It is easy to look at BLA and see only the own apps: Sudoku, Notas, Lanterna, the queue of what is coming. But that is half the portrait. BLA walks on two legs. One is the line of its own apps. The other is commissioned development, the apps BLA builds for clients.
The two legs do not compete for attention. They sustain each other. The own apps are living proof: anyone can download, open and see the standard of finish BLA delivers. It is not a portfolio in PDF, it is not a promise in a meeting. It is a product in the world, working, that examines itself.
That proof is what makes commissioned development possible to sell. A client thinking about commissioning an app does not have to believe a description. They install a BLA app and feel, in hand, the kind of work they will receive. The own line is the showcase, and the showcase speaks for itself.
In the opposite direction, commissioned development is what sustains the own line continuing to grow. Own apps are a long-term bet: they take time to return. Commissioned work generates more direct revenue, and that revenue is what gives the own line the breath to be built calmly, without the rush to monetize every release in a panic.
It is an arrangement in which each leg does what the other cannot do alone. The own line, isolated, would be a bet with no cash to sustain it. The commissioned service, isolated, would be a studio with no showcase of its own, selling work with nothing of its own to show. Together, one covers the weakness of the other.
This also protects the editorial independence of the own line. When the own apps do not need, alone, to pay the whole bill, they can be made under editorial criteria, at the right pace, without giving in to monetization shortcuts. The service buys that freedom. The own line is freer because it is not alone carrying the weight.
In two years, the shape of BLA is this: the two legs firmer, more defined, walking together. Not a choice between being a product studio or being a service studio. Both things, on purpose, because the combination is stronger and more stable than either of the halves.
Walking on two legs is what allows going far without depending on a single foot. If one leg trips in a period, the other holds. BLA was built this way on purpose: not as a single bet, but as two fronts that balance each other, and that together go farther than either would go alone.