What we help with
Architecture
Usually at the point where a decision is about to become permanent. The useful conversation is rarely about which database; it is about which parts of the system you are willing to rewrite later and which you are not.
Technical due diligence
For founders on the receiving end of it, and occasionally for people about to acquire or invest in a technical business who want a reading they can trust.
The first engineers
The first three or four hires set the engineering culture for years, and most founders make them under time pressure with no basis for comparison. We help with what to look for and how to run the process.
What not to build
Often the most valuable conversation. Small teams lose more time to work that should never have started than to work done badly.
How it works
It starts with a conversation, usually an hour, at no cost. That is generally enough to establish whether we would be useful to you, and we will tell you plainly if we would not.
Beyond that, engagements are shaped around the problem rather than a fixed package. Some are a single deep review with a written outcome; others are a standing conversation every few weeks over a longer period. We agree scope and cost in advance, in writing, before anything begins.
We do not take equity in place of fees as a matter of course. Where an advisory relationship turns into an investment conversation, we treat it as a separate decision made on its own terms.
Why the number stays small
Advice is only worth anything if the person giving it has enough context to be specific, and context takes time that does not scale. A firm with forty advisory clients is selling something else: pattern-matching, mostly, which you can get free from the internet.
So we keep the list short, and sometimes the honest answer is that we do not have room. If that happens we will say so rather than take the work and do it thinly.