Before you spend anything
10 free first steps, and not one of them is a call.
Each of these is a document or a sample, written or built by the person who would do the work. You send one input, you get back something you can act on or ignore, and nothing about it obliges you to buy anything. If the honest answer is that the thing is not worth fixing, that is what the reply says.
- Free first steps
- 10
- Cost
- None
- Calls required
- None
- Usual reply
- Two business days
Build
We build the software.
Free
Build Map
What to build or replace first, what to leave alone, and in what order.
You send: The system you are outgrowing, or the process nobody has a system for. A few sentences, or a screenshot of the spreadsheet.
You get back:
- The part of the process that should become software first, and why that part
- What should stay in the tools you already pay for
- The order the rest goes in, so nothing gets rebuilt twice
Automate
We make the repeat work run by itself.
Free
Automation Map
Every task in a role sorted into three columns: software can do this, a person has to, not worth touching either way.
You send: The job posting you are about to run, or a description of the process eating the most hours.
You get back:
- The posting marked up task by task, in three columns
- Which of the software column is worth doing first, and roughly what it costs
- What the seat still needs a person for, so the hire starts further along
Data
We get you the data, clean, on a schedule.
Free
Data Map
Where the data would come from, how often, what breaks first, and what running it costs a month.
You send: The market you need data from, plus a sample of whatever you have now.
You get back:
- The sources worth collecting, and the ones that are not worth the trouble
- A collection frequency, and what goes stale between runs
- The failure that will happen first, and what it costs to survive it
Free
Diagnosis of one broken source
Pick the feed that keeps breaking. We tell you why it breaks and what it would take to stop.
You send: The source, plus whatever error output or logs you have.
You get back:
- What is actually failing: blocks, layout changes, rate limits, or the schedule
- Whether it is worth stabilising or worth replacing
- What a rescue would involve, with the price band it falls in
Free
One-week competitor sample
Name three competitors. We collect them for a week and send you what changed.
You send: Three competitor names or URLs, and what you care about: prices, availability, catalog, or copy.
You get back:
- A week of collected records for the three, in a file you keep
- What moved during the week, and what did not
- What a continuous version would cost to set up and run
Free
Thousand-row cleanup sample
Send a thousand rows of the messy file. Get them back deduped, corrected, and filled in.
You send: A thousand rows of the list, catalog, or contact file that is not usable as it stands.
You get back:
- The same thousand rows, cleaned, with a change log beside them
- The rules we applied, so you can argue with any of them
- What the rest of the file would cost at the same standard
Growth
We build the system that finds you customers.
Free
Pipeline Map
Where demand is leaking, and which leak is worth fixing first.
You send: Your site, and a note on how buyers currently reach you.
You get back:
- Where the demand that already exists is going instead
- What is not being measured, so nobody can tell the spend is working
- The one fix to make first, and what it would be judged on
Free
Bounce read
Send a thirty-day bounce-log export. Get back which of the three causes it is, with the evidence.
You send: A thirty-day bounce-log export from whatever you send through.
You get back:
- Which of the three causes the pattern points to: the list, the sending setup, or the domain reputation
- The evidence in your own export that says so, quoted back
- What to do about that cause, in order, including the parts you can do yourself
Talent
We put engineers on your team.
Free
Capacity Note
Who would sit in the seat, how the first week runs, and how to end it if the fit is wrong.
You send: Your open roles and the current stack. The job ad is usually enough.
You get back:
- The shape of the engineer the work actually needs, against the one the ad describes
- How the first week runs: what they touch, what they ship, who reviews it
- The exit: how you end it, and what you keep if you do
Whichever practice
And one that fits any of them.
Most of what we have built was delivered under confidentiality or under someone else's brand, so a fair amount of the work cannot be published. It can still be shown.
Free
A walkthrough of work like yours
Most of the work was delivered under confidentiality. Tell us what you want to see and we show it directly.
You send: The kind of work you want to look at, and what you would judge it on.
You get back:
- A screen walkthrough of the closest thing we have built
- The parts we can show, and a straight answer about the parts we cannot
- The client's permission asked for first wherever it is needed
The free first step
What the first move looks like.
Samples of the one-page note and the discovery work that follows it, from proposals we wrote and sent.
A marketing diagnostic for a home-services company and its franchise armWhat happened: Proposal only. No build followed.
A dryer-vent service with a franchise programme asked what its marketing was actually doing, and what to fix first.
What it covered
- A short diagnostic of the site, the tracking, and the content as they stood
- A two-funnel site structure: one path for customers, one for prospective franchisees
- A measurement plan (analytics, tag management, ad pixels) so spend could be judged
- A content cadence sized to what the company could sustain
- The first move
- Fix measurement and the two funnels before spending on content or ads.
A channel viability study before any spendWhat happened: Study prepared; follow-up pending at the time of writing.
A consumer brand wanted to know which growth channel to commit to, and did not want to find out by funding all of them.
What it covered
- A scoring framework: reach, cost to test, fit with how the product is bought
- The channels ruled out, with the reason for each
- A short feasibility sprint on the channel that survived, followed by longer pilots only if it earned them
- The first move
- A short feasibility sprint on one channel, with the pilot decision made on its result.
A ninety-day paid-search trial plan for a roof-restoration companyWhat happened: Plan viewed and a brief received; the partner ran the account.
Through a partner agency, a roofing company wanted paid search tried properly before deciding whether to keep paying for it.
