Business Development

Our process looks like:

• Someone contacts us via our new project form or is introduced through phone/email
• We have a video call or meet in person
• Make a decision whether we are a good fit or if someone else would be better for the client
• Understand the client’s vision
• Agree on the outcomes we want to achieve
• Estimate interval of iterations
• Sign the contract
• Pay us for the first iteration
• Schedule people for iterations
• Begin the work

Leads

Most of our leads come from referrals from clients.

We track our leads in Notion.

Leads that come through the form are automatically created and organized in Notion tables, leads that are introduced to us through referrals are created manually.

Leads are managed primarily by our head of sales, but for calls and meetings we have our developers on the call to absorb the context and determine potential projects to work on together.

Understanding product vision

Whenever we start an engagement with a client we first aim to understand their existing business and their vision for the project.

We need to answer questions like:

• What are their core motivations for the new project?
• What’s the big benefit the project hopes to achieve?
• Who are the primary stakeholders for the project?
• Who is the target audience for this project and what are they like?
• What is the big pain point this product hopes to solve?

After an initial interviewing period with a client we should aim to follow up with some due diligence with potential customers to understand how they see their own needs and our potential solution.

We do this by doing some customer discovery and asking non-leading questions.

NDAs (non-disclosure agreement)

Because we work with many clients we would prefer not signing any NDA unless it is of critical importance.

If an NDA is required we would need to ask some questions about the business to determine if there are conflicts with any current or past clients.

If there are no conflicts and the project is a good fit, and the NDA is mutual, then we sign it.

If the NDA is not mutual then we use our NDA.

No fixed bids

We prefer to avoid “Request for Proposal” (RFP) style engagements where requirements are done up front and are usually quite detailed.

These requirements rarely capture the optimal solution. The right features are usually discovered in customer discovery or during iterations of the product which then need to be amended to the RFP which creates bad incentives between both parties.

There may be special cases in projects we really believe in, but as much as possible we want to avoid engagements in these types of contracts.

Rate

Our rates are determined with a per-person, per-week rate. The work required for each week determines which skills and people will be needed.

This system of billing has advantages to our clients:

• Our team is experienced
• We have extensive experience working together
• Our time is predictable and consistent for their billing
• We can quickly rotate in a new team member if required

We don’t provide itemized invoices to clients showing individual pieces of work that were done. Instead, clients have full insight into exactly what is happening each week from their Notion dashboard.

Typical projects

An example of typical projects for us are:

• Product design sprint, 2 people, 1 week
• Idea to version one, 2 people, 2-3 months
• Fill in a gap until an internal team is hired, 2 people, 3 months

Sometimes a very simple project needs many iterations and other times a big project can take a lot less time than people might estimate.

Designing our engagements around iterations allows our clients to stop at any time and leave with a working product or prototype they can do whatever they want with.

Contract

We store contracts on Notion for easy access and back them up in Dropbox.

The consulting proposal and contract contains:

• A one-page summary of the expected work
• Our weekly rate
• Net 15 payment terms
• Payment for the first two weeks is required to start work
• After the first two weeks, invoices will go out monthly or bi-monthly for prior work
• Agreement that the client owns the week’s source code once they’ve paid their weekly invoice
• Agreement that both parties won’t use materials which break someone else’s copyright
• Agreement that the contract is mutually “at-will” and either side can decide to stop work at the end of a week
• A page for signatures

Invoices

Clients can pay their invoice via check, ACH, credit card, or wire transfer.