Service

A product team that stays,
long after the first release.

After the first release, we continue as your product team on a monthly retainer. A small pod of developers and a product strategist already knows your codebase, so work continues while you hire, or instead of a hire. The retainer has no fixed end date.

See the proof
The cadence, and the handover

Month one, the pod picks up the codebase. A steady team of three reads the code and plans the first releases.

3 months - 4+ years
how long our partnerships run, from the shortest to the longest
Monthly
retainer, with no fixed end date
4+ years
Casa Paleologu ran on a fractional team, with no IT department
Days
turnaround for a new landing page once the pod knows the codebase

01 - The situation

The first release ships. Then the real work starts.

A founder, an innovation unit, and a portfolio company hit the same wall after the first version: who builds the next release, and who keeps the product live.

Where a product stalls after launch

  • The MVP works, but the team that built it moves on to the next project.
  • An innovation unit funds one strong pilot, then loses its team before the next one.
  • A portfolio company signs a technical vendor with no CTO in the room to check it.
  • A contractor leaves, and the codebase has no one left who reads it.

What a partnership gives you instead

  • The same pod continues on the product, month after month.
  • We run several experiments a quarter, with one consistent report format.
  • We supply on-demand technical leadership: architecture reviews, recruitment help, and vendor checks.
  • The codebase stays documented, so a handover works at any point.

02 - What you get

Three things a partnership adds every month

Not a fixed scope of work, but a team that stays. What it ships changes each month, what it protects does not.

01

A steady product team

A small pod of developers and a product strategist who stay on your product every month.

What it is

The same people who shipped the last release ship the next one. We add features, fix what breaks in production, and keep a steady release cadence. Casa Paleologu ran on this pattern for more than four years.

Why it matters

You do not restart the ramp-up cost every quarter. New work builds on a team that already knows your product.

02

Fractional CTO leadership

On-demand technical leadership for a founder, a portfolio company, or a business without its own CTO.

What it is

We run architecture reviews, help with technical recruitment, and evaluate vendors before a contract gets signed. A senior technical voice sits in the room for the decisions that matter.

Why it matters

You make build-vs-buy and recruitment decisions with someone who built production software before. A written recommendation follows each review, not a verbal opinion.

03

A documented, transferable codebase

The codebase stays in a state that a new team, yours or another vendor's, can pick up at any time.

What it is

We document the architecture as we build, not after a handover request. Instructions for AI agents sit in the repository next to the code they cover, the same practice we run on our own products.

Why it matters

You keep the option to bring the work in-house at any point in the engagement, not only at the end.

03 - How it runs

The cadence, month by month

The team stays a fixed size. What changes is how much of the product your own team runs.

The cadence, and the handover

Month one, the pod picks up the codebase. A steady team of three reads the code and plans the first releases.

Month 1

The pod picks up the codebase

A senior developer and a product strategist read the codebase. Together we agree the release cadence and the first items on the backlog.

Every month

Features ship on a steady cadence

The same pod ships features, fixes production issues, and reports progress every month. The cadence stays steady, whether the retainer runs three months or four years.

When you are ready

Your own team joins

Your new engineers learn the codebase next to a pod that does not shrink. You choose the moment to add them, not us.

Handover

Full ownership returns to you

The codebase carries full documentation at every stage, so a handover works whenever you decide. Ownership shifts gradually until your team owns all of it.

04 - Proof

Where we did this work

Two client retainers and two of our own products. Each one ran for months or years, built and operated by a small team.

Casa Paleologu: a custom course-sales platform, run for years without an IT department

Education, culture, publishing

Casa Paleologu: a custom course-sales platform, run for years without an IT department

A Bucharest cultural institution runs its entire commercial operation on a custom platform: enrollment, card payments, Romanian fiscal invoices, and customer accounts. A fraction of a developer operates the platform, in production since 2022.

Read the case study
From raw court decisions to an AI research workbench: a complete legal-tech product built by a small team

Legal technology, AI-assisted legal research

From raw court decisions to an AI research workbench: a complete legal-tech product built by a small team

A small team built a legal-tech product in roughly three months, in three phases. An ingestion pipeline processed tens of thousands of court decisions from a government database. A semantic search engine returns citations a lawyer can trust. A multi-tenant AI research workbench holds the daily work of a legal team.

