For startups
Ship an MVP that investors and users can touch
How we work with founders
Three things that decide whether v1 survives
Validate faster
Reuse Industry OS modules for the parts every product needs — auth, roles, records, admin — so the budget goes to whatever makes your product different.
Stay lean
Fixed MVP quotes with explicit non-goals written into the scope. The non-goals list is what keeps a first version shippable.
Grow later
Move onto a retainer once real usage tells you which features deserve more work, rather than guessing during the build.
In the first release
What we insist on building
- One workflow that a real user completes end to end, not five half-built ones
- Authentication, roles, and an admin view — because you will need to fix data by hand in month one
- A staging environment you can show an investor or design partner without risking live data
- Analytics on the two or three events that tell you whether the workflow is being used
Deliberately later
What we argue against in v1
- Billing automation before you have customers to bill
- A mobile app before the web workflow has held up for a quarter
- Multi-language and multi-currency before the first market is proven
- Custom dashboards that nobody has asked a question of yet
None of these are wrong forever. They are wrong before the core workflow has users, because each one adds surface area you then have to maintain while still looking for product-market fit.
Commercials
License, build, or both
If a Softlinks product already covers most of your workflow, licensing and customizing it is faster and cheaper than a greenfield build, and you inherit the parts that are already hardened. If your workflow is the product — the thing you are actually selling — then it should be built, and built to be yours.
Most founders arrive expecting one answer and leave with a mix: a licensed spine for operations, custom code for the differentiator. Build vs buy sets out how that decision usually breaks, and the estimator gives a range before you talk to anyone. Scope, price, and timeline are agreed together, because a fixed price with a vague scope is just a delayed argument.
Ready to talk?
Share a brief and we will recommend a product, a custom build, or both.