Pricing
We bill by the outcome.
Below: the mechanism, a sample engagement with real structure (anonymised numbers), and the questions buyers ask before they sign.
The mechanism
Five rules. Signed before kickoff. Followed without exception.
- 1
We scope the outcome, not the hours.
Before kickoff, we agree what "done" looks like for each milestone — a feature that ships and works, a system that passes its acceptance criteria, a metric that moves. The milestone is the unit of work.
- 2
We price each milestone as a fixed amount.
No hourly rate. No retainer. Each milestone has a number attached before we start. You see exactly what every step costs.
- 3
Payment triggers on milestone delivery, not on calendar dates.
If we ship early, we get paid early. If we slip, we don't get paid for the slip — we eat the time.
- 4
Scope changes are repriced in writing.
When you add to the scope, we publish the new milestone and the new number. No hidden change orders. No surprise invoices.
- 5
A 20% kickoff deposit secures the team and the timeline.
Standard across all engagements. Applied against the first milestone.
A sample engagement
Real structure, anonymised numbers.
Engagement
Multi-tenant SaaS MVP rebuild for a Series A B2B SaaS founder.
Total engagement value
$X
(placeholder until a real example is anonymised and approved for publication)
Architecture & data model design.
2 weeks. $X.
Delivered: written architecture brief, data model schema, ADR documents.
Multi-tenant foundation.
3 weeks. $X.
Delivered: auth, tenancy, billing integration, deploy pipeline, observability.
Core feature pack.
4 weeks. $X.
Delivered: [5 specific features], each with acceptance criteria signed off before milestone close.
Production hardening.
2 weeks. $X.
Delivered: load testing, security review, runbooks, handover documentation.
What this engagement did not include (and how we'd price it if you wanted it): [examples of common adjacent work, with order-of-magnitude pricing].
Questions
Questions buyers ask before they sign.
We eat the difference. That's the deal. We absorb the estimation risk so you don't have to.
We repropose the affected milestone in writing within 48 hours. You decide whether to proceed. No surprise charges.
Rarely. For one-off advisory engagements with no fixed deliverable (e.g., "come spend a day at our office and audit the team"), we'll quote a flat day rate. Otherwise: milestone-priced.
Diagnostics and reviews: $X to $X. Full builds: $X to $X+. We'll quote specifically after the fit call.