A senior engineer at the price of a mid-level salary
Applications Standard at $3,499 a month. 2-4 day delivery cycles, cancel anytime. 14-day money-back if the fit is wrong. No equity ask.
Who this is for
Bootstrapped SaaS founder at $10,000-$40,000 MRR, ready to invest in engineering without giving up equity.
The pain today
- Growth is throttled by one missing feature or a scaling bottleneck.
- A $200,000/year senior engineer is not in the budget.
- An agency wants a 6-month commitment for scope that should take 3.
- Every previous contractor has either ghosted or overbilled.
The outcome you get
- Senior engineering on a 2-4 day delivery cycle.
- The bottleneck feature shipped inside a quarter.
- Month-to-month with cancel anytime so the bill fits the cash curve.
- Full code ownership day one under Work Made for Hire.
Bootstrap-friendly scoping
Bootstrapped SaaS founders need scoping that respects the cash curve. I scope to ship something valuable inside 4-6 weeks, not a 3-quarter epic. The pattern: one feature that unblocks a revenue lever, delivered end to end, measured in its impact on conversion or retention. Then the founder decides whether to continue the retainer for the next feature. This structure means the founder can pause after any month if cash tightens, or push forward if growth accelerates. It matches how bootstrapped cash flow actually works.
Monthly retainer vs equity
Bootstrapped founders get pitched equity deals constantly. Someone always wants 5-20 percent for part-time engineering. The math almost never works for the founder. A senior engineer on a $3,499/mo retainer for 12 months costs about $42,000. That is worth roughly 0.5-1 percent of a growing bootstrapped SaaS. Trading 5-20 percent for part-time engineering is the most expensive deal a bootstrapper can make. Cash is cheap, equity is expensive, and I stay on the cash side of the ledger.
Work Made for Hire means zero lock-in
Some engineering contractors hold ownership hostage: the code runs on their infrastructure, the repo is theirs, the domain is registered in their name. This is a lock-in trap. My terms are Work Made for Hire: code, repo, deployments, and infrastructure are yours from day one. You can hire me for one month, cancel, and everything keeps running on your accounts. That is the only structure that respects the bootstrapped founder's optionality.
When to scale to the Pro tier
Applications Standard at $3,499/mo is the default. The Pro tier at $4,500/mo adds priority delivery, more hours per week, and an advisory slot for the founder's broader strategy questions. Most bootstrapped SaaS founders start on Standard and move to Pro when MRR crosses $50,000-$75,000 and the roadmap outgrows Standard bandwidth. Some stay on Standard for a year or more. Both patterns work.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
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Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Can I pause the retainer in slow months?
- Yes. Cancel end of any month, restart when cash allows. Many bootstrapped founders run 3 months on, 1 month off, repeat.
- What if I want to hire full-time later?
- Great outcome. I help interview and onboard. Clean handover. Cancel the retainer end of the month they start.
- Do you work on my stack?
- If you're on Next.js, React, Vue, Laravel, NestJS, Node, or TypeScript, yes. Outside these, I refer to someone who specializes.
- Can you help with technical hiring?
- Yes. Job description, CV screening, interview panels. No recruiter fees.
- How do you handle urgent bugs?
- Standard turnaround on critical bugs is same-day or next-day inside the retainer. Not a formal SLA but a 16-year habit.
Ready to start?
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