Marketing that can prove what it changed.
Most marketing software was built for other markets, in another language.
We build what's missing.
Vrio Labs is Forward Media's product engineering lab. We turn ideas into tested products for the Gulf, starting with the gaps we see in marketing every day.
How the lab works
Most ideas should never become products. The ones that survive, we build.
IdeaTestProveBuild
What we believe
Three convictions behind every product we make.
Making is cheap now. Being wrong isn't. AI writes the code, drafts the content and designs the screens. A product can exist in weeks. But a product nobody needs still costs a year, a budget and a team's belief. As building gets easier, more of the wrong things get built.
The region deserves products made for it. Too much of what the Gulf runs on was designed somewhere else and translated later. The next great products will start here: Arabic first, local payments, and the way people here actually book, buy and pay.
Stopping is a skill. The hardest decision in a lab is not what to build. It is what to drop. We decide what would prove us wrong before we test, and we respect the answer.
ideas were dropped for every company launched at Pioneer Square Labs, one of the world's leading studios.
215 dropped, 25 launched. GeekWire, 2021of the difference between startups that succeed and fail came down to timing, in research by Idealab founder Bill Gross.
As cited by 500 GlobalWhere we look.
We start where Forward Media works every day, then follow the evidence. These are the spaces we keep coming back to.
Media that is easier to plan and buy.
Every channel still has its own process, its own price and its own paperwork.
Spaces that sell before anyone visits.
Property, hotels and venues still sell three-dimensional places with flat photos.
Everyday services, paid without friction.
Repeat visits, subscriptions and small payments still run on cash and memory.
In the lab now.
What we build stays quiet until it is proven. We announce products when they are ready, not before.
Product 01
In marketUnder wraps until launch.
Product 02
BuildingUnder wraps until launch.
Product 03
TestingUnder wraps until launch.
Built inside Forward Media.
Vrio Labs is one of four specialties in Forward Media. That gives every product something most startups spend years building: real customers to learn from, and a team ready to take it to market.
100+clients across the region
4specialties: Exceed, Sard, Backstage and Vrio Labs
3cities: Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Amman
Notes from the lab.
What we learn about building products in the Gulf, written as we go.
Stopping is a result.
Why the ideas we drop teach us more than the ones we keep.
Coming soonBuilt here, not translated here.
What changes when a product starts with Arabic, local payments and local habits.
Coming soonThe cheapest test is a conversation.
Twenty interviews before a line of code, and what they usually change.
Coming soonBuild the next one with us.
We work with people who see a gap before others do.
Founders
You see something missing and want to build it. We test it with you, and if it survives, we build the company together, as partners.
Bring an ideaCompanies
You have a problem your market keeps living with. We find out, with evidence, whether a new product is the answer, and build it with you.
Bring a problemInvestors
You want early access to products whose need is already proven. Meet the lab before the round, not after.
Meet the lab
What is the region still missing?
Tell us in one line. If the need is real, we'll want to prove it with you.