Software development for US startups and founders.
US startups hire us for the same reason each time: the same product, built properly, for materially less than a US agency charges — without the offshore experience people expect. One engineer, scoped on a call, shipped to your own accounts, and yours outright from day one.
What working together actually involves
- Invoicing
USD. Bank transfer or card. One fixed quote against an agreed scope, not hourly.
- Tax documents
We provide the standard documentation a US company needs from an overseas supplier — typically a W-8BEN-E for your records.
- Contracts
We work to your paperwork. MSAs, SOWs, NDAs and IP assignment clauses are all normal here.
- Overlap hours
We keep a live overlap with US business hours daily. East Coast overlaps comfortably; West Coast mornings work well.
- What you own
All code, repositories, credentials, store listings and cloud accounts. From the first deploy, not at the end.
What actually makes it cheaper — and what does not
The saving is real, and it is worth being precise about where it comes from, because "cheaper" from an overseas supplier usually implies a compromise somewhere and here it does not have to.
Most of the difference is structural rather than a discount. A US agency quote carries account management, a sales function, office overhead, and a margin on subcontracted engineering. Ours carries the engineer. You talk to the person writing the code, which removes both the cost of the translation layer and the delay it introduces. Cost of living in India does the rest.
What is not part of the saving: scope, testing, deployment, security, or the quality of the handover. Those are in every quote as standard, because taking them out is how a low number turns into an expensive project. If a quote you are comparing looks cheaper than ours, check whether it includes deployment to your own accounts and whether you end up owning the code — that is usually where the difference is hiding.
The risk you are actually weighing
The genuine risk in hiring an overseas studio is not price or skill. It is that you end up with something you cannot maintain, built by someone you cannot reach, on infrastructure you do not control.
That specific risk is what the ownership model is designed to remove. Everything is deployed into accounts you already hold — your Vercel or AWS, your Apple and Google developer accounts, your GitHub organisation. You hold the credentials throughout, not at handover. If you decide halfway through that this is not working, you take the repository to another engineer and continue, because there is nothing of ours in the way.
That arrangement rules out the recurring-revenue model most studios depend on, which is deliberate. It means the only way this works commercially is if the work is good enough to be recommended, rather than merely difficult to leave.
What US clients have actually had built
The work spans SaaS platforms and dashboards, cross-platform mobile apps submitted to the client's own App Store and Play accounts, and AI systems that do real operational work rather than demo well.
A common shape is a founder with a validated idea and a budget that will not stretch to a US agency, who needs a real product rather than a no-code assembly — something that can carry a paying customer and be extended by an engineer they hire later. Another is an existing product that has outgrown whoever built the first version and needs someone to take it over honestly.
The free prototype exists mostly for this market. Hiring an engineer eight time zones away on the strength of a portfolio is a reasonable thing to hesitate over, so you see a clickable version of your own product, built around your business, before any money or commitment is discussed.
Answered before you ask
Who owns the intellectual property, and does that hold up for a US company?
You own it, and we are happy to make that contractual in whatever form your lawyers prefer. In practice we work to your paperwork: if you have an MSA with IP assignment and work-for-hire language, we sign it. If you do not, we can put a plain assignment clause in the project agreement. The practical reinforcement matters as much as the legal one — code lives in your GitHub organisation and deploys to your cloud accounts from the first day, so ownership is not a promise that has to be honoured later at handover, it is just the arrangement the whole project runs under. Nothing is held back as leverage, and there are no license terms on anything we write for you.
How do payments and tax documentation work for a US company paying an overseas supplier?
We invoice in USD, by bank transfer or card, against an agreed fixed scope rather than hours. Payments are milestone-based and agreed in writing before work starts. For your finance team, we supply the standard documentation a US business needs from a foreign supplier — typically a completed W-8BEN-E, which is what establishes that we are a non-US entity and is generally what your accounts payable team will ask for. Because the services are performed outside the US by a foreign entity, US withholding usually does not apply, but your accountant should confirm that against your own circumstances rather than taking our word for it.
Can you sign our MSA, SOW, and security questionnaire?
Yes to all three, and it is routine rather than an exception. We work to your contracts rather than insisting on ours, and we will flag anything we genuinely cannot commit to instead of signing and hoping — the usual examples are clauses assuming on-site presence, or SLAs written for a managed-service provider rather than a build engagement. Security questionnaires are fine; the honest answer to several standard questions is that we deploy into your infrastructure using your credentials, which removes a number of the concerns those questionnaires are written to surface.
Time zones, how often we talk, and whether distance slows a build down are answered on the working with us across borders page. Ownership, NDAs and support are on the full FAQ.