We work time & materials. If you need more this month, we scale the team. If you need less next month, your cost drops. With an internal team, you pay full salaries regardless of load. We carry that bench risk so you don’t have to.

No. We’re a pure fee-for-service partner. Taking equity changes the relationship: it pulls us into governance and product decisions (roadmap, pivots, pricing, hiring). Our model is different: you own every major decision; we execute quickly and well.

We’re happy to advise when asked, but we don’t want (or accept) decision-making authority. If you ever want structured strategic input, we can do that as a paid, clearly scoped advisory or fractional-CTO engagement — still without equity.

Speed and coverage. You get the right specialists part-time (frontend, backend, data, QA, DevOps) without hiring five people. We swap in skills as needed so you move faster to a market-ready test.

Early product work changes fast. We use T&M with tight scopes and sprint budgets. For well-defined work, we can fix-price small milestones. This aligns with founder advice to keep risk low and increments small.

NTE caps: Every sprint has a not-to-exceed budget. We don’t cross it without your written okay.
‍Pre-estimate for fuzzy work: Big/unclear items get a short discovery spike first (time-boxed) + rough-order-of-magnitude so you can slice, defer, or simplify before we build.
‍Demo-based approvals: 1–2 week sprints. You approve the next sprint only after seeing the last sprint’s demo.
‍Monthly budget guardrail: We agree a monthly cap; you get a weekly burn forecast and a “no surprises” alert if we’re trending high.
‍Full transparency: Daily timesheets, your Jira/ClickUp board, PRs and reviews visible, and a running app from week one.
‍Change control: Any new ask gets a quick impact check (time/cost) and trade-offs so scope doesn’t quietly expand.

You do, 100%. Our MSA/SOW state the work is work-made-for-hire with a full IP assignment. We don’t retain any ownership or claim to reuse your bespoke code. We build in your Git org, your cloud accounts, and your package registries from day one. At handover, everything remains under your control, legally and technically.

Immediately. We assemble the right people and begin discovery in week one; first demo in the first sprint. No months-long hiring delay.

A clear product owner, fast feedback, access to users, and decisiveness on scope. We’ll handle the rest.