Price and terms
$5,600CAD $7,900£4,200€4,900*One pricebuys a version: a week of scoped work.
Prices in USDCADGBPEUR ·
*Something running by the first Friday; version 1, the first you can sell, takes one to four weeks, and we agree which on the scoping call. One version, not the whole product.
The unit is the thing to read twice: a version is a week of scoped work. The first one is bigger, one to four weeks, because it has to reach something you can put in front of the people you want to sell to; we agree its length on the scoping call. You see something new running every week while it is built. Then you decide whether there is another one, at the same price.
There is no total on this page, and that is not an omission. You buy a version at a time and there is nothing to commit to beyond the one you are in, so a year’s figure would be a number neither of us has agreed to. Ush bought forty weeks of this, back when the unit was a week, and could have stopped after any of them.
| Setup fee | none |
| Minimum | one version |
| Version 1one to four weeks, agreed on the scoping call | $5,600CAD $7,900£4,200€4,900* |
| Version 2built on version 1 | $5,600CAD $7,900£4,200€4,900* |
| Version 3 | only if you want it |
| To stop | nothing to cancel |
| Code and cloud accounts | yours, from day one |
Compared
Three of these start with a spec. This one starts with working software.
| Option | Freelancer | Agency | An in-house team | Here |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | A few hundred for the whole prototype | Roughly double, in overhead alone | Around ten salaries | $5,600CAD $7,900£4,200€4,900* a week of scoped work; version 1 is one to four weeks |
| Starts | This week | After the discovery phase | Months of hiring first | After the scoping call |
| Scoped by | Whatever fits the posted budget | Weeks of paid discovery | Whoever you hired, once they’ve ramped | The scoping call, then the last version |
| Throughput | One person, on their own terms | A team, on their schedule | A team you have to run | One architect deciding, a fleet building |
| You get | A prototype that works once | Production software, their timeline | The capability in-house, permanently | More than a prototype, less than a dev team: production software and its architecture |
| Changes | It breaks, nobody knows why | New quote | Theirs, while they stay | You make them |
For the engineer they forward this to
The in-house column is the strong one.
It has a real advantage this doesn’t: the capability ends up inside the company and stays there. Worth saying plainly rather than arguing around.
What the comparison leaves out is who assesses those candidates before anyone signs, the months of recruiting before they start, and the ramp after that. And the throughput isn’t like for like — a team is a group you have to run, where this is one architect deciding and a fleet building. Whoever scoped it on the first call is on the call every week after.
Contract
Seven terms. Two of them, custody and acceptance, change what you sign.
Custody and acceptance change the contract itself against what a development agreement usually says: the repository and the accounts are yours from the first commit rather than assigned to you at the end, and what counts as done is written down and tested before work starts rather than argued about after it. They are the first two below. The other five describe how the work runs.
- Notice
- None, after any version
- Custody
- Yours from day one
- Acceptance
- Every version
- Term
- One version at a time
- Custody.Changes what you sign.
Repository and cloud accounts in your company’s name from day one.
- Acceptance.Changes what you sign.
A written definition of done for the version, agreed before work starts — including the three tests the documentation has to pass.
- Provenance.
Whoever scopes it on the first call is on your weekly call and answers for what ships. That doesn’t get delegated.
- Cancellation.
Company to company, after any version. No notice, no setup fee, no seat cost, no long commitment — the version being built is the whole of what either of us is committed to.
- Every version.
You don’t check this at the end. Every week a demo video arrives 24 hours before our call, you watch it first, and we talk about what is running. At the end of the version you decide whether there is another one. That is the answer to hiring a supplier you have no references for — one version as the whole first bet, checked every week while it is built.
- What you send me.
Named before work starts: what the fleet may read, what it may write, and what never leaves your accounts. Some of that is still being settled, and I will tell you which parts.
- After you stop.
It keeps running in your account, because it was never in mine. The repository and the accounts were yours from day one, and the documentation was tested by somebody who did not write it. If something needs doing later — a dependency patched, a certificate renewed, a provider changing something underneath you — that is a version, or a conversation about whether it is one. There is nothing to subscribe to and nothing to cancel. If you have someone who can do it, you should.
Read next
The first call is the scoping call. It is free, and the first version is the whole commitment.
That’s deliberately the cheapest way to find out whether this is wrong for you.
If you’re the engineer this got forwarded to, start at how it runs instead.
Or write: [email protected]