Software development
for startups
and MVPs
You have a runway, an idea you believe in, and no way to know if you are right until something real is in front of users. Every month spent building the wrong thing is a month you do not get back.
* MVP development services and custom software development for startups. A real first version in front of users, built so you can develop the next version without starting again.
Getting to a first version
An MVP is the smallest thing that answers the question
A minimum viable product is not a cheap version of the real one. It is the smallest thing you can build that answers the question you are actually uncertain about — whether anyone wants this, whether they will pay, whether the hard technical part is possible. Our MVP development services start by working out which question that is, because it decides what can be left out.
The failure we see most is an MVP built so disposably that succeeding is the worst outcome: the thing works, users arrive, and the code cannot carry them. We build first versions that can be built on rather than thrown away, which is a different decision from building them slowly.
Two ways to get there
01
We build it
As a software development company for startups, we take it as a project: discovery, build and launch, with a small senior team. Best before you have engineers of your own, or when the first hire has not landed yet.
02
We staff it
Startup development services as people instead: engineers joining whatever team you have, so the knowledge builds up inside the company. Best once you have a technical founder to direct the work.
What we build
What
we build
Startup software development, from the first prototype to the version that takes real customers. Software development services for startups at whatever stage you are at.
Related: Custom software development · Planning and technical advice
Product discovery
Working out what to build before you pay to build it
Prototype development services
Something clickable in front of users in weeks
MVP build
The first version real customers can use and pay for
Startup app development
Web and mobile, whichever the audience actually uses
Investor-ready technical work
Architecture and documentation that survive due diligence
Scaling the first version
When the MVP works and the load arrives
Technical advice for founders
Build or buy, what to hire for, what can wait
Handover to your own team
So your first engineers inherit something they can read
Clear
answers
What people ask before any of this starts — including what we cannot promise.
Less than you think. We cut the first version down to what has to be proved, and we are explicit about what is deliberately left out — because the fastest way to learn nothing is to launch everything at once.
Weeks rather than months for most first releases, for the same reason: the scope is the thing being controlled. After that we ship in short cycles you can see.
The point of how we build the first version is that the second one does not start from nothing. An MVP built to be thrown away costs you the whole thing twice. That said, we will tell you where we have taken a deliberate shortcut and what it would cost to undo.
No, but it changes what the first conversation is about. Often the useful first step is a short piece of planning rather than a build, so that the decisions you cannot easily reverse — the data model, the platform, the integrations — are made with someone who has carried systems into production.
You do, from day one, in your own repositories and accounts. That matters more for a startup than for anyone else, because it is what makes you fundable and what makes the work portable.
Next step
Discuss your
project
Tell us what you're trying to prove and how long you have to prove it. We'll tell you what the smallest useful version looks like, and plainly if we're not the right people for it.