If you're reading this, you're probably one of three people: a non-technical founder who's been quoted $50,000 by an agency and felt sick, a technical co-founder drowning because you're also the CEO, or someone who's already shipped one version of the product and realised the architecture won't survive a paying customer.
I've worked with all three. The advice is different for each, but the underlying truth is the same: most SaaS dev problems aren't technical, they're scoping problems wearing a technical disguise. Get the scoping right and a competent full-stack dev can ship something good. Get the scoping wrong and the best developer in the world can't save you.
What I actually do for SaaS startups
The work splits into three distinct modes depending on where you are.
Mode 1: MVP build from scratch. You have a problem, customers, and a wireframe. You don't have code yet. The work is picking a stack you can maintain, building the boring parts (auth, payments, database, deployment), and shipping the thin slice of features that proves the thesis. Typical timeline: 6–12 weeks. Typical cost: $8,000–$25,000 USD depending on scope and pricing model (hourly vs fixed).
Mode 2: Rebuild or rescue. You shipped V1, you have customers, but the codebase is held together with hope. New features take three times longer than they should. Bugs surface in random places. Onboarding any new dev would take a month. The work is triage — what stays, what gets rewritten, what gets deleted — followed by careful rebuilds while keeping the thing running. Hourly only ($50/hr starting), because no one can fixed-price a rescue honestly.
Mode 3: Ongoing pair-of-hands. You have a CTO or a senior dev. You need someone reliable to take well-scoped tickets off the backlog so the senior person can focus on architecture. This is where the Lead Steer monthly retainer earns its keep — 10 dedicated hours a month at $500.
Most SaaS founders who reach out think they need Mode 1, but a third of them actually need Mode 2. I'll tell you which you're in before we start, even if the answer is "you should hire a different person."
The stack question (and why most advice is wrong)
The internet has a lot of opinions on the "best SaaS stack." Most are wrong because they optimise for the wrong thing — usually hiring pool or fashion. Here's what actually matters:
Pick a stack the second engineer can take over. You will eventually want a second engineer. Maybe in six months, maybe in three years. The difference between a good stack and a bad one is whether onboarding that person takes a week or a month. PHP/Laravel, Node/Express, Rails, Django, and Next.js with a SQL database are all fine choices. Esoteric Haskell setups, custom build pipelines, or four microservices for what could be one Rails app are not.
Pick a stack you can deploy without crying. A frighteningly large number of SaaS startups die because deployments are scary. Use Vercel, Render, Fly.io, Heroku, Railway — anywhere a git push ships to production with rollback. Don't run your own Kubernetes cluster on day one. Don't run your own anything on day one. You are running a SaaS, not a hosting company.
Pick a stack with a real ORM. Whatever the stack, use the canonical ORM (Eloquent, Prisma, Active Record, Django ORM). Hand-rolled SQL inside a SaaS that hasn't found product-market fit is technical debt that compounds weekly.
For most early-stage SaaS I'd nudge toward Laravel + MySQL on Render or DigitalOcean App Platform for backend-heavy products, or Next.js + Postgres on Vercel + Supabase for frontend-heavy ones. Both are deeply boring choices. That's why they work.
What to brief
The single best thing a non-technical founder can do is write a brief that answers these eight questions before contacting any developer:
- Who pays for this? A specific persona, not "small businesses." If you can't name the role and the size of company, you're not ready to build.
- What do they pay for it? A real number. "We'll figure out pricing later" means you'll build the wrong product.
- What's the smallest thing that could be useful? Not the smallest thing that's "complete" — the smallest thing one paying customer would actually use to solve their problem.
- What's the data model? A list of the 5–10 things your software needs to remember. Users, subscriptions, the thing the user creates, the thing that gets done to it. If this list is longer than 15, your scope is wrong.
- What integrations are non-negotiable? Stripe? Google Auth? A specific HRIS? List them. Each one adds 1–3 days of work.
- What's your deadline? Real deadline, not "ASAP." Customer commitment, demo day, runway date.
- What's your budget? Same — real number, not "what does it cost?" The honest range is $8k–$25k for an MVP. If your budget is $2k, you need no-code, not a developer.
- What happens if it works? This is the question most founders skip. If V1 ships and you get 50 users, what's the next 90 days of build look like? A dev who can't answer this is going to make decisions that screw you in month 4.
If you give me a brief that answers these, I can give you a quote in a day. If you can't answer them, the work I'd do first is helping you answer them — and that's the actual work, not the coding.
What I won't do
A few things I turn down:
- Crypto / Web3 / DeFi. Not because the tech is bad, but because the legal and regulatory surface in AU/UK/US is moving too fast for a single developer to keep a client safe.
- Anything HIPAA/PCI Level 1. Compliance work needs an in-house team and audited infrastructure. You want a specialist agency, not a freelancer.
- "Build me a [Uber/Airbnb/LinkedIn] clone." If the brief is a famous product's name, the brief isn't ready.
- Equity-only. I've done it before. It doesn't work for either side.
The honest pricing conversation
My SaaS work is priced one of three ways:
Hourly: $50 USD/hr. For unclear scope, rescues, or ongoing pair-of-hands. Time-tracked transparently — you see exactly what I worked on and when. Most clients start hourly and move to retainer once they trust the rhythm.
Fixed-price MVP: $8,000–$25,000. For clearly-scoped V1 builds. Deposit (50%) up front, balance on launch. I quote fixed-price only after a paid scoping session ($500, refunded against the build) — quoting fixed-price on a vague brief is how both sides get hurt.
Monthly retainer: $500/mo (Lead Steer). 10 hours/month. Best for product-led work where you have a backlog and want someone reliable working through it. Unused hours roll to the next month, with a 50% cap.
Compare that honestly to the alternatives:
- AU/US senior freelancer: $80–$150/hr. Same quality on the dev side. You're paying for proximity and tax residency.
- Agency: $150–$300/hr (but billed 1.5x because of overhead). Faster on big projects with multiple specialists. Slower on small focused work.
- Offshore agency or marketplace: $15–$40/hr. Cheaper on paper. Communication overhead and rework usually eat the savings on anything that isn't a clearly-spec'd commodity task.
What you get with me
Written in plain language because I'm tired of consultancies obscuring this:
- A Slack channel or Discord with me directly, not an account manager
- Daily check-ins during active builds, weekly during retainer work
- All code in your GitHub from day one — never mine, never rented
- Documentation written as I go, not at the end (or never)
- A handoff doc if we ever stop working together, so the next dev can pick up clean
If your SaaS could benefit from a free SEO audit before launch — to make sure your landing page and pricing page are technically sound for Google — run it through SEOCheck, my free crawler. Surprising how often a "soft launch" gets undermined by a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> left over from staging.
Ready to talk?
The first conversation is free. If your project is a fit, I'll send a written scope with a fixed quote within 48 hours. If it isn't, I'll tell you who I think actually fits — usually a specific person or agency I'd send you to.
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Looking for the deeper strategic guide? Read Full-Stack Development for Solo Founders and Bootstrappers — the pillar guide this service page sits under.