How we work
Anyone can demo a dashboard.Production is everything around it.
We start with the money, not the model. We find what the problem costs you, diagnose before we design, build on your own accounts and put one ship date in writing.
The method
Eight steps.In this order.
The order is the point. Nothing gets built until the money is sized and the scope is signed. Nothing is done until it meets the win conditions in that scope.
01 to 03
Before we build
01
Start with the money.
Every business has one constraint that costs it the most: not enough demand, or not enough capacity to serve it. We find yours and put a number on it. What it costs you a month, and what happens if nothing changes in the next six to twelve months.
You getThe constraint, priced per month
02
Diagnose before design.
We don’t build what you ask for. We find what’s worth building, and the requirements come from the diagnosis. If the honest answer is a smaller fix, or no AI at all, you hear it from us first. Whatever the build needs, we bring in our team or the specialists to meet it. This step is the diagnostic: two weeks and $5,000, credited to the build if you go ahead.
You getA 90-day game plan worth building, or a straight no
03
Put it in writing.
Within 48 hours you get the scope: deliverables, architecture, phases, a timeline to the day, the win conditions, what we need from you and one fixed price. It’s priced on the outcome, not the hours. We walk you through it, you change what you want, you sign. Then it’s locked.
You getScope, win conditions, price and date, signed
“If it doesn’t make money, it doesn’t make sense.”
04 to 06
While we build
04
Built on your accounts. Data first.
You open the accounts: cloud, repo, hosting. We build on them from day one, and nothing lives on ours. Data first, structure second, skin third. One clean data layer, so every system after this one gets cheaper to build.
You getYour cloud, your repo, your keys
05
Click it in phase one.
Before anything is wired in, you get a clickable mock-up with dummy data. Click it, test it, tell us what’s wrong. Nobody should reach the end of a build and find it isn’t what they pictured.
You getA clickable mock-up on dummy data
06
Every milestone, tracked.
Each phase has its own win conditions and date. When a milestone is done we mark it complete and you’re notified automatically. Your team talks to the engineers in a shared Slack channel. Each phase is accepted before the next one starts.
You getA notification at every milestone
“Tell me why you love it. Tell me why you hate it.”
07 to 08
When it ships
07
Accepted against what you signed.
Done means the win conditions in the scope. We test against them and revise inside the scope until they’re met, at no extra cost. Then you sign off.
You getSign-off against the win conditions
08
Handed over. Then tuned.
On final payment you get all of it: code, IP, accounts, docs, SOPs and training. Then two weeks of tuning. Run it yourselves, or keep us on for the next phase, with its own scope and date.
You getCode, IP, accounts, docs, SOPs, training
“Our goal here isn’t for you to be dependent on us forever.”
The date
Every build ships on the date in writing. If we miss it on our end, the build is free, we still finish it, and we wire you $5,000.
How a system runs
One event.Every layer it touches.
Pick a system and follow one event through it. What happened, in plain English, on the left. What ran, on your accounts, on the right. Every run ends the same way: a line in the ledger.
Revenue. Dormant lead, 19:22. A lead from 14 months ago replies: “Is this still available?” It reads the record: a $6,400 quote, one missed call, never a no. It decides inside your rules: same quote, same rep, a call tomorrow. It acts: replies in your voice, books the rep, reopens the deal. It logs it: +$6,400 reopened.
Before you sign
Five questionsyour team will ask.
- Who owns it?
- You do. It’s built on your accounts from day one, and nothing lives on ours. You can leave any time.
- At handover: code, IP, docs, SOPs and training
- Will it pass security review?
- Built to pass it. SSO, roles and an audit trail. Row-level security on every query, every time.
- We sign BAAs
- Who’s in charge?
- Your people. Nothing sends on its own where it matters. Unsure or sensitive cases go to a person, with the full context.
- Every rule change needs human sign-off
- Can we see what it did?
- Every decision, traced and tested. Replay any run, step by step, and see why it did what it did.
- Audit trail and trace on every run
- What will the models cost?
- Typically $200 to $1,200 a month. That’s at 1,000+ AI interactions a day. The cheapest capable model does each job, with a fallback provider, so no single model locks you in. The bills run on your accounts, so nobody marks up your tokens.
- Cost alarms and budgets on every model call
Next · The Diagnostic
Tell us what the problem costs.We’ll tell you if it’s worth building.
Two weeks inside your business. We find the constraint costing you the most, put a number on it, and hand you a 90-day game plan to fix it with AI. $5,000, credited to the build if you go ahead.
Kevin Jacobson, Partner
Architecture, case studies and references
- Two weeks · $5,000
- About two hours of your time
- Replies within one business day