Strategy & 0→1
Getting from an idea to something real, with the scope decided before the budget is spent. Five stages, each ending in an artifact rather than a deck: discovery ends in a scope, design ends in a prototype in code, engineering ends in production software.
Discovery and a working prototype fit a 2–4 week sprint; the first release is 1–3 months.
0→1 is the work of turning an idea into a first version that real people use. Most of the risk is in scope rather than execution: the expensive mistake is building the right thing badly far less often than building the wrong thing well. Discovery exists to make that decision cheaply, before the budget commits to it.
- DISCOVERY
- 2–4 weeks
- FROM
- €5,000
- PROTOTYPE
- IN CODE
- ARTIFACTS
- 5
HOW IT RUNS
WEEK 1 → WEEK 4- WEEK 1
Discovery
Interviews, constraints, and a technical audit. It ends in a written scope, not a deck nobody opens twice.
- WEEK 2
The scope cut
What ships in the first version and what explicitly does not, with the reason recorded beside every line.
- WEEK 3
Prototype in code
A real interface on real data. Clickable mockups hide exactly the problems that decide whether this works.
- WEEK 4
First release
The smallest version somebody can pay for, in production, with a way to see whether they use it.
HOW IT IS BUILT
- Prototypes in code, not mockups
- Real interfaces beat static screens, and the prototype becomes the product rather than being thrown away. It is also the only honest way to find out what a design costs to build.
- Scope decided before spend
- Discovery means stakeholder interviews, technical audits, and a written scope. A sprint is priced as a fixed fee against that scope, agreed before work starts.
- Cut to a first version that ships
- Cali shipped as a calculator that reads sentences before it had thirty currencies. The first release should be the smallest thing that is genuinely useful, not the largest thing the budget allows.
- Ship to learn
- Live software beats perfect plans. Deploy early, deploy often, and iterate against real usage — numbers rather than opinions.
SHIPPED
Not a capability list — software in market that this work produced.
- MARKDOWN EDITORAMPERSANDA native editor with block-based editing, a saved version of every change, and an AI draft that stays in the margin until asked for. Exports to clean PDF and Word; the source stays plain .md you can still open in twenty years.Tauri · Rust · ReactCASE STUDY
- CALCULATORCALIA hand-written expression engine — lexer, parser, evaluator, no math library — that reads labels, currencies, and units out of ordinary sentences. Live per-line totals, thirty-plus real-time rates, portable .cal files, one engine across Mac, web, and CLI.Tauri · Rust · TypeScriptCASE STUDY
- EMAIL CLIENTOLAA Tauri desktop app and PWA built straight on the Gmail API — per-account OAuth, Pub/Sub push, and web-push alerts. Azure OpenAI handles triage, summaries, and smart replies across every account, in one keyboard-driven inbox.Tauri · Next.js · Azure OpenAICASE STUDY
WHAT YOU GET
- Written scope with what is explicitly out of it
- Technical audit of anything that already exists
- Working prototype in code, deployed and shareable
- Architecture decisions documented with their trade-offs
- A fixed-fee estimate for the first production release
- TypeScript
- Next.js
- Tauri
- Rust
- Postgres
THE ARTIFACT
IS THIS THE RIGHT FIT
- You have an idea and no agreement yet on what version one is
- A previous attempt stalled and you need a technical read on why
- You want a prototype real users can touch before committing a budget
- A team that already has a validated spec and just needs execution
- Market research or user testing as a standalone service
QUESTIONS
What do I actually get from a discovery sprint?
A written scope, a technical audit, a working prototype deployed somewhere you can share it, and a fixed-fee estimate for the first release. Two to four weeks at €5,000 – €10,000, and the prototype is code that carries into the build rather than being thrown away.
What if discovery says the idea will not work?
Then it did its job for a fraction of what finding out later costs. That outcome is written up with the reasoning, and there is no obligation to continue into a build.
Do you take equity instead of fees?
No. Engagements are priced and paid as work, which keeps the incentives legible on both sides.
Got something in this shape?
A scoped sprint starts at €5,000 and runs two to four weeks. Every engagement is priced before work starts.