Near Future

SO. If you or someone you know is looking to level up a team on AI, just let us know. We’re really excited to help.

Email me at jonny (at) nearfuture.works and let's get started.

• Focused build projects in partnership with internal teams
• Working with leaders directly on their personal AI confidence
• And yes, still those team workshops and hack days to get everyone up-skilling and feeling more confident.

Some example of what we’ve done over the last year:

• Embedded partnerships as fractional Heads of AI
• Hired Heads of AI and AI-focused employees for clients
• AI maturity sprints to help leaders know where to focus people and resources

We’re now looking for folks that need support with both practical and strategic aspects of their organisations into the AI era, whether for single session or a longer term relationship.

And with the new name comes a deepening of our belief: that this extraordinary technology will continue to shape how we all work together, but the process of discovering and navigating that symbiosis still requires humans at its core.

It became pretty clear in late 2025 that Hack Weeks didn't feel like the right name. So we've now updated our name to one that ties us less to hacking…in err, a week.

However it took an embarrassingly long time to decide on a new one. But we got there.

We're now 'Near Future'.

So we evolved. With a new focus on design and product-led organisations, we’ve now worked with founders and teams at fast growing scale-ups and household names on their AI adoption programs — from building directly with employees to working with leadership on their goals.

Finally: Hack Weeks is evolving.

This time last year Tom and I started running 4 day hack weeks for anyone that wanted to learn more about and build with AI.

People learned. But so did we. We saw how not just individuals but whole teams needed support with this change.

F.U.N day out · Luma Found up North and Department Campfield are teaming up for a FUN day out, working together on our companies, sharing stories and eating pastries. Who is this…

​5pm: Close laptops and head home or find a local pub to descend on

Sign up: luma.com/vgtutwob

​12:30: Lunch and demos/learn: ask questions of the group, practice a pitch, discuss shared challenges over lunch (we'll work out lunch options on the day)

​1:30-5pm: more co-working. We may organise some break outs on specific topics if there's appetite (if anyone wants to run one, just shout!)

10am: Coffee and Pastries (thanks Department!) with the wider Campfield community

​11am: Co-working. Bring your laptop and your company, and let's sit side by side.

For northern tech founders, recovering founders and future founders building the foundations of the businesses right now, this is an opportunity to sit shoulder to shoulder, share our agentic workflows, GTM hacks and fundraising struggles and generally keep each other company as we work for the day.

Found Up North is back! This time we're on a F.U.N day out on 27th April, working together for a whole day at Department Campfield, in the heart of Manchester.

Life after Figma is coming (and it will be glorious) As code becomes source of truth, design tools become interfaces on code, not the other way round. We'll see hundreds

I can't wait to see what we build.

My latest post: jonnyburch.com/life-after-...

We're seeing it already with tools like Pencil and Agentation. And it's just the start. The era of one monolithic design tool is ending. What comes next looks more like the developer ecosystem: hundreds of choices, open standards, composable tooling.

Redlining tools, visual canvases, component inspectors — not as features in someone else's SaaS, but as modular packages layered on top of your actual production code.

So what replaces Figma? Not another platform. Dependencies.

Design tools are starting to look like NPM packages you install into your codebase.

AI coding tools are letting designers work directly in code. The bottleneck in product teams is shifting upstream. And maintaining two sources of truth - one in Figma, one in the codebase - is becoming indefensible overhead.

Figma has ~90% market share today. And it's dying.

Not because of a single 'Figma killer' (I don't believe one will exist), but because the category itself is dissolving.

Buzz Cut Coffee Low Caffeine coffee for all the taste and half the shake

So here’s my ask: if this sounds interesting, please do validate my decision to launch so quickly by placing a Christmas coffee order! (You can also buy gift cards). Get it in by tomorrow night and I’ll guarantee pre Christmas delivery.

Order at buzzcutcoffee.com

The real work starts next year as I find out what the market’s like for this. But in the mean time I’d love to sling some beans this week.

Well. 40kg of roasted beans arrived today, and I think what we’ve put together is pretty special. Smooth, chocolatey medium roast that goes like anything in our home espresso machine, tastes like the real deal but isn’t punishing me despite an extensive tasting this morning.

Today: Coffee, packaging and other printed stuff arrived. Tasted (a lot), took (bad) pictures, asked Nano Banana for better ones. Website live.

Monday: Confirmed coffee order, signed up for Shopify, settled on name and brand (not perfect but time wasn’t on my side)

Tuesday: picked a theme for the website. Designed packaging and sent to print.

Wednesday: Tested website, set up subscriptions

The only problem was I had no name, no website, no brand, no packaging. No clue. Cue a monster sprint to pull together a coffee subscription business in 6 days to beat Christmas delivery.

Here’s how it went.

Weekend: started working on brand, look and feel. Worked with supplier on coffee.

Until last week, when I emailed probably my 10th coffee roaster, asking whether they would help.

They said yes! And what’s more, with a quick enough turnaround time to be able to make Christmas delivery.

But the mixing bowl technique wasn't going to work long term, and as I mentioned this to others I'd hear their stories of similar hacks. So began a journey of developing my own blend. A couple of months of very stop start - and ultimately no - progress.

It worked! And for a while (until I fessed up) my wife didn't even notice I'd swapped the beans in the coffee machine.

But after the third cup things start getting weird, and if I have a coffee past about 2pm it affects my sleep. So I got to thinking, what if I could get a premium coffee hit without the full whack of caffeine?

So a few months ago I started mixing half caff and half decaf. In a big bowl.

I just launched a half caff coffee brand in under a week.

Why? I like to have 4-5 cups of coffee a day. I like the ritual, and I don't like having to switch to tea.