Stop burning months on SaaS demos that collapse in production.

Eight weeks from kickoff to launch, for a well-scoped MVP. That covers architecture, development, testing, deployment, and launch support. The number isn’t magic. Auth, billing, multi-tenancy, role-based access: I’ve built these enough times that I’m not figuring them out on your budget. We define the scope together in week one, and if your product genuinely needs more time, I’ll say so upfront. Some projects take four weeks, some take twelve. Eight is the sweet spot where most founders get a launchable product with real architecture behind it.

React and Next.js on the frontend, Node.js behind it, MongoDB or PostgreSQL depending on your data, hosted on Vercel or AWS. Stripe handles billing; Firebase or Auth0 handles login. Boring choices, on purpose. These are the most widely used, hiring-friendly technologies available, so if you ever bring on more developers or hand the project off, you’ll find talent easily. Nothing obscure, nothing trendy. Your product needs to be stable at 2 AM while you’re asleep, and proven tools are how it gets there.

Real development work, not a sales pitch in disguise. I review your idea, ask about your users and business model, then build something tangible: a core feature prototype, a database schema, or an architecture document with the key technical decisions mapped out. The code is yours either way. If we continue, we pick up where we left off; if you take it to another developer, that’s fine too. Five hours is enough to see how I communicate and how I think about your product before any money changes hands.

With an agency you talk to a project manager, who relays your feedback to developers you never meet. Requirements get lost in translation and timelines slip while everyone coordinates. With me, you talk directly to the person writing your code, someone who knows your business context and the full architecture, so “this needs to work differently” turns into the right change the first time. There’s also the bill: a typical agency’s effective rate runs $150–250/hr once you’ve paid for the project managers, QA, and account teams. Solo SaaS products need a builder, not a bureaucracy.

They can build an impressive demo, and for a weekend prototype they’re genuinely useful. But a real chunk of my client work is rescuing products that started in Cursor or Bolt and hit a wall the moment real authentication, billing edge cases, or multi-tenant data isolation entered the picture. I use AI daily to move faster; what it can’t supply is the architectural judgment that keeps a product standing once real users and real money show up.

Launch is the beginning, not the end. Your first real users will surface things no amount of planning predicts, so I stay involved: hourly for ad-hoc fixes and small features, or a monthly retainer of 20–40 hours for continuous development. Most clients keep a retainer for the first two or three months, then shift to hourly as things stabilize. I handle monitoring, bug fixes, feature iteration, and scaling as your user base grows. I’m not hunting for quick projects. Long-term partnerships are the work I actually want.

This is exactly who I work with. Every Friday you see a live demo of working software: real screens you click through, real features you test, feedback given in plain language. I explain trade-offs in terms you can act on, like faster now versus flexible later, and the shared project tracker describes every task in plain English rather than engineering jargon. You will never feel locked out of your own product. My longest client relationship started with a non-technical founder, and it worked because of communication, not in spite of it.

Three things. Vetting: Toptal accepts roughly 3 of every 100 applicants after testing system design, live coding, and project delivery, and I passed that screen. Range: most freelancers specialize in frontend or backend, while I take products from architecture through deployment, including DevOps, database design, and integrations, so you never coordinate between contractors. Economics: I work from India on US business hours, which lets me charge a fraction of what senior engineers with comparable experience bill. You get the same architecture and execution without the market-rate invoice.