The engineering partner behind the product
For founders and product companies, we're the team that ships: v1 builds scoped to what earns the next round, dedicated squads behind growing products, and AI features with evaluation built in. And for a few companies a year — equity partnerships, where we co-own the outcome instead of invoicing it.
What we build with product companies
From first commit to the version that carries real revenue — and the modernisation nobody else wants to touch. A representative list, not a boundary — if the system you need isn't on it, we build that too.
v1 builds
From validated idea to a product carrying real users — scoped to what earns the next round, not to a feature wishlist. First working software in week two.
The team behind a growing product
A dedicated squad that owns the roadmap with you — shipping weekly while the product takes on paying customers, integrations and scale it wasn't born with.
AI features that survive contact
Copilots, document intelligence and agentic workflows shipped with an evaluation harness built from your own cases — not demos that die in the pilot phase.
Modernisation under load
The module everyone fears touching, replaced incrementally while the product keeps serving customers — no big-bang rewrites, no downtime.
Platform & integration layers
Public APIs, billing, multi-tenancy, SSO — the unglamorous plumbing that turns a product into something enterprises can actually buy.
Internal & admin tooling
Support consoles, ops dashboards and onboarding flows — the tools your team opens every morning, built so customer problems take minutes, not tickets.
Where product companies bleed
Not exotic failures — the same four, over and over. The diagnosis phase names which ones apply before anything is proposed.
Runway spent on the wrong build
A v1 scoped like a v3 burns the round before the product meets a customer. Scoping to the metric that earns the next round is the discipline.
The velocity cliff
The first team shipped fast and left few notes. Now every feature costs three times what it did — and nobody can say why with confidence.
AI features stuck in demo
The prototype impressed the board; production never came. Without evaluation against real cases, an AI feature is a liability with a launch date.
Agency roulette
Deadlines as sales tools, juniors behind a senior pitch, IP entangled at the worst moment. The incentives were wrong from the first invoice.
Four phases, whether you pay in cash or equity
The team, the process and the quality bar are identical in every model — only the commercial structure changes. You can stop after any phase and keep everything.
See the full process →- 1Diagnose the product, not just the code
Traction, runway, architecture, team — we look at what the business needs shipped, and say plainly if the answer is "less than you think".
About this phase → - 2Estimate at market rate, always
Architecture, milestones, timeline and cost. The same estimate underwrites cash, hybrid and full-equity deals — so every conversation starts from a real number.
About this phase → - 3Build like a product team
Weekly demos, a shared channel with the engineers, milestones you accept before paying. Course-correction is cheap when feedback is constant.
About this phase → - 4Operate or hand over cleanly
Monitoring, documentation and a 90-day warranty ship with the product. We run it on a retainer, or hand it to the team you're hiring — including hiring help.
About this phase →
Traction but no product? We build for ownership instead of invoices
A clinical founder came to us with distribution and no product. Under a hybrid deal — reduced price plus equity — we built the patient-intake platform and she filled it with clinics: 100+ on the platform, an institutional round closed, and SigmaJunction still on the cap table. That's the profile — send the traction, we'll send the estimate.
How partnership worksA publisher turned manual design into a compose-to-doorstep platform
Customers compose a personalised book with a live preview; the platform renders a print-grade file and routes it through integrated print-shop APIs — a bound copy arrives at the door with no manual step in between.
Read the case study →Common questions
Who owns the code and IP?
You do — in full. IP transfers milestone by milestone as payments clear; in equity deals it's governed by the shareholder agreement. There is no lock-in by obscurity: everything is documented for handover.
Can you work alongside our in-house team?
Yes — we regularly pair with internal engineers, share a codebase and review each other's work. Handover is cleaner when your team was there from the start.
How are equity deals priced?
Exactly like cash deals. We estimate the build at market rate, transparently — that number becomes the basis of the equity conversation: the full build value as equity, or a reduced price with the discount converting to equity. Details on the partnership page.
Do you take over existing codebases?
Yes, after a short technical audit. If the honest answer is "rewrite this part, keep that part," that's what the audit will say — and the estimate will price both paths.
We're pre-revenue. Will you talk to us?
If you have traction — users, distribution, letters of intent, domain advantage — yes, and that's exactly the partnership profile. An idea alone isn't enough for an equity deal; we'll say so quickly rather than waste your time. With a build budget, none of this applies — a bounded v1 fits per-project.
Which engagement model fits a SaaS build?
A bounded v1 fits per-project; a product with a living roadmap fits a dedicated team; founders with traction and no product may fit a partnership. The diagnosis will recommend one.
Building a product — with a round behind you, or just traction?
Thirty minutes with an engineer, an honest answer — including which commercial model actually fits.