A database you'll have to migrate
Choose the wrong data store for how your product grows and you face a painful migration, usually just when you have customers to keep happy.
The code is the easy part.
If you need software built, the usual options are an agency, a freelancer or an AI app builder. Any of them can get you working code. Fewer can tell you which features to leave out, or which early decision will get expensive a year from now. That judgment is most of what you're paying us for.
How we compare.
There are good agencies and good freelancers, and AI builders are handy for a quick prototype. These are the patterns we see most often, and where we work differently.
| Compared on | Dhruvsutra | Typical agency | Freelancer | AI and no-code builders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who you work with | One point of contact who owns your product from plan to launch. | A senior team on the sales call, often a junior team on the build. | One person, with whatever gaps they happen to have. | You and a prompt box, checking everything it writes. |
| Knows your world | We've been founders. We know what investors and early customers look for. | Builds to the brief, whether or not the brief makes business sense. | Varies a lot. Most are hired to code, not to question the plan. | No view on your market. It builds what you describe. |
| Architecture | Planned by engineers who have designed systems at enterprise scale. | Often a reused template, whether it fits or not. | Depends on the person, and it's hard to judge before you hire. | Generated code with no plan behind it. Fine for a demo, shaky once real users arrive. |
| Scope | We ask why each feature exists and build what your launch needs first. | More scope means a bigger invoice, so there is little reason to trim. | Builds the list you hand over. | Builds whatever you ask for, including the features you didn't need. |
| Security and compliance | Designed in from day one by people who've built security products. | Often left for the end, if the budget holds. | Rarely a specialty. | Up to you to know what's missing. |
| Pricing | A fixed price per milestone, agreed before work starts. | Hourly or time and materials, so costs creep. | Usually hourly. | A low monthly fee, until the product outgrows it and needs a rebuild. |
| When something breaks | If it's ours and within the agreed period, we fix it at no extra cost. | A change request and a new quote. | Depends on whether they're still around. | You debug it yourself. |
| Handing over to your team | Your GitHub, written docs, and mainstream tools a new CTO already knows. | Sometimes tied to their stack or their hosting. | Docs are often thin or missing. | Often tied to the builder's platform and hard to move elsewhere. |
These are generalizations. If you've found an agency or freelancer who does all of this, hold on to them.
The expensive mistakes are the quiet ones.
A lot of what we do well only shows up months later, once the product has users and the decisions made in the first week either hold or don't.
Our engineers have spent years on cybersecurity, distributed systems and cloud security, and on B2B and D2C products used by companies worth millions and, in some cases, billions. Some of what they built is still running in production eight to ten years on. Designing systems at that scale, from the overall architecture down to the details, was the day job. So we know most of the ways a young product can paint itself into a corner.
What one early decision costs to change
- Decided in the planning weekA conversation
- Changed six months after launchWeeks of rework
- Changed two years inA migration, with live customers on the old system
Illustrative. The real cost depends on the decision.
A few we plan around from the start:
A deployment that doesn't fit
Too elaborate and you pay for servers and upkeep you don't need. Too basic and it falls over the first time traffic spikes.
Weeks on the wrong feature
Polishing something that isn't why customers will pay, while the thing they will pay for waits.
Over-engineering
Microservices and multi-region setups for a product that hasn't found its first hundred users. It looks impressive and slows down every change after it.
An AI builder won't warn you about any of these. It builds exactly what you ask for. Catching them takes domain knowledge and someone thinking about your business as a whole.
We ask why before we build.
Founders are excited about their idea and usually want all of it on day one. We get the pull. But a first release has a narrower job: getting you to your next milestone, usually a launch or your first paying customers.
So we go through your feature list together and brainstorm each one: why you want it, how much it matters to your customers, and what it costs to build. Features that take a lot of effort for little impact move to a later release. Some things can't wait, though. Compliance and data privacy have to be designed in from the start, because the architecture won't take them later without a rebuild.
We'd rather you go broad first. Ship the core, see how customers use it and what they ask for, then put the money into what's working.
A sample first-release plan
- Sign-up and loginCore
- The workflow customers pay forCore
- PaymentsCore
- Consent and data privacyFoundation
- Access rules and audit logsFoundation
- Referral programLater
- AI chat assistantLater
- Dark modeLater
5 of 8 features make the first release. The rest wait for real usage data.
- Core
- What customers will pay for. It ships first.
- Foundation
- Compliance and security that are hard to add later, so they go in from the start.
- Later
- Good ideas that can wait until real users ask for them.
We use AI. It doesn't make the decisions.
AI makes us faster at the routine parts of the work. It's good at generating code and scripts. It isn't good at building a product. Getting production-grade work out of it means questioning it over and over and knowing when it's confidently wrong, and that takes domain knowledge it can't supply.
Plenty of people can get a story out of an AI model now. That doesn't make any of them George R.R. Martin. Code works the same way. Our engineers bring computer science degrees and long years at enterprise companies, and that's what decides how the AI's output gets used.
Where AI helps us
- Boilerplate and repetitive code
- Scripts and one-off tools
- First drafts of tests
- Searching docs and unfamiliar APIs
Where our engineers decide
- Architecture and the data model
- What goes in the first release
- Security and compliance
- Reviewing every line before it ships
How we work with you.
The same terms for startups and businesses.
A fixed price per milestone
Hourly billing sets both sides against each other. The client squeezes scope, the builder has every reason to stretch the hours, and nobody ends up happy. We agree a price for each milestone before it starts, so we both want the same thing: the work done well and on time.
One person owns it
Your point of contact is the person accountable for your product. We don't send seniors to the sales call and hand the build to someone you've never met.
We fix what we got wrong
If something we built or agreed with you turns out wrong within the agreed period, we go back and fix it at no extra cost.
Replies within 24 hours
During a project you talk to the team directly over email and Google Chat, and you hear back within a day. A reply isn't always the fix, but you'll know where things stand.
A date you can plan around
First versions usually take two weeks to three months, depending on scope and budget. Once the scope is agreed, the delivery date is too.
Flexible, within reason
Timelines and requirements can move between milestones, and we will work with you on that. Once a sprint starts, though, its core structure is locked. A pivot waits for the next milestone.
Built for the CTO you haven't hired yet.
At most startups the CTO is either stretched thin or not hired yet. Either way, someone new will inherit this code, so we make taking it over as easy as we can. Businesses get the same for their in-house team.
Scaling up is usually a configuration change. If you started on the cheapest hosting that works, the next step might be a planned migration instead. It depends on the setup, and we'll tell you which one you're looking at before you commit.
Maintenance after launch is a separate agreement, sized to what your product needs.
What your next engineer inherits
Code in your GitHub
Your repository, under your company's account.
Docs they can follow
How it runs, how it deploys and where things live.
Mainstream tools
Well-known frameworks and hosting a new hire already knows.
Room to scale their way
We leave scaling choices open for your CTO or team.
Two things we'd rather say up front.
If you pay partly in equity
The work doesn't change, only how we're paid. We take equity when we understand the industry, believe in the product and trust you to take it from zero to a real business. If we see the market size or feasibility differently, we'll tell you, still help you build it, and ask for more of the fee in cash.
How equity deals workWhat we don't take on
Half-finished builds and rescue jobs from another team. We do our best work on new products, where the decisions are ours from day one and we can stand behind all of it. Adding a defined feature to a product your own team runs is a different thing, and we're glad to do that.
See milestone projectsWant a second opinion on your plan?
Tell us what you're building. We reply within 48 hours with honest feedback, even if we're not the right fit. Startups can pitch an idea. Businesses and agencies can send a project brief.