Complete startup development partnership
The whole technical side of your company, under one accountable person
Product decisions, design direction, architecture, and the engineering to build it — as one monthly arrangement rather than three vendors, four tools and a founder doing integration management at midnight. You get a technical partner who is in the business, not a supplier answering tickets. One company at a time.
One partnership at a time, because it is most of a month. If it is taken, we will tell you when it frees up and what to do until then.
From
$20,000/month
- 60 hours a month across product, design and engineering
- Two calls a week, plus availability between them
- Named collaborators for design and additional engineering capacity
- Everything in one record in Golux Club — tickets, approvals, decisions, files
Month to month after an agreed first quarter. A comparable in-house team — CTO, designer, senior engineer — is upwards of $50,000 a month fully loaded.
What this replaces
The coordination tax nobody puts in the budget
Most early companies end up with a designer, a dev shop, a freelancer and an AI tool. Each is individually reasonable. Together they produce a product nobody owns.
Three vendors, three versions of the truth
The designer says it was specified, the agency says it was not buildable, the freelancer left. Every gap between them is your evening.
Decisions made by whoever is free
Architecture chosen by whoever picked up the ticket, data model shaped by the first screen, and nobody senior looking at the whole.
Velocity that quietly stops
Month one ships five features, month six ships one. Nothing broke — the codebase simply became something nobody can change confidently.
You are the only integration layer
The only person holding product, design and engineering in one head is the founder, and that head is supposed to be selling.
Nobody is accountable for the outcome
Every supplier is accountable for their deliverable. Not one of them is accountable for whether the product works as a business.
The handover that never comes
When the money arrives and you hire a team, there is nothing to hand them: no decisions written down, no tests, no runbook.
Why not an agency, or hiring
The two normal answers, and what each actually costs
Hiring is the right answer eventually and the wrong one now: a CTO, a designer and a senior engineer are upwards of $50,000 a month fully loaded, take a quarter each to find, and are hard to unwind if the product changes shape. An agency is fast to start and structurally unable to tell you not to build something — their revenue depends on the build. This sits between the two on purpose.
An agency bills for scope; we argue against it
The most valuable weeks here are the ones where the answer is 'buy it', 'wait', or 'that is two weeks, not two months'. No agency's economics survive saying that often.
Hiring takes a quarter; this takes a week
And unwinds in a month if the company changes direction, without a severance conversation or an equity grant you cannot take back.
One accountable person, not a rotating team
The same person on your first call is on your calls in month nine. Collaborators join by name, for a stated reason, and you meet them first.
Designed to end
Everything is documented as it is built because the intended ending is that you hire a team and we hand it over. A partner who has made themselves necessary has failed.
The arrangement
One partnership, sized to what you are doing
This is the top of the ladder and the only tier that covers all three disciplines. If you need one of them rather than all three, the CTO and design arrangements are cheaper and the honest recommendation.
Most founders start here
Startup Partner
$20,000/month
60 hours a month across product, design and engineering, with one person accountable for the whole of it.
Best when you are funded or profitable, building something real, and the technical side is the part without an owner.
- 60 hours a month combined — Nikola plus named collaborators for design and engineering capacity
- Two calls a week, plus availability between them
- Product: what to build next, what to stop, and the metric each release is meant to move
- Design: flows, a design system, and production design for the screens that matter
- Architecture: the data model, the API, the security, the infrastructure — decided and written down
- Engineering: the risky parts built by us, the rest buildable by your team or your AI tool
- Hiring: we write the roles, run the technical rounds, and hand over to whoever you hire
- Investor and enterprise due diligence: the artefacts, the answers and the call
- Everything in one record in Golux Club, visible to you in real time
Founding engagement
Scoped on the call
A fixed first block — product definition, design direction and an architecture plan — before anyone commits to a year.
Best as the way into the partnership, or as a standalone if you want the plan and then to build it yourself.
- Two to four weeks, agreed scope, one fixed price
- The product one-pager: user, job, metric, smallest slice that proves it
- Design direction and the flows that carry the most risk
- Target architecture, data model and the build sequence, written down
- A build plan with real estimates — including the parts you should not build
- Yours to run with, with us or with anyone else
Priced as a partnership, not as hours sold: the value is a technical side that works, and a founder who can go back to selling. If the fit is not right we will say so on the first call — this only works when it is the right arrangement for both of us.
Why this team
Fifteen products where we were the product, design and engineering
Golux has built and still operates fifteen of its own products — an AI planning platform, a portfolio monitor, server monitoring, a booking marketplace, an agriculture platform. On each of them this team made the product calls, drew the flows, chose the architecture and then operated the result for years. That is what a partnership is: not a vendor delivering a scope, but the people who live with the decisions.
See the products- 15
- products built and operated end to end by this team
- 15+
- years building production software
- 312
- tests guarding the authorisation layer of our own platform
- 1
- company in this arrangement at a time
How it starts
It starts with a conversation and a plan, not a contract
- 01
A partnership call
Forty-five minutes on the company, the product and the money. We are both deciding whether this is the right arrangement, and either of us can say no.
- 02
A founding engagement
Two to four weeks, fixed scope and price: the product definition, the design direction and the architecture plan. Yours whatever happens next.
- 03
The partnership begins
An agreed first quarter so the work has a runway, then month to month. Two calls a week from week one.
- 04
It ends well
You hire a team, we write the roles and run the technical rounds, and hand over documentation written as we went. That is the intended ending.
Questions
The partnership, in detail
- Is this a dev shop with better marketing?
- No, and the difference is testable: ask a dev shop to talk you out of building something. Their revenue is the build. Ours is a monthly partnership that continues only while the company is better off, which is why the weeks that save you three months of work are the ones we are proudest of.
- What if we need more than sixty hours in a month?
- It happens around launches. We agree the extra hours before they are used, at the project rate, or we bring in a named collaborator with your approval. Nothing appears on an invoice that was not discussed first.
- Who owns the code and the designs?
- You do, from the first commit — your repositories, your accounts, your Figma. There is no proprietary layer, no licence, and nothing that requires us to stay. The documentation exists so your next team does not need us.
- Can we start smaller and grow into this?
- Most do. The Fractional CTO arrangement at $6,000 or Embedded at $12,000 covers the technical side alone, and moving up is an email. Starting here is usually right only when product, design and engineering all lack an owner.
- Do you take equity?
- A small equity component alongside the full fee is discussable for a company we believe in. Equity instead of the fee is not — the freedom to tell you something you do not want to hear is the thing you are paying for.
- What happens if it is not working?
- Month to month after the first quarter, and either side can end it with thirty days. We would rather finish a short engagement well than hold a long one that neither of us enjoys. The handover documentation is written as we go precisely so leaving is not a crisis.
- Do you work with agencies or existing teams?
- Yes. Often the arrangement is exactly this: your team builds, we own the decisions, review the work and handle the parts that carry the most risk. It works as long as it is clear who decides, and that is agreed on the first call.
Related
- Fractional CTOThe technical side alone, from $2,500 a month.
- Product design consultingThe product and design side alone, same rate card.
- How we run projectsTickets with SLAs, approvals, files — one record you can see.
- The products we have builtFifteen products this team designed, built and still operates.
- Who runs GoluxThe person accountable, and the collaborators behind him.
- Free production auditIf you have an app already, start here. Sixty seconds.
Next step
One company at a time, and the first call decides whether it is yours
Forty-five minutes on what you are building, what it needs technically, and what it is worth. If a smaller arrangement is the right answer, that is what you will hear.
