Senior help for the features a solo dev cannot ship alone
Applications Standard at $3,499 a month. Senior engineer, 2-4 day cycles, cancel anytime. Work Made for Hire. No equity ask.
Who this is for
Indie hacker at $2,000-$20,000 MRR, ready to bring in senior help without giving up equity.
The pain today
- The core loop works; next-level features need senior judgment.
- Auth, billing, and scaling are all on my plate while I try to sell.
- Other indie hackers hire $40/hr contractors and the code quality shows.
- Every hour on engineering is an hour not on marketing or customer dev.
The outcome you get
- Senior engineering that shares the codebase cleanly.
- One feature shipped every 2-4 weeks on a 6-week experiment.
- Cancel anytime with Work Made for Hire ownership.
- A codebase I can maintain solo when the retainer ends.
The indie hacker retainer model
Indie hackers running solo at $2K-$20K MRR benefit from a specific retainer structure: senior engineer on a 6-week experiment, ship one hard feature, measure the impact, decide whether to continue. The retainer at $3,499 a month is real but fits a bootstrap cash flow: MRR-to-retainer ratio of 10:1 or better is sustainable. Below that ratio, the retainer competes with survival cash. I am clear with indie hackers about the ratio. Sometimes the answer is wait 3 months.
Scope calibration for a one-person team
Indie hacker scoping is different from startup scoping. The founder is the support team, the sales team, and the product team. Every feature has a downstream support cost. I scope with the support cost in mind: ship features that stabilize the product, not features that expand surface area. Auth upgrade, billing automation, scaling fixes, export/import, admin tools. These pay back because they reduce the solo founder's ongoing time spent on customer tickets. New features that expand surface area come after the foundation is stable.
The six weeks of senior help experiment
Many indie hackers start with a 6-week retainer (one month plus a two-week extension) to test the fit. Six weeks is enough time to ship one substantial feature end to end. At the end, the founder has a shipped feature, real code to read, and data on whether the retainer velocity justifies the spend. Many founders continue for 3-6 more months. Some cancel and return 6 months later for the next big feature. Both outcomes are fine. The experiment is cheap relative to a bad hire.
Cancellation and ownership
The indie hacker case for cancel-anytime is obvious: cash flow is tight and a 12-month commitment is a nonstarter. Work Made for Hire means the code is yours the moment you pay. I hand over the repo, the deploy config, and a week of pair-time when the retainer ends. The solo founder continues solo, or hires the next contractor, or takes a break. The code runs either way.
Recent proof
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Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Can I afford the retainer at $3K MRR?
- Probably not yet. The healthy ratio is MRR at least 10x the retainer. At $3K MRR, $3,499/mo is 100 percent of revenue. Wait until $30K MRR or beyond.
- What if I want to pause after 2 months?
- Cancel end of month. Restart when cash allows. Many indie hackers run 2-3 month sprints with gaps in between.
- Do you take equity?
- No. Cash only. Keeps the relationship clean and the indie hacker fully owns the upside.
- Do you work on my stack?
- Next.js, React, Vue, Laravel, NestJS, Node, TypeScript. If you are on Rails, Django, Go, or .NET, I refer to someone else.
- Can you help with billing and Stripe?
- Yes. Stripe, LemonSqueezy, Paddle, Chargebee. Subscription, one-time, metered billing. I have shipped all of these.
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