Pricing: blitz, fixed bid, fractional

Most studios make you sit through two calls to find out whether you can afford them. Here it is.

Big agency experience, without the overhead and the padded invoices. It starts with one week: a blitz from one senior expert. It buys more than you might think. Six ways to buy it: three for a piece of work, three for the long run.

One-off work. Pay for a defined project, a week at a time, or a month at once.

Fixed bid

Onenumber

Discovery first · then one number

A figure we hold

A defined project, scoped with you, quoted once and held. Available after the question week, not before it.

Once we understand what is being built, we put a single number on it and stand behind it; change the scope later and we requote, openly, before anything moves. On technically deep or long builds the bid carries an upfront discovery fee — pricing a complex system is itself work, and it is the work the bid depends on being right.

You get:

One figure, agreed up front
Scope agreed together, alongside it
Requoted openly if scope moves
Paid discovery on deep or long builds

Week rate

$5k/ week

One senior expert · 40–60 hours

A week of us

One senior-level expert, working inside your team, planned ahead and scheduled. Billed by the week, never by the hour.

Wondering what a week gets you? Ten ideas

The range is the point: forty hours when that is what the job takes, sixty when it needs the push — same price either way, and no overage. The plan is agreed before the week starts, so on Monday you already know what Thursday produces. Best used as extra muscle to get something over the line, or for the small awkward job nobody internally wants to pick up.

You get:

One senior-level expert, dedicated to the week
A plan agreed with you before Monday
Week on, week off, as the roadmap moves

Month rate

−25%

Four weeks · bought together

A month, bought at once

Four weeks together takes twenty-five percent off. The best block on this page.

Four weeks at five thousand is twenty thousand; bought together it is fifteen — one block you buy once and draw down against, for when you know there is a month of work but not exactly how it splits. Need it standing rather than one-off? That is the retainer, and it goes further.

You get:

Four weeks: 25% off
One block, drawn down
Same fixed-price weeks inside it

Retainer

Scaled∞

Days, monthly · by commitment

The longer it runs, the cheaper it gets

A standing block of days every month, priced down as the commitment grows. Economy of scale, in our favour and yours.

Bulk is a block you buy once. A retainer is us on your roster: a standing number of days each month, first call on the calendar, and a rate that keeps falling the longer the term runs. Scale the days up when something ships and down when it does not — the term is the only thing that has to hold. The longest one we have run went twelve years.

You get:

Us on your roster, not in your inbox
Rate falls as the term grows
Scale up and down inside it
First call on our calendar

Fractional

Oneseat

Part of every week · billed monthly

The seat you have not filled yet

Design director. Head of product. A senior person in the chair for part of every week — without the salary, the title and the eighteen months.

A retainer buys days. Fractional buys a person with a job: the one who decides what the thing is before anyone builds it, sits in your standups, owns the roadmap, and answers to your leadership like anyone else on the team. When you make the full-time hire, we help you make it — and hand over properly. The seat was always yours.

You get:

A named senior person, part-time
In your meetings, on your org chart
Owns a function, not a ticket
A handoff when you hire

Equity · for startups

Bench+10

Our cost, plus ten · plus a stake

Dollars, traded for skin in the game

A discounted hourly rate — our cost plus ten percent for overhead, no margin — and a position alongside you instead.

We do not make money on the cash here. The upside is the stake, and being invested changes how the work gets made: longer horizons, fewer shortcuts, nobody optimising for the end of the statement of work. Not on a menu and not offered often — we have to believe in it, and it is a conversation for the start, not a discount to negotiate at the end.

You get:

Hourly at our cost, plus 10%
A partner with a position, not a vendor
Stake agreed in writing, up front

With every engagement

The first five hours are on us.

Five real hours, not a sales call with a deck at the end of it. They come with a signed engagement on any of the six above, and are credited against your first invoice. They are not a free consultation to book on their own.

What you actually needWhich is frequently not the thing in the brief.
What the requirements areIncluding the ones nobody has written down yet.
When you need itAnd the real deadline behind the stated one.
Anything else in the wayBudget, politics, the system nobody is allowed to touch.

And whichever of the six you pick: no hourly billing anywhere on this page, and everything we make is yours.

Start an engagement

Five thousand, concretely

What comes out of one week.

Not a status report and not a research phase. Real things, made with your team, finished enough to show someone who was not in the room. Any one of these is a week.

A clickable prototype straw-manThe idea, built enough to click through and argue with.
A pitch deck with your brand on itThe story shaped with you, designed around your brand and real screens.
A high-level UX framework for that thing that has no shapeThe key screens, and the structure everything else hangs off.
A design system starterType, colour, spacing and the first dozen components, ready to build against.
A product audit with the three real blockersThe three things costing you conversion, ranked, with what we would do about each.
One critical flow, mapped end to endOnboarding, checkout, activation — whichever one is leaking, mapped and redesigned.
A quick brand and a lite brand kitA mark, type and colour, packaged so your team can use it on Monday.
A first pass of high-fidelity UIThe key screens, drawn properly, in the states people hit.
A five-page websiteDesigned, written with you and built, by the end of the month.
An honest read on your AI featureWhether it belongs, what it does when it is wrong, and how you would know it works. Our position →

Not sure which of these you need? That is what the first week is for, and it is the same five thousand.

The honest part

We can tell you the rate. We cannot tell you the total.

The rate is five thousand a week; it was before you called and it will be next Tuesday. The total depends on what the problem turns out to be, and nobody knows that in a first meeting — a figure offered there is a guess wearing a quote’s clothing, whoever offers it. So we scope after the question week, when a number stops being a guess. You can stop there if the answer is not what you hoped. People have. There is a story about this →

What actually moves the number

The rate is fixed. The multiplier is up to you.

None of this is a surcharge and none of it is on an invoice. Rules of thumb for where the weeks go.

Bar length = cost of the week

×1Deciding something in week two
×20Deciding the same thing in week nine
×1.5A second decider with a veto who has not attended a review
×2“Make it pop” in place of a reason — compounding, each round
×1.8A spec nobody is permitted to question
×0.6Giving us the constraint you have not written down yet
FreeUs telling you the idea is good
FreeUs telling you it isn’t. That is the one worth having.

The twenty is not a joke and it is the only figure on this page we would defend in a deposition. A decision deferred past the point where the thing is built is not a decision, it is a rebuild. Working with creatives →

Including, sometimes, none of them. If a week of us is not the right spend, we would rather say so now than invoice you for finding out.

Start the conversation

The part nobody puts on their website.

A figure we hold

A week of us

A month, bought at once

The longer it runs, the cheaper it gets

The seat you have not filled yet

Dollars, traded for skin in the game

The first five hours are on us.

What comes out of one week.

We can tell you the rate. We cannot tell you the total.

The rate is fixed. The multiplier is up to you.

Tell us what you’re building and we’ll work out together which one fits.