We build before you sign.
Before a contract exists, we build a working proof of concept against your actual problem. This page is the plain arithmetic on why that's worth it to us and what it gets you.
Why would you build before we sign?
Because a working proof collapses the riskiest part of your evaluation: whether we can actually do the thing. Everything else about vendor selection is reference-checking. This part can just be demonstrated.
Agencies ask you to buy on portfolio and promise. We'd rather you buy on a thing that already works against your data, your systems, your problem. It also disciplines us: a POC forces the hypothesis to be specific before anyone's on retainer.
What do you actually get?
A scoped, working demonstration: an integration moving your real signal, a page structure answering your real queries, or an agent reading your real kernel. Small enough to build fast, real enough to judge.
It lives in the deal room beside the research and the hypothesis, so your internal case isn't "they seem good." It's "the thing is running. Click it."
What does it cost you?
Nothing. The arithmetic works for us without your money: proofs shorten sales cycles, kill bad-fit deals early, and every build sharpens a pattern we reuse. A lost deal that taught us a new integration still paid.
The honest version of the math: we spend real hours pre-contract. In exchange, deals close on evidence instead of persuasion, scope disputes drop because the hypothesis was tested before pricing, and the patterns compound across clients. Enthusiasm is not required to believe this; the incentives alone hold it up.
Where's an example?
A scoped proof against a real pipeline, built before signature.
For a trades company evaluating us, the proof was the CompanyCam wiring: job-site photos landing on the deal record, stamping the job stage, and triggering the office follow-up. Built pre-contract against a sandbox of their real structure. The evaluation stopped being about our slides and started being about their pipeline.
The build shipped to production after signature, already tested.
event: photo_set.created match: project.address → deal.property write: deal.job_stage = "in_progress" trigger: workflow "job-started-notify"
Is there a catch?
The scoping is the catch, if you want one: the POC is small on purpose, sized to prove the riskiest assumption and nothing else. If what you need proven is genuinely large, we'll say so and propose the smallest honest slice of it.
Who owns the POC if we don't sign?
The pattern is ours; the instance built on your data is yours to keep or discard. We don't hold demos hostage. A proof that only works if you're locked in isn't proof of much.