Read the case study
A ground-up rebuild of SafestMenu, our restaurant menu platform, with no downtime

Hospitality, restaurant software

A ground-up rebuild of SafestMenu, our restaurant menu platform, with no downtime

SafestMenu is our own QR menu platform for restaurants, in use since 2020. We rebuilt it from the ground up on a modern base, and the restaurants continued to use it throughout. The new version reads the same data as the old one, and it matches the old one feature for feature, with 1,106 automated tests as proof.

Read the case study
A CRM you can talk to: Founders Kit, our own AI sales assistant with email and calendar built in

Sales software, AI-assisted CRM

A CRM you can talk to: Founders Kit, our own AI sales assistant with email and calendar built in

Our own product: a CRM where an AI assistant called Kit does the routine sales work. Kit takes 82 distinct actions across deals, contacts, email, and calendar. The product holds roughly 220,000 lines of code from about ten months of work, live at founders-kit.com.

Read the case study
All case studies

05 - Questions

Common questions

What is a dedicated development team, and how is yours different?
A dedicated development team is a small group that works on one product every month, not a pool of contractors that changes each month. We also call it a fractional product team, since the pod costs less than a full in-house department. Our pod includes developers and a product strategist. The same people stay on the product from one month to the next. Casa Paleologu ran on this exact model for more than four years, with no internal IT department.
What does your fractional CTO service cover?
It covers the technical leadership a company needs, without a full-time hire. We run architecture reviews before a major decision. We help with technical recruitment, so a non-technical founder does not interview alone. We evaluate vendors before a portfolio company signs a contract. An innovation unit can also use it to run several experiments a quarter, with one consistent report format across all of them.
How much does a long-term product partnership cost?
We state no price on this page, and no price list exists anywhere on the site. A partnership runs as a monthly retainer, and we agree the fee before the first month starts. The fee depends on the pod size and the release cadence you need. It changes only when we agree a change together, never by surprise on an invoice.
What does post-MVP development look like?
Post-MVP development is not one fixed package. Most clients choose one of three routes after the sprint. Some hire their own team, and the new hires inherit a documented codebase instead of a black box. Some pause the work and return to it later, with the code exactly as they left it. Others move straight into this partnership, and the same pod that built the MVP ships the next release.
Do you replace our team, or work as an outsourced product development partner alongside it?
Either model works, and you decide which one fits. As an outsourced product development partner, our pod owns the full backlog and ships every release. Alongside your own developers, we take the features your team does not have time for. We document our part of the codebase the same way. Casa Paleologu runs this second model today: a fractional team next to marketing and content staff, with no separate IT department.
How long does a long-term software development partnership run?
It depends entirely on the need, and clients call us a long-term software development partner for exactly this flexibility. We ran both ends of the range ourselves. The shortest of our long-term partnerships ran about three months. The longest runs more than four years and continues today. The length is a decision you make each month, not a term fixed in a contract.

06 - Related

Other services

Most engagements combine two of these. Start where the risk is highest.

MVP development sprintA fixed-scope sprint of 4 to 6 weeks. It ends with a deployed product, the codebase, and a roadmap.Custom-built AI agentsAgents that take real actions in your product and your operations, under permission controls you select.Custom software and modernizationOne system that replaces the spreadsheets, or a ground-up rebuild of a product you still run.Proof of concept and pilotsA functional prototype in 3 to 6 weeks that answers one question: scale it, or stop it.AI opportunity workshop and roadmapA workshop with your process owners that shows where AI pays off, and in which order.Agentic development workshopsWe teach your developers to ship production software with AI agents, then guide the first build.Technical due diligenceA review of the code, the architecture, and the team before you invest, delivered as a written report.
This service, written for one audienceFor startupsFor VCs and accelerators

Ready for a team that does not rotate?

Book a short call. We look at your product, your team, and the release cadence you need, then propose a pod and a monthly fee. You keep the option to change or end the retainer at any point.

Free scoping callConfidentialMonth-to-month, no lock-in