer software that is tailored to specific communities and tied to outcome rather than engagement. That is what we are chasing.

By partnering with community leaders, we can deploy directly into the niche communities they’ve built, and craft software around exactly what those people need.

Ten is inspired by the colloquial “10,000-Hour Rule.” In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argued that mastery in any skill takes ten thousand hours, drawing on psychologist Anders Ericsson’s research on expert performance. What often gets overlooked, and what Ericsson was careful about, is that these hours have to be deliberate, focused, and demanding, hours outside of your comfort zone.

In a world where people are constantly competing for your attention, this kind of unwavering focus is hard to find.

Those hours are what close the gap between where you are and the excellence you’re chasing. We recognize this. Since you’ve committed to putting the time in, Ten is committed to providing the support.

Product builders and operators by nature, from MIT, Palantir, NVIDIA, and McKinsey, now building and operating premium consumer software.