Senior velocity in the 3 months it takes to hire one
Applications Pro at $4,500 a month. 2-4 day delivery cycles, senior engineer integrated into your team, cancel anytime. No recruiter fees, no equity ask.
Who this is for
Seed-stage founder with 1 junior engineer or no technical hires yet. The post-seed roadmap exploded and the team needs senior throughput now.
The pain today
- A full-time senior engineer takes 90 days to hire and close.
- The board wants velocity, the team is one junior engineer deep.
- Recruiters want 20-25 percent of first-year salary to source a mid-tier candidate.
- The stack choices are locking in without a senior voice at the table.
The outcome you get
- Senior engineering every week, starting inside two weeks.
- Stack decisions that survive the 18 months to Series A.
- Ownership transfer on the first full-time senior hire.
- Monthly cancellation so the retainer ends cleanly the week the hire lands.
The seed-stage velocity trap
Seed-stage founders hit the velocity trap at month two. The round closed on a roadmap that assumed full senior hiring inside 30 days. Hiring takes 90. The board expects milestones on the 30-day cadence. The founder either slips the roadmap (bad signal) or over-promises (worse signal). A senior engineer on retainer at $4,500 a month fills the gap: shipping velocity from week one, no recruiting cycle, no equity dilution. Most seed-stage clients keep me on for 4-9 months while the permanent team lands.
Monthly retainer vs contract-to-hire
Some seed founders try contract-to-hire through staffing agencies. The math rarely works: agency markup, 6-month minimums, no real senior candidates willing to convert at the salary band. The monthly retainer at Pro ($4,500) gives the founder one senior engineer, cancel anytime, Work Made for Hire. The total cost over 6 months is $27,000, versus $50,000+ in agency markup for the same calendar time. The velocity is higher because the engineer is direct, not filtered through an account manager.
What to ship in the 6 months between seed and Series A
The seed-to-Series-A window is about proving the core loop at scale. The shipping list is usually short: get to 50-100 paying customers, integrate the three platforms your ICP uses, turn the demo into a real product, and stand up the first metrics dashboard that tells the Series A story. I help founders cut from a 40-item list to these five in a two-hour call, then we ship. Cuez hit Series A readiness on a similar disciplined cadence.
A stack that survives the next round
Seed stack choices lock in for two rounds minimum. Rewrites at Series B cost 6-9 months. I pick Next.js, Laravel or NestJS, PostgreSQL, Redis, and AWS or Vercel because they scale through Series C with discipline. I avoid the current flavor-of-the-quarter framework unless there is a specific reason. Durability beats novelty at seed stage.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Rescued a slow API that was blocking user growth
Refactored the backend architecture, making the system far more responsive and scalable for the growing user base.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- How does this compare to hiring a full-time senior engineer?
- Faster (1-2 weeks vs 90 days), no recruiter fees, no equity, cancel anytime. Trade-off: you give up long-term dedicated headcount. Works best as a bridge for 4-9 months.
- Can I add a second engineer?
- I am a solo practice. If you need 2+ engineers, I recommend pairing my retainer with a second senior from my network or a direct hire.
- How do you integrate with my existing team?
- GitHub, Jira or Linear, Slack, standups if you want them. I follow your conventions, not mine. Code review is a collaboration, not a handoff.
- What if the full-time hire lands fast?
- I hand over cleanly: docs, a week of pair-work, architecture walkthrough. Cancel end of month, no penalty.
- Can you own a full product area?
- Yes. Most seed-stage clients hand me one area (billing, auth, an integration layer, a reporting module) and let me own it end to end.
Ready to start?
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