About 9horsemen

I spent 25 years failing so you don't have to.

If you're reading this at your desk, with an idea you've carried around for months, I know who you are. I was you for a quarter of a century. Between rent, loan repayments and a family to look after, walking away from a salary to “take the leap” was never responsible. So I tried everything else.

Every wall I hit

2005
HealthBits
The manufacturing trap
Two commercial mills to make fresh flour and baked goods. Sourcing grain, running machines, hygiene and packaging was a full-time job on top of my full-time job. I ran out of hours.
2007
Blue Giraffe
The agency trap
A branding agency with a real client and two staff. The money was real, but every launch and every new store needed me there in person. It needed all of me, and I still had a salary to protect.
2010
Telecom towers
The capital trap
Leasing land and infrastructure for mobile towers during the telecom boom. The model was right, but it needed millions in risk capital that ordinary people don’t have. It never left the drawing board.
2020
A neighbourhood store
The inventory trap
Groceries and essentials. Rent, power, spoilage and shrink every week; a dollar or two per customer on a good day. I was paying to keep the lights on, and closed within twelve months.
2025
9horsemen.com
The wrong idea
When AI arrived, I registered 9horsemen.com and built an automated meme generator on free tiers. It cost almost nothing, but nobody needed it.
2026
The reality check
The code trap
AI made writing code fast. Putting a real app live, with sign-in, payments, a secure database and phone-friendly screens, was still hard engineering. The tools everyone praised were built by developers, for developers.

Read the full story →

What I learned

Good ideas die on the same four walls.

Time
You have a job, and the business only gets your evenings.
Capital
You can’t risk savings your family relies on.
Fixed costs
Rent, stock and staff bill you whether customers come or not.
Code
Software that works for a business takes skills you shouldn’t need.

Our mission

Help people with real expertise start and run a business without betting the house.

9horsemen is built for one person: someone who knows their trade, has an idea or a small business, and has no time or interest in writing software. No capital up front, no code, no rent or stock to carry, and no need to quit your job first.

Our vision

Anyone with a skill can start a business on the side, without risking their family's security.

How we'll get there: every step of starting a business in one place, from testing an idea to growing it. Gallop is the first piece.

Validate
Started
Find out whether your idea works before you spend on it.
- A free, working preview of your website and app before you pay anything
- Coming: Tools to test demand for an idea before you build it
Build
Live
Turn a description of your business into something customers can use.
- Gallop builds your website, online booking and business app from a conversation
Run
Started
Run the day-to-day from your phone, without spreadsheets.
- Bookings, quotes, customers, services and staff in one business app
- In-person payments, receipts and daily takings
- Coming: Taking payments online
Grow
Started
Get found by the people looking for what you do.
- Get found on Google: a page for each of your services, written for local search
- Coming: Sharing your business across social and search channels from one place

If your business needs something Gallop can't do yet and it would help other businesses too, tell us. We'd rather build it into Gallop for everyone than quote you for custom work.

The way we work

What we build

No problem is small

The booking system for a two-chair barbershop. The paperwork behind a one-van cleaning business. Nobody else is racing to fix these, because they don't look big enough to bother with. We think a problem doesn't need to be huge to be worth solving properly. It just needs to be real.

Make it simple, but significant

Simple isn't the same as small. We'd rather ship one thing that actually changes someone's day than a dozen features that only look impressive on a list. If it doesn't make something meaningfully easier, it doesn't ship.

How we build it

Technology is the horse, not the rider

It's what gets you there faster, with less effort, and the direction is still yours. We build software to automate the repetitive part of running a business and hand the time it saves back to the person doing the work.

The person on the floor knows best

The barber between appointments, the groomer booking next week, the owner doing the books at night: they understand the problem better than we ever will from behind a screen. We build by listening to them first.

How we treat you

Don't bet the house

Starting a business shouldn't need your savings or your salary. Gallop is free to build, then one plan priced for your country, with no contract. Keep your job while you find out if your idea works.

Your customers stay yours

We don't sell your data or run ads, and we only ever email your customers on your behalf: their bookings, receipts and sign-in codes. You pay us for software that helps you. That's the entire relationship.

Who's behind it

I'm Shri Krishnan, and I founded 9horsemen in New Zealand in 2025. Our blog is also a podcast: Why Your Software Sucks, the anti-hype tech podcast.

My full story

You don't have to quit your job tomorrow. Let's get to work.

Start building with Gallop Tell us what you need

I spent 25 years failing so you don't have to.

Every wall I hit

HealthBits

Blue Giraffe

Telecom towers

A neighbourhood store

9horsemen.com

The reality check

Good ideas die on the same four walls.

Time

Capital

Fixed costs

Code