What it covered
- Keyword research from the search-intelligence tool, mapped to the services that pay
- One campaign structure for ninety days, with the budget band and lead target as the client stated them
- The single measure the trial would be judged on: cost per qualified lead
- The first move
- Ninety days, one campaign, judged on cost per lead.
Outreach, inbox, follow-up, voice, and billing, mapped as one systemWhat happened: Proposal only. No signature, no build.
A services company wanted its outreach, inbox triage, follow-up, voice calls, and billing to stop living in five tools that a person bridged by hand.
What it covered
- A diagram of the whole system across an automation platform, the CRM, a voice layer, and payment and accounting
- Acceptance criteria written as measurable targets, so the build could be judged rather than admired
- A two-phase plan, with the second phase contingent on the first being trusted
- The first move
- Automate intake and follow-up first; voice and billing wait until the classification is trusted.
Billing reconciliation for a small clinical practiceWhat happened: Proposal prepared; no award recorded.
A psychology practice reconciled its billing by hand every month, and had a budget that ruled out a platform.
What it covered
- The monthly reconciliation as it actually ran, step by step
- The hours it cost, in the client's own estimate
- What a small automation would take over, and what should stay manual
- The first move
- One small automation inside the budget, priced as a build rather than a subscription.
Lead intake, qualification, follow-up, and booking, in two phasesWhat happened: Proposed; no award.
A company wanted inbound leads qualified and followed up without a person watching the inbox, and booked when they were ready.
What it covered
- A workflow-platform design for intake, qualification rules, follow-up sequences, and booking
- Phase one and phase two, with the second only after the first had run
- An hour estimate rather than a fixed price at that stage, and the reason why
- The first move
- Phase one: intake and qualification only.
Guest-service automation for a hospitality operatorWhat happened: Proposed.
A hospitality operator wanted routine guest requests handled automatically, without the guest noticing a machine.
What it covered
- The requests that could be automated, and the ones that need a person on the first reply
- The escalation path, written before the automation
- A statement of work scoped to the routine requests only
- The first move
- Automate the routine requests; route everything else to a person, visibly.
A spreadsheet-validation demo built before the proposalWhat happened: Demo and proposal; no award recorded.
A manufacturing prospect asked for a recorded demo of the tool. There was no tool: the work was custom, so a working front end was built to show what it would do.
What it covered
- A front end that takes a spreadsheet upload, runs validation rules (an empty product code, a duplicate identifier), and hands off to workflow templates
- An indicative proposal with two options and a work breakdown by activity
- An explicit caveat that requirements had been gathered by email and no formal discovery had happened
- The first move
- Something to click before anything to sign.
One place to read a restaurant's point of sale, social, and web analyticsWhat happened: Discovery only. No build.
A restaurant group wanted its point-of-sale data, social channels, and web analytics readable in one place, so marketing could be decided from the numbers rather than from instinct.
What it covered
- A diagram of the data flow from the point of sale through social and web analytics into one store
- What an AI layer over that store could answer, and what it could not
- The discovery scope, and the smallest channel test that would prove the value first
- The first move
- A channel test before the platform.
Treasury forecast automation for a logistics groupWhat happened: Discovery only. No build.
A family-run logistics group built its weekly cash-flow forecast by hand from two reports out of its freight system, with stakeholders in two countries.
What it covered
- An intent summary agreed before the workshops
- Discovery workshops on the forecast as it was assembled, report by report
- A bilingual non-disclosure agreement, and a discovery output the group could take to a build
- The first move
- Automate the two report pulls before touching the forecast model.
A phased build for a remote-desktop platform, after a working proof of conceptWhat happened: Unsigned. The proof of concept it followed is in the capability catalogue.
An IT services firm had a working proof of concept and needed the path from it to a product its own team would eventually own.
What it covered
- Three phases, each with a handover milestone, and the point at which ownership transferred
- An hour-based estimate per phase, revised once against the client's budget
- Later, a separate scope to move a monitoring tool built on a no-code platform onto a cloud host, with a database migration and a delivery pipeline
- The first move
- Phase one on the relay and the agent, with ownership transfer written into the plan.
A quote packet and a consolidated technical approach for a digital publication readerWhat happened: Proposal reviewed; no award. The discovery deliverable is on the work page.
A publishing startup had a broad, generated statement of work and needed an architecture it could actually execute and price.
What it covered
- A consolidated technical approach: the publisher CMS scope, the system architecture, and the reader
- Team composition, QA and security strategy, acceptance criteria, and a risk register
- A quote packet with the delivery plan
- The first move
- Discovery output first, then a build against it.
After you send one
What happens next, in order.
We reply within two business days. If it is a fit, you get a one-page note on what to do first, before any sales call.
We read it
The founder reads every one. If something is missing to answer it, the reply asks for that one thing rather than for a meeting.
You get the document
One page, or the sample file, depending on which step you asked for. It says what to do first and what to leave alone.
You decide, or you do not
A scoping call exists if you want one, and it is also free. Plenty of these end with a recommendation to leave the process alone.
The whole engagement model, step by step and priced, is on the pricing page.
Elsewhere on the site
Related
- StartSend us the bottleneckA few sentences on what is still done by hand is enough to get a written answer.
- How it runsHow we workThe funnel, the four stages, how a problem is diagnosed and what a quote contains.
- How it runsHow a price is builtHours, tools and a share of company cost, agreed before work starts. The arithmetic is public.
Where to next
Pick one, or describe the problem and we will pick.
If none of these is quite it, write the situation in a few sentences. The reply names which first step fits, or says the fix is not software.