Make the right tech bets before you write a line of code.
Most early-stage failures are decision failures, not engineering failures. We help founders make the few unrecoverable choices — stack, architecture, vendor, hiring sequence — with the clarity of someone who has shipped this before.
The moments this engagement was built for.
Founders usually call us at one of these inflection points — the kind of decision that's expensive to reverse later.
You're about to build, and the stack will outlive the decision.
Picking framework, hosting, and data model for an MVP that will quietly become production. We make those choices boring on purpose.
You're raising, and an investor wants a technical reference.
We sit on a call with your lead and answer the questions you don't yet have answers for — credibly, not defensively.
You're inheriting code, a team, or a vendor.
An honest read of what's there: what's salvageable, what to rip out, what's quietly bleeding cost or risk.
You're considering an acquisition or acqui-hire.
Technical due diligence with founder-grade language, not a 60-page report nobody reads.
You're hiring your first engineer — or your tenth.
The roles to open, in what order, against the roadmap you actually have. Plus interview help when you need it.
Outcomes, not activity reports.
Every Discovery engagement ends with three things you can act on the next morning. No 80-slide decks. No theatre.
- A decision memo. The five to ten choices you actually have to make, our recommendation on each, and the trade-offs you should know about. Written for founders, not for the file.
- An architecture you can hand to a builder. Diagram, component breakdown, data model sketch, and the boring-but-load-bearing details (auth, payments, observability, secrets).
- A 90-day plan with named owners. What ships, in what order, who runs it, and what we expect from you. No phantom milestones.
- A hiring sequence tied to the roadmap. First-engineer profile, then second, then third — with realistic salary bands and where to source from.
- A vendor and tooling shortlist. Cloud, payments, analytics, support — chosen for cost-to-scale, not for our agency margin.
- A clean handover to whoever builds next. Whether that's us, your in-house team, or a third party — the artefacts travel.
Advisory first. Build, only if you want us to.
Discovery is almost always an Advisory engagement — a fractional CTO running point, with one or two senior architects on call for the deep dives. Two to six weeks, scoped tightly.
If you want us to build what we recommended, we move into a Build engagement with the same lead — no rebrief, no rediscovery, no margin theatre. If you want to build it yourself or with someone else, we hand the artefacts over and stay available on retainer.
A single named lead runs the engagement end-to-end. You get one inbox to escalate to, one calendar to find, one person who carries the context.
Cost-based. Cash, equity, or a mix.
We price engagements at cost plus a small margin — designed to be affordable at zero revenue, with cash, equity, or hybrid structures available. Final shape gets agreed in the discovery call.
If you're here, you're probably also thinking about these.
Discovery rarely lives alone. The same conversation usually opens questions about what gets built, where it runs, and how it's defended.
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Tell us what you're trying to decide. We'll tell you whether two weeks of our time will move you forward — or save you from moving in the wrong direction.
Book a discovery call