The first working version
There is a design, or a document, and no product yet
The screens people actually move through, wired to real data, running somewhere you can send a link to.
First version
Get the first version built, properly.
Starting from nothing is the part where a few quiet decisions set the cost of every change that follows. I build the first working version and make those decisions deliberately.
Not a prototype you throw away, and not an architecture built for a scale you do not have yet. Something real, that ships, that a second developer can pick up.
Fixed price for a scoped first phase, agreed before the work starts.
What I build
A first version is mostly a small number of decisions made early, then a lot of ordinary work carried out carefully.
Structure that survives month six
Every early decision feels like it might be the wrong one
Routing, authentication rules, and the boundaries between parts of the product. These are cheap now and expensive later.
The flow the product depends on
The hard flow is the one nobody wants to start
Onboarding, payment, whatever your product lives or dies by. I build that early, while there is still time to change direction.
Deploys from week one
Nobody has tried to ship it yet
The pipeline goes up before there is much to put through it, so the first release is routine instead of an event.
A codebase someone else can pick up
A second developer is joining soon
Clear ownership and conventions, so the next person is productive without a week of archaeology.
What you receive
We agree what the first version has to do, I build it in the open with something deployed early, and you end up owning all of it.
- A working product, deployed, that you can put in front of people
- The source, documented, with no dependency on me continuing
- The decisions written down, so the next developer knows why
- A handover call with your team or your next hire
Questions I get asked
How much does it cost?
A fixed price for a scoped first phase, agreed before anything starts. I would rather scope tightly and extend than quote a number for work neither of us has thought through yet.
How long until something is usable?
For a focused first version, weeks rather than quarters. The frontend for a fractional real estate platform went from nothing to a public product in three months, and that included investor dashboards and the whole investment flow.
Do I need to be technical to work with you?
No. Most of what I need from you is product judgement: who this is for, what they are trying to do, and which parts you already know are hard. I will handle translating that into decisions and tell you when one of them is yours to make.
What if we already have designs?
Good, that removes a whole category of guessing. I build from Figma regularly. If the designs stop before the difficult states, empty, loading, error, half-finished, I will flag those early because that is where most first versions get stuck.
What happens when it launches?
Whatever you want to happen. Some founders take the codebase to an in-house hire, some keep me on for the next phase. The handover is built in either way, so leaving is never a cliff.
Can you do the backend too?
Yes. I am currently building a product on my own across web, iOS, backend, and infrastructure. For a first version that often means fewer moving parts and fewer handoffs than assembling a team.
Do you work remotely?
Yes, across North American hours, from Toronto. Every engagement I have run in the last few years has been remote.
Relevant work
Reitium
Concept to a public investor product in three months
Property pages that had to be found by search engines, investor dashboards behind a login, and the investment flow in between. The hard flow was built first, because that is the one the product depended on.
View the Reitium case studyMusic At The Towers
A site the staff still run themselves
Built mobile-first for parents, with the schedules, programs, and announcements behind a CMS the school keeps current without calling a developer.
View the Music At The Towers case studyBuilt to be handed over, not held hostage.
You own the code, the accounts, and the decisions behind them. If the product already exists and the problem is that it has become hard to change, the audit is the better starting point.