Two voices. One workshop. One way of working.
Almost a Lab is a Barcelona tech consultancy and AI studio with deep agency roots. Forty years combined inside MENA agencies and fifteen building software and AI infrastructure, in one two-person studio. We partner with advertising agencies and the startups they serve across MENA, EMEA, and beyond.
Two people. Full ownership of every build.
Joseph Bihag
CO-FOUNDER · CREATIVE DIRECTION30+ years across MENA agencies and editorial design. Joseph leads creative direction on every Masthead build: the visual language, type system, and editorial sensibility that makes AAL clients look nothing like their competitors. Also the co-founder keeping the studio's editorial standards up.
Braeden Bihag
CO-FOUNDER · CTO · ENGINEERING15 years across software, AI infrastructure, custom SaaS, and shipping production systems solo or near-solo. Plus 10 years inside the advertising industry. Engineer behind ImpossibleOS and the technical backbone of every Forge build. Speaks at MWC two years running on Answer Engine Optimization, which is how Beacon got built in the first place.
Four principles we don’t compromise.
Small team, big surface.
Two people ship what ten usually can't. No middle-management overhead. No handoff between strategy and execution. The founders are the team.
Production from day one.
No prototype graveyards. Every sprint lands on a reachable URL. Every PR is a PR someone could deploy. We don't ship proofs-of-concept. We ship products.
Bespoke over templates.
Every site starts with a brand brief, not a theme. Every CMS is modeled to the client's actual editorial, not bent into a generic page-builder. Designed from the brief up.
Skin in the game.
Equity when it fits (Orbit). Fixed scope when it doesn't (Forge, Masthead, Beacon Improve). Retainers almost never. We want to be on the hook for outcomes, not billable hours.
“Two voices, one workshop, one way of working: research rigor, deadline urgency, prototype to production. Forty years combined inside MENA agencies, fifteen building software and AI infrastructure, brought together in Barcelona to ship for MENA, EMEA, and beyond.”
Let’s ship something.
Two sentences on what you’re trying to build. Two on why now. We respond within 24 hours, usually with a pointed question, sometimes with a proposal.