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Technical deep-dives, product strategy, and lessons from building real SaaS products. Written by engineers, for builders.

FeaturedTechnical Leadership

Six Months as Your CTO: What Actually Happens

Most people think a fractional CTO is a consultant who shows up for a few hours, draws some architecture diagrams, and leaves. Here's what the engagement actually looks like, week by week, from the inside.

February 17, 20268 min read
Engineering

The Stack We Recommend to Most Clients and Why

We've shipped enough products to have strong opinions about technology choices. Here's the stack we reach for on most projects, what we considered and rejected, and the reasoning behind every decision.

January 14, 202610 min read
Leadership

How to Read a Technical Proposal Without Being Technical

You've received three proposals from three dev studios. They all look different. You don't know which one is honest. Here's what to look for, what to question, and when to walk away.

September 2, 20258 min read
Product

The First 90 Days After Launch Are the Hardest. Here's the Playbook.

Launching is the easy part. The next 90 days determine whether your product survives. Here's the week-by-week playbook we give every client on launch day.

July 20, 20258 min read
Product

How Much Should Your MVP Actually Cost?

You've been quoted $15,000 by one studio and $200,000 by another. Neither number is wrong. Here's why the range is so wide and how to figure out what your product should actually cost to build.

June 24, 20258 min read
Engineering

Pooled, Siloed, or Bridge? How to Pick Your Multi-Tenant Architecture.

Multi-tenancy isn't a one-size-fits-all decision. Your architecture should match your revenue per tenant, your compliance requirements, and your operational capacity. Here are the three patterns and when each makes sense.

May 18, 20256 min read
Product

Most Startups Don't Have a Technical Problem

Every month, a founder tells us their product needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Most of the time, it doesn't. The real problem is that nobody has decided what the product actually is.

April 8, 20255 min read
Product

Your Product Scope Is a Feature List. That's Why You're Over Budget.

A founder came to us with 47 features for version one. We shipped 11. The product was better for it, and so was their budget. Here's the scoping framework we use on every project.

March 15, 20258 min read
Engineering

A Founder Wanted Kubernetes for 200 Users. Here's the Conversation We Had.

We talk to a founder at least once a month who wants microservices for their MVP. The pitch is always the same: we need to build for scale. Here's why that thinking costs you 6 months and $80K before you've validated anything.

February 10, 20256 min read
Engineering

We Inherited a Codebase That Was Bleeding $38K a Month

Technical debt isn't an abstract concept. It shows up on your AWS bill, in your hiring pipeline, and in the three-hour deploy cycles your team dreads every Thursday. Here's what we found when we audited a real production system, and what we did about it.

January 28, 202510 min read
Leadership

We've Sat on Both Sides of the CTO Interview. Here's What Actually Matters.

We've helped hire CTOs and we've been the CTO. The things that make someone great at the job are not the things most founders screen for. Here are the five signals we look for and three types we avoid.

January 2, 20258 min read
Engineering

We Needed Event-Driven Architecture. Kafka Was Overkill. So We Used Redis.

A client's notification system was falling apart under load. Instead of reaching for Kafka and adding three months of infrastructure work, we built it with Redis Streams in two weeks. Here's exactly how.

December 5, 20248 min read