One queue and two accountable founders, or a freelancer per ticket.
A freelancer is the right tool for a sharp slice of work. The trouble starts when the work stops being a slice and becomes a roadmap.
| Dimension | Retained team | Freelancers |
|---|---|---|
| Best unit of work | A roadmap that keeps changing | A slice that fits on an index card |
| Who manages it | We scope, ship to staging, and demo every Friday | You do: specs, reviews, and stitching the pieces together |
| Continuity | Two founders on the engagement, and the one who wrote the code stays on it | One person who knows the code, and who can stop replying |
| Coverage | Design, engineering, AI, and growth through one queue | One skill per hire; integrating the pieces is your job |
| Throughput | One active request at a time, unlimited requests in the queue | Parallel, if you hire and manage several |
| When scope moves | Add it to the queue and reorder | Re-quote, renegotiate, or find someone new |
| Accountability | Both founders answer for what ships | The freelancer answers for the task, not the product |
| Code ownership | Your repo, yours from the first commit | Whatever the contract says, so check the IP clause before you wire anything |
| Attention | Capped: four or fewer active engagements per co-founder | Shared across however many clients they carry |
§01
Where freelancers break: continuity.
The freelancer failure nobody quotes for is the ghost. The build ships, the one person who understands it stops replying, and the code becomes your problem on a Tuesday you didn't plan for.
For a one-off task that risk is acceptable. For a product you change every week, it's the whole risk. A retained team keeps the engineer who wrote the code on the engagement, with a second founder on the same line. Nobody rotates off, because the founders are the team.
§02
Where freelancers break: you become the project manager.
Freelancers are priced on what you describe. When the brief drifts, and on a live product it drifts weekly, you write the new spec, review the output, and integrate it with whatever the last freelancer built. That's a part-time job most founders never budgeted for.
On a retained queue you submit the request in plain language. We scope it, ship it to staging, and demo it on Friday. You decide what comes next.
The other side
When a freelancer wins.
When the work fits on an index card and you're the one holding it: a payments integration, a scraper, a single screen on an existing product. If you can write the spec and judge the output yourself, a good freelancer gets you a good result for less than a retained team costs.
When the need is genuinely one-off. If no second request is coming, there's no queue to retain. Hire the specialist, sign an IP clause that vests on creation, and move on.
We say this on the first call. If your scope fits a freelancer, hire a freelancer.
Price
Tell us what's waiting in your backlog and we'll reply with pricing within 24 hours. Ask for pricing
Questions founders ask
- Should I hire a freelancer or retain a team for ongoing development?
- A freelancer if the work is a defined, one-off slice you can spec and review yourself. A retained team if requests keep coming and you don't want to own the specs, the reviews, and the continuity risk.
- What happens if a freelancer disappears mid-project?
- The code becomes yours to rescue, and the next developer charges to understand work they didn't write. Protect yourself with repo access from day one and an IP clause that vests on creation.
- Is a freelancer cheaper than a retained team?
- For a small, exact scope, yes, and we'll tell you so. For a roadmap that keeps changing, count the hours you'd spend managing the work before you compare quotes.
- Why only one active request at a time?
- Because finishing beats juggling. One request ships to staging and gets demoed before the next starts; the rest wait in a queue you can add to anytime.
- Who do I talk to on a retained team?
- Both founders, directly: Naman Barkiya on engineering, Abhiraj Sakargaye on growth and positioning. No account manager in between.
Keep reading
Talk to the two people who'd do the work.
A 30-minute call with Naman or Abhiraj. Or email two paragraphs on what you're building — we reply with a pricing estimate within 24 hours.
Send two or three times that work, with your timezone. A founder confirms within 24 hours.
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