Why most ideas die as notes, what a lab does differently, and why the first things built are the things we need ourselves.
By Simon Torngren · July 29, 2026
Most ideas do not die because they are bad. They die because nobody has anywhere to put them. An observation turns up in the middle of a client project, someone says it is interesting, and then the week runs out. The note stays where it is. That is the whole funeral.
This page is about why ideas need a space of their own to survive their first day, what that space actually does, and why the first things built there are the things we need ourselves.
An agency has deliveries going out, clients waiting and a calendar that is already full. Let half-finished product ideas into that environment and they compete with what pays the bills, and they lose every time.
That is the right priority. An agency that lets experiments crowd out client deliveries is a bad agency. But it also means the ideas never get a chance, however good they are. The environment is built to deliver, not to test, and the two demand different things: delivery demands that nothing breaks, testing demands that things are allowed to.
Formise exists to solve that conflict by moving it. The lab is its own space, with room to test, build and get things wrong without any client's delivery being at stake. What it does for the agency matters just as much: it is spared carrying experiments and gets to be entirely an agency. How the two spaces belong together is under About.
The word lab can sound like an excuse for never making up your mind. Here it means the opposite: a place where an idea is tested properly before anyone commits to it.
The difference from merely having ideas is ownership. Formise builds and owns its own products; it is not a consultancy drawing for someone else. When something turns out well it belongs to us. When something breaks it is our own that breaks, and that is the whole point: whoever owns both the upside and the downside has no reason to flatter either.
The testing has an order that looks the same every time: explore, define, build, launch. It is laid out step by step on the process page. What matters here is not the steps themselves but what the order buys: most things fall early and cheaply, and what reaches a build has earned it.
The fastest way to know whether something holds is to use it yourself, in earnest, where it shows the moment it does not work.
That is why the lab's first deliveries are its own. memorise.se was built at Formise: an agency selling technical SEO, performance and measurability can hardly run a slow, leaky site of its own, and that particular site gets scrutinised by exactly the people who know the craft best. The whole build, from rendering to tracking and accessibility, is in the Memorise case. The site you are reading this on was built the same way, for the same reason.
Building for ourselves first is not modesty. It is the hardest review there is, because you cannot invoice away a site you have to live with. We would rather show the craft than describe it.
The lab is not a storage room. A build that shows it holds moves out: its own name, its own site, its own company. Dynamic SEO went that way, and why the model is rigged like that, with the assets up and the risk left down below, is in the spinout model.
What stays in the lab is what a lab should contain: what is still being tested, what is allowed to break, and the next note that deserves better than being forgotten.
Simon is the one who builds. At Formise he takes an idea from observation to something that runs: prototypes, products and the technical foundation they stand on.
Why aren't the ideas built inside the agency?
An agency has deliveries going out and clients waiting. Half-finished product ideas compete with what pays the bills, and they lose every time. The lab is its own space where testing never puts a delivery at stake.
What does it mean that Formise owns what gets built?
Formise builds and owns its own products; it is not a consultancy drawing for someone else. When something turns out well it belongs to us, and when something breaks it is our own that breaks.
What has the lab built so far?
All of memorise.se, the site the agency runs on, and the site you are reading this on. And Dynamic SEO, which was tested in the lab and runs on today as its own company. The build behind the agency's site is in the Memorise case.
Are things allowed to fail in the lab?
Yes, that is part of the point. What doesn't hold gets to die cheaply and early, without any client's delivery being at stake.
Want to see where your idea sits in the model?