Startups
Help getting live on Shopify, Amazon and WhatsApp — and the software for when that is not enough.
Most development companies will build whatever you describe. We have done that too, but it is not the useful thing about us.
The useful thing is that we have launched seven products of our own and we still run all of them. Which means we have paid the hosting bills, answered the support messages, removed the features nobody used, and discovered what it actually costs to keep something alive in its fourth year. That experience changes the advice we give, and most of it is advice nobody wants to hear before they start.
Three kinds of new business come to us: somebody building a software product, somebody launching a product business online, and somebody starting their first manufacturing unit. There is something below for each, and some of what we do for them costs nothing.
We are a good fit when
- You are selling something, or about to be
- You would rather be live and learning than six months into a build
- You want to be told when something should not be built at all
- You want to know what it will cost to run, not only what it costs to build
And if you have nobody technical yet
- Deciding what to build, and what you can simply subscribe to instead
- Choosing the technology — and then being told to stop thinking about it
- Reading a quotation from another developer and saying whether it is reasonable
- Looking at something a previous developer built, and whether it is worth keeping
- Working out what it will cost to run once it exists
- Direction, when you are simply not sure what the next step is
No charge, and no obligation to build anything with us.
What we would tell you before you build anything
The launch is the cheap part
Almost every founder budgets for building the thing and not for owning it. Hosting, the dependency that has to be updated, the bug reported at eleven at night, the feature your largest customer makes a condition of renewal. The second year routinely costs more than the first, and a product funded only to launch usually dies of neglect rather than of competition.
You are going to remove things
In our experience roughly a third of what goes into a first version ends up removed or ignored. That is not a failure — it is how you find out what the product is. But it does mean building the whole of version one before anyone uses it is the most expensive possible way to learn it.
The technology is almost never what kills it
In twenty years we have not once seen a product fail because the stack was wrong. They fail because nobody needed the thing, because the money ran out before the market understood it, or because there was eventually nobody left to answer the support queue. Choose sensibly, then stop thinking about it.
A good deal of it should not be built
Some of what founders ask us to build already exists and can be assembled from things you can subscribe to this afternoon. We will say so. It costs us a project and saves you a year, and you will remember which of your vendors told you.
We would rather you launched something
Some of what we do for a new business costs nothing, because getting you live is more useful to both of us than selling you a project you are not ready for.
Before we commit time, we will talk about your launch plan — what you are selling, and how you intend to make the first sale. Not a business plan, and not a pitch. Just whether you have thought about it.
This is not charity. We do it for people who are going to run a business, not for people who are going to have an idea.
Launching on Shopify
We are a Shopify Partner, and we will get you live at no cost. You pay Shopify’s subscription and whatever theme you choose; none of that comes to us. A good ready-made theme is genuinely enough to open a shop, and paying for a custom build before you have sold anything is the wrong order to do things in.
To be plain about what this is and is not: we are not building you a store. No custom templates, no integrations, no bespoke checkout. And when a ready theme is not enough — a catalogue with real depth, dealer or project pricing, anything unusual that has to happen after checkout — we will tell you so, because that is a build and it should be paid for.
Launching on Amazon India
The same arrangement. Getting registered, getting the catalogue and listings right, and getting the first orders moving. Most of the difficulty here is not technical — it is that the rules are particular and unforgiving, and nobody tells you which ones matter until you have fallen over one.
WhatsApp Business API
Startups with funding get ₹20,000 back on the Silver plan — half the first year’s fee — returned as credit to spend on campaigns and messages to people who have opted in to hear from you. First year only, and the credit has to be used within the year.
If you are starting a manufacturing business
A different kind of new venture, and one we have built specifically for.
Before anything is manufactured there is a long stretch of deciding: what to make, whether the demand is real, what the machinery costs, who supplies the raw material, and what the whole thing needs by way of investment. Most of that research is done badly, from whatever can be found, by somebody doing it for the first time.
Research before you commit
We built a platform for exactly that work, and it is free to use for research — project profiles with full investment breakdowns, demand data, machinery and supplier directories, and the detailed project and credit-monitoring reports a bank requires before it will lend against any of it.
Through partner agencies we can also arrange business registration, project report preparation, and ISO and other certifications at a discounted rate. That work is not ours and we do not pretend otherwise — but the people doing it are people we have used, which is worth something when you are arranging it for the first time.
What we build for founders
- A first version that is genuinely first — the smallest thing that can go in front of real users, built so the second version is not a rewrite
- Web applications and platforms, including the unglamorous half: accounts, roles, billing, administration and the screens your own team will live in
- Mobile access without an app store, where a progressive web application does the job faster and cheaper than a native build
- Integrations with payments, messaging and whatever your customers already run
- The operational layer — the reporting and tooling you need to support customers, which is always needed sooner than founders expect
- Taking over something half-built, where a previous arrangement ended badly. We will look at it honestly and tell you whether it is worth keeping
What we will not take on
Worth saying plainly, because finding out at the third invoice serves nobody.
- Consumer applications chasing scale before revenue. We build software that businesses run on. Products that need a growth team and a funding round to work are a different discipline and we are not it.
- A fixed price on an unfixed scope. We will scope it with you first and quote once it is real. Anyone who quotes before that is pricing their own guess and will come back for more.
Tell us what you are building
Describe what you are selling, who it is for, and how you plan to make the first sale. We will tell you how we would approach it, what we think it costs to run once it exists, and whether we think you should build it at all.
Tell us what you are building
We will tell you how we would approach it, and whether we are the right fit.