We have run the kind of business we build for.
Performous is a custom software studio in Dubai. It is led by someone who has spent almost thirty years starting and operating businesses, and who knows what it costs when the software gets in the way.
Marcus Cent started his first business in 1997 and has been creating, running and investing in companies ever since: web agencies, booking software, advertising technology, restaurant systems, a garage and a renovation business.
In every one of them, software was either the thing that made the business work or the thing that held it back. Performous exists to make sure it is the first.
- 1997Founds a web agency in Glasgow during the first wave of the commercial internet, building websites and software for businesses.
- 2004Builds iBooking.com, online booking and ticketing software for travel and transport companies, used by operators such as NakedBus and easyBus.
- 2006Cofounds ResDiary, one of the first web-based restaurant reservation platforms, later acquired by AccorHotels in 2018.
- 2008Moves to Dubai and helps build Clicksco Group, a search advertising business that grows to more than 200 people.
- 2020Becomes a founding investor in Powerworks Garage, an independent workshop in Dubai.
- 2026Builds a run of new businesses and systems with AI engineering in a single year: visit.network, magiport.com, betterfxrates.com and theentrepreneurinstitute.com, alongside the custom systems that run Powerworks Garage and The Garage Guys. It shows how quickly an entirely new business can now be built.
30 years of experience. A completely new way to build software.
For most of those thirty years, custom software meant hiring a development team, writing a long specification and waiting months. Only larger companies could justify it. Everyone else made do with tools that nearly fitted.
AI coding tools have changed the economics. One experienced person can now direct the building of a system that would once have needed a team, and can change it the same week the business asks.
What has not changed is the hard part: knowing which problem to solve, what the system should do and whether it is right. That still takes someone who understands how a business runs.
Not an agency, and not an AI consultancy.
- We use what we build
- Our case studies are businesses we are involved in. If the software is awkward, we hear about it from the people using it the next morning.
- We think like owners
- We have managed payroll, chased invoices and lost customers to slow follow-up. Recommendations come from that experience, not from a framework.
- We stay
- We host and support the systems we build and keep improving them. Our interest is in a long working relationship, not a one-off project.
- We are careful with claims
- We will not promise a percentage saving before we understand your business. We will show you working systems and tell you plainly what we think is worth doing.
Where we work
Based in Dubai, working with established businesses across the UAE. We meet in person where it helps and work remotely where it does not.
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