- Startups
- MVP & POC Development
- Discovery Workshop
- Custom SaaS Development
The spreadsheet that was already a product
A founding team delivering a service by hand through spreadsheets and email has done the hardest part already, which is proving somebody pays for it. The build is then a question of which twenty percent of the manual process to encode first.
Representative engagement. This describes a pattern we build rather than one named client: the situation that produces it, how we approach it, and the range of outcomes that kind of work lands in. Figures are stated as ranges or targets, never as a measured result for a specific customer. Our named client work is on the work index.
- Industry
- Startups
- typical scope for a properly narrowed first build
- 8 to 12 weeks
- of the loop for the core job, manual kept where it is cheaper
- Founders out
The problem
Running the service manually is the right way to start and a difficult thing to stop. It works, customers are happy, and the founders are the system, which means growth is capped at their available hours. The risk in productising it is scope. Everything the founders do by hand looks essential, because they have never had to distinguish the parts that create the value from the parts that are just how they happen to do it. That distinction is the entire project. Runway makes it sharper. A twelve month build is not a build, it is a bet the company may not be around to collect on.
What we built
A short discovery phase mapping what actually happens, including the judgement calls the founders make without noticing. Those judgement calls are usually the product, and they are never in the process document. Then a deliberately narrow build: the smallest set of features that lets a customer complete the core job without a founder in the loop. Everything else stays manual on purpose, because a manual step that works is cheaper than a feature that might not be needed. Instrumented from the first day, so the question of what to build next is answered by what customers actually do rather than by what they said in a call. The stack is chosen to be handed to a first engineering hire without an apology.
What changed
The founders come out of the delivery loop for the core job, which is the thing that was capping growth, and the manual steps that remain are the ones that were cheaper to leave alone. What the narrow scope buys is a second decision. Instead of one twelve month bet, there is a working product in weeks and real usage data to decide the next phase with, including the option of deciding not to.
Built with
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- PostgreSQL
- Stripe
- PostHog