A first version built to learn from your early users

We build the slice of your product that puts the idea in front of users and reports back what they do.

Two people talking over a laptop and notebooks at a cafe table

Founders with a product to prove

Some of the people who come to us run businesses, and some are building one. They bring a product idea and a hard question: what’s the narrowest thing worth putting in front of users?

Founders get the same production discipline we bring to operating businesses, aimed at a product that holds up with its first paying customers.

Millgrove Software

A trial signup is enriched from its domain and welcomed in the founder’s voice. A stalled trial gets a nudge that waits for a person’s yes. Millgrove is a company we invented, so we could build its website and back office in full.

Open the Millgrove build

How the engagement runs

Scope on the bet
We define the core loop together and agree in writing on what the first version must prove, before design begins.
Ship a working slice early
You click through working software early in the build and steer while steering is cheap.
Instrument for learning
The product ships able to tell you what users do inside it, which is often different from what they say.
Decide with evidence
After launch we look at usage together and scope the next round from what the product showed you.

Hands laying out printed app wireframes along a wooden table

The one loop worth building first

Every product vision has one workflow that carries the whole bet: the loop a user completes that shows someone wants this. That loop gets built properly, with accounts, data and Stripe payments done right, and everything else goes on a written later list.

Questions

Who owns the code and the product?

You do. The code, the data and the infrastructure accounts sit in your name from the start, so a team you hire later inherits a codebase it can work in. More on ownership and care.

Can you work alongside a technical co-founder?

Yes. We can own a piece of the build or review theirs, and scoping defines the seam.

What happens after launch?

Whatever the evidence calls for. Some founders continue with us into the next version and some bring the work in house, and the product is built so either path stays open.