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How engagements work

No fixed price. No "contact us" theater either.

Downshift used to publish two numbers on this page. It stopped, because a co-founder seat is not a deliverable you can staple a price to, and pretending otherwise set founders up for a surprise later.

So here is the honest version. What an engagement is, the eight things that move the estimate, what the monthly covers, and the one fixed fee still published below.

Two ways in

One is bounded and priced. One is an engagement. Most founders who arrive with something already built start with the first.

Production Gap Audit
$2,500 fixed

Five business days. For founders who already have something built and cannot tell whether it is any good.

  • The codebase and the deployed environment, scored against all 14 points of the production gap
  • Evidence for every point. Code references, failing requests, screenshots
  • A verdict, with the reasoning shown: salvageable, partly salvageable, or rebuild
  • The full fee credited against month one if an engagement starts within 30 days
Read what the audit covers
Most ventures
Deployed Pod
Upfront estimate

Then monthly. Most MVPs go live in two to four months, and the pod keeps running the product after that.

  • A pod of two or more senior engineers. One of them holds the co-founder seat
  • Product design, UX, and UI. Not bolted on from a second vendor
  • Production deploy on accounts the founder owns
  • Full code ownership from day one. The repo, the infrastructure, the IP
  • Zero equity by default

A third path exists. The Public Build campaign carries no cash cost for a small number of founders each cycle, in exchange for working in the open. The bar is high and the door is open. Apply here.

What moves the estimate

Eight things. Nothing else. If a founder can answer these, they can predict roughly where their engagement lands before anyone writes a proposal.

1. Pod size

Two senior engineers is the floor. Adding seats compresses the calendar. It does not reduce the total.

2. Duration

Two to four months to a live MVP is the honest band. The estimate names a date, and the date is the largest single input to the number.

3. Surfaces

Web alone is one build. Web plus native iOS plus native Android is three, each with its own release process and its own review queue.

4. Integrations

Every external system the product must talk to is scope. Payments, CRMs, bank feeds, health records, carrier APIs. Two integrations is a different product from nine.

5. How deep the AI goes

One model call behind a form is a week of work. A retrieval pipeline with evaluation, guardrails, and a feedback loop is a different product wearing the same word.

6. Compliance

SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR change the architecture, not just the paperwork. Audit logging, data residency, and access control get designed in rather than added later.

7. Where it starts

Greenfield is predictable. Inheriting a codebase is not, until someone reads it. That is what the audit is for, and why it exists as a separate step.

8. What already exists

A validated spec, real users, or a working design system shortens the front of the engagement. Guesswork lengthens it.

A pod of two or more senior engineers has a real cost floor. This is not a freelancer budget, and Downshift says so on the first call rather than in a proposal three weeks later.

The estimate is written down before any work starts. If the scope moves, the estimate moves, and the founder sees it before the change happens rather than on an invoice.

What the monthly covers

The upfront estimate carries the build to a live product. The monthly is what happens for the rest of the company's life, and it is the part most founders have never been sold honestly.

The same pod keeps shipping features, answering incidents, patching dependencies, watching the bills, and making the technical calls a non-technical founder should not have to make alone.

It is not a maintenance retainer handed off to a different team after launch. The people on the kickoff call are the people still there in month nine.

A founder can end it. The repo, the infrastructure, and the IP were theirs from day one, so there is nothing to extract and nothing to negotiate.

How to locate the number before you ask

Downshift will not publish its price. It will publish everything a founder needs to work out the magnitude, using costs that are a matter of public record.

A full-time CTO runs $200,000 to $400,000 a year before equity, and the search takes six months on average (Wellfound and PayScale, 2026). A technical co-founder costs 25 to 50 percent of the company, and Carta's data across 32,000+ companies shows 45.9 percent of two-person founding teams split it evenly. On a $10 million exit that is $2.5 million to $5 million.

Downshift sits between a freelancer and a full-time engineering hire. Closer to the hire, because that is what a pod of senior engineers is.

Anyone who wants the actual figure gets it in writing after one call, before any work starts. That call is free and it is not a qualification interview.

When Downshift is the wrong call

  • The idea has not been tested with anyone yet. Build it in Bubble or Lovable first, put it in front of 50 people, and come back once there is something worth engineering.
  • You can write the spec, manage the work, and judge the code. Hire a freelancer. Paying for judgment you already have is a waste of money.
  • You need a website. Downshift builds products. A good agency will do a better job on a marketing site for a fraction of this.
  • The budget is a freelancer budget. Downshift will say so on the first call. There is no version of a senior pod that fits that number, and pretending otherwise wastes a month for both sides.

Pricing questions

Why does Downshift not publish a fixed price?
Because a co-founder seat is not a deliverable with a number stapled to it. Downshift used to quote a fixed figure for a fixed scope. In practice the work continues past launch, and pricing it as a one-time project misrepresented what the engagement actually is. Every engagement now starts with a written estimate built from the eight drivers above, followed by a monthly engagement. The estimate arrives before any work begins.
What does an engagement actually cost?
It depends on the eight drivers above. Pod size and duration move it most. A pod of two or more senior engineers has a real cost floor, so this is not a freelancer budget. Downshift says that on the first call rather than in a proposal three weeks later.
How long until the product is live?
Most engagements reach a live MVP in two to four months. Native mobile surfaces, regulated data, and heavy integration requirements run longer. The estimate commits to a date. Downshift no longer publishes a marketing number in place of one.
Is there a fixed price for anything?
Yes. The Production Gap Audit is $2,500, delivered in five business days. It is bounded, so it can carry a fixed fee honestly. The full amount is credited against month one if an engagement starts within 30 days, and there is no charge at all if the report does not change what the founder does next.
Do you take equity?
Not by default. Engagements are cash-first and the founder keeps 100 percent of the company. Equity is a variant Downshift proposes when it wants exposure to the upside, and it is a conversation rather than a condition.
What happens after the MVP is live?
The same pod keeps running the product. Features, incidents, dependency patches, and the technical calls a non-technical founder should not have to make alone. It is not a maintenance retainer handed to a different team.

Pick a starting point

A call gets you a written estimate. The audit gets you a verdict on what you already have. Public Build is an application, and Manuel reads every one.

Start with an audit