Howell & Gibbs

Founder's Story

Howell & Gibbs started with two layoffs and a good idea. We got laid off from our tech jobs about a month apart. We knew each other socially from the same office, and around then we started building something together: SendTax, a tool to take the pain out of tax document intake. Six months in, we noticed something: we loved working together, and we were good at it. The work we made as a team was better than anything either of us had done alone.

So we made it a studio. We'd each been doing civic tech on our own, building public-interest tools, and together we decided to aim that at the city itself. Two projects sealed it: Tenant Triage NYC, which helps NYC tenants understand their rights, and GovRoll, a workflow tool for government teams.

We haven't "made it," we're just getting started! But we know what we're good at: careful, trustworthy tools for the moments when someone's paperwork, money, or attention is on the line. That's what we're building.

Business Description

Howell & Gibbs is a two-person design and engineering studio based in New York City. We build software for civic organizations, public-interest groups, and teams working in regulated, high-stakes areas, such as taxes, money, housing, and government services. What makes us different is simple: it’s just the two of us on every project. Holly leads design, Liam leads engineering, which means the people who design your product are the same people who build it. No junior handoffs, no project managers in the middle, and no telephone game between the idea and the finished thing.

Our work tends to live in the places where software feels stressful: a tax form, a benefits application, a notice from the city. We’ve built tools like SendTax (document intake for tax professionals), Tenant Triage NYC (a housing-rights tool for NYC tenants), and GovRoll (a workflow tool for civic and government teams). Across all of it, we hold to one idea: if the screen has someone’s paperwork, money, or attention on it, we want to make it less stressful to look at. If you’re an organization trying to make something complicated feel clear and trustworthy, that’s exactly the kind of work we do best.