“Build the platform.”
Too large for a first hour.
- Discovery, or a MVP around one job.
- A written out-list.
- A later block only if the first is used.
For founders
A first release is a boundary. It is not a smaller version of the whole company.
Everything else can be a later block you are allowed to skip.
Pick the sentence the first release has to make true.
Founders arrive with a product that is real and a scope that is a roadmap. The first A1 Services block is discovery when the edge is not written, or a SaaS MVP when the core job is already obvious: accounts, that job, and a way to see if anyone uses it. A landing page is the right block when the offer can be sold before the product is wide.
An AI feature inside a product that already exists is an app sprint or a pilot, not a new company. The pilot has to be allowed to stop. If stopping would be treated as failure inside your team, say that, because it changes whether a pilot is honest.
Capacity is for the weeks when the backlog is varied and you do not want a fixed contract around each task. It is a month at the hourly rate times 30. It will not quietly build the platform you have not scoped. If both are happening, they are two engagements and the fixed one needs an edge.
The public site and the product are allowed to be different blocks. A site that explains the offer is not the application. Shipping them as one muddy project is how the first screen fills up with navigation for features that do not exist yet.
Side by side
Three founder requests, retold
“Add AI.”
Too vague to price as a product.
- Name the draft and the source.
- Name who sends it.
- Pilot first. Agents only if the pilot earns them.
“We need a site and the app.”
Two blocks.
- The site sells the offer.
- The app does the job.
- Either can be declined.