Discovery
I read what you wrote, then I ask you the questions you didn’t answer.
Quiet rooms, sharp axes.
I’m a one-person studio — marketing sites, internal tools, calculators. Fourteen of these in twenty-four months, none of them late. I price in days, I ship every Friday, and I’d rather lose the lead than win the wrong one.
Below: the five acts every project moves through, then the ten questions I get most. Read both before you brief me. If anything here isn’t what you need, close the tab.
I read what you wrote, then I ask you the questions you didn’t answer.
I write the smallest version of your project that still earns its keep.
I build it. You see it Friday. Then Friday again. Then it ships.
We go live, quietly. No launch deck, no kickoff Slack channel.
You own it from here. I keep the lights on for 30 days, no charge.
Fixed price, quoted in days, never hours. Most projects land between $8k and $40k. I’ll send the number with the scope, in writing, before either of us commits.
Not under two weeks. I work one project at a time and I won’t burn the current one for a new one. If your deadline is shorter than that, I’ll tell you who else to call.
Crypto, gambling, anything that needs to lie to its user. Also: pure agency overflow where I never speak to the actual client. The work gets worse and I get bored.
A team is right when the work is bigger than one person. For a marketing site, an internal tool, a calculator, a portal — one person is faster, cheaper, and the design holds.
Email is primary. Phone for anything urgent. I don’t live in Slack, Linear, or Notion — I’ll work in your tools when there’s a reason to, but I won’t pretend I’m on your team.
Monday brief check-in (15 min, async OK). Friday demo of working software (staging URL, no slides). That’s it. No standups, no sprint planning theatre.
Once. Quietly. If the change is small I’ll absorb it; if it’s real I’ll re-quote in writing before I touch the code. Scope creep is a process problem, not a billing one.
Thirty days of free bug fixes. After that, retainer at $4.5k/month (10 hrs) or one-off briefs at the same day rate. Most clients come back twice.
Yes. Full repo transfer at launch, MIT-licensed unless you ask otherwise. I keep nothing proprietary and I never resell client work.
Yes. Returning clients skip Discovery; I already know the system. Same day rate, faster start. Eight of my eleven studio clients have come back at least once.
I read every brief in twenty-four hours. If I’m not the right person you’ll know by tomorrow.