How Hylark is making computers personal again

At the dawn of computing, if you needed your machine to do something new, you wrote a new programme. Maybe it was a complicated calculation, maybe it was some new kind of data visualisation - if you wanted something custom-built, you wrote some new code.

As computers have gone from specialist machines to everyday workhorses, new off-the-shelf software emerged, which was relatively cheap and accessible and did a particular job or serviced a particular industry.

Today consumers and SMEs buy off-the-shelf software while larger business have a mix of that and software which they customised and maintain. However, what we found lacking is the ability for consumers and smaller business to customise and maintain software in an affordable manner.

Hylark was built to address this issue.

The Hylark journey

Our story began in 2015 with Not Actively Looking, a platform we created to help senior executives share their data with select and trusted search firms in case of potential job opportunities. When integrating with existing customer relations management (CRM) systems, we discovered a persistent problem: the existing platforms were clumsy and difficult to use, leading to poor internal adoption rates. A powerful tool that is barely used is not powerful at all.

This led us to launch Ezekia in 2018, initially as a minimal viable product offering basic CRM and candidate management features. Over the years, we evolved Ezekia into a feature-rich, highly customisable platform that rapidly overtook legacy systems in our niche market. But success brought its own challenges.

Our customer base in executive search is incredibly demanding, constantly pushing the boundaries of customisation. The industry itself is evolving rapidly, requiring software that could adapt just as quickly. And having disrupted the market ourselves, we knew the importance of staying ahead of potential competitors.

In 2021, we made a bold decision: we would disrupt ourselves. We funded an internal team to build Hylark, a platform that would compete with our own successful Ezekia product. The long-term mission was clear: create something so fundamentally different and adaptable that if anyone was going to draw customers away from Ezekia, it would be us.

Turning software into Lego

Hylark represents a fundamental shift in how software adapts to users. Think of it as a box of Lego - you can build what you like, add to it later, or break it apart and build something entirely new. Children don’t need to ‘learn the rules’ of Lego - they just get it. Instead of forcing people to learn complex interfaces or adapt their workflows, users simply tell the AI what they want to achieve and it builds it for them.

This flexibility stems from our unique architecture. While other platforms scrambled to layer AI features onto existing systems when generative AI burst onto the scene, Hylark was different. We had built a completely flexible foundation that AI could genuinely shape and reshape. Our calculations suggest billions of possible workspace combinations, making each user's setup truly unique.

Whether it's "I need to manage a wedding planning business" or "Help me track household bills and renovation projects," Hylark configures everything automatically, creating a personalised workspace that fits your exact needs. It can even help when you don't know *what* you want or where to start. Enter "I need tools to manage a new internship" or "I'm an estate agent" and it will build a workspace just for you - a workspace that can do everything your other apps can, from sending emails to keeping and modifying complex records.

How we will pay for it

The model reflects our core belief: software should be accessible enough to try freely but valuable enough to pay for. We offer a robust free tier that lets individuals experience the full potential of AI-powered workspaces without restricting core functionality. As users discover how transformative it is to have a workspace that truly adapts to their needs, upgrading to our full paid version becomes a natural progression - but one that will only happen if our product is truly helping people.