01
Pre-seed to seed proof of concept
What you need to demonstrate the wedge to investors and the first 5-20 customers. Lean, but engineered - not slideware-grade.
Product Engineering · LAUNCHPAD
MVP Development.
Zero-to-one MVPs scoped against what funders, regulators, and first customers actually need to see - built production-ready from day one, not as throwaway demos that have to be rebuilt before Series A.
- Practice
- Product Engineering
- Department
- LAUNCHPAD
The problem
Most agency MVPs are throwaway demos in production wrappers.
The pattern across founder-funded MVP engagements: an agency ships a beautiful demo that gets through the seed pitch and immediately becomes the founder's problem. The architecture was scoped to ship in 8 weeks, not to scale to 10x users. Identity is hardcoded. The data model is two layers of JSON in a Postgres column. Test coverage is zero. The agency hands off and disappears. By Series A, the founder is rebuilding it - and the rebuild costs more than the original would have if it had been engineered for the next 18 months instead of the next 8 weeks.
Prosigns runs MVP engagements as engineering - not as agency theater. Production-ready from day one: real auth, real observability, a data model that doesn't require a rewrite at 1,000 users. Scoped against what your investors, first customers, and (for regulated workloads) regulators need to see. Founder-friendly economics - we're not staffing a 14-person team to ship a CRUD app. The handoff is documented and the architecture survives the post-MVP team that takes over.
Where it ships
5 use cases, in production.
Specific applications we’ve built and operated. Not speculative: every example below is grounded in a real shipped engagement.
- 02
9-14wk
typical first-version timeline
Seed to Series A scale-ready MVP
The MVP that proves traction and survives 10x growth without a rewrite. Production-ready auth, identity, observability, data model.
- 03
Regulated-vertical MVP
Healthcare, fintech, insurance - the MVP needs to clear HIPAA / PCI / SOC 2 readiness from day one because the first customer is enterprise. Compliance scoped before the first commit.
- 04
Enterprise spinout / corporate MVP
Internal innovation team, corporate venture, or carved-out product line. MVP that respects the parent's identity, audit, and security posture but ships at startup velocity.
- 05
Pre-existing-team augmentation
You have founders / a small team but need senior firepower for the foundational architecture. We pair with the team for 8-14 weeks and hand off a production-ready substrate.
How we engage
4 phases, named in the SOW.
Each phase has a deliverable, an owner, and an acceptance criterion. Not slogans, operating rules.
- 01
Wedge-first scoping
Discovery isn't a 6-week deck. We map the wedge - what investors and first customers need to see - against the architecture decisions that have to survive the next 18 months. Trim scope ruthlessly to ship the wedge in 9-14 weeks while engineering the substrate properly.
- 02
Production-ready substrate
Real auth (Clerk / Auth0 / Cognito, not hardcoded). Real observability (Sentry / Datadog / Vercel Observability) from day one. A data model that doesn't require a rewrite at 1,000 users. CI / CD with staging. The cost is small at MVP scope; the savings are enormous at Series A.
- 03
Founder-friendly bench
2-4 senior engineers, often a designer, sometimes a PM. Not a 14-person agency team billing 60% to project management. The bench is the same engineers from kickoff to handoff - no junior swap-out.
- 04
Honest handoff
Architecture decision records, runbooks, onboarding docs for the team that takes over. 30-60 day shadowing period if you're hiring a CTO / VPE post-launch. We're not optimizing for renewal-trap; we're optimizing for your team owning the code cleanly when they take over.
Capabilities
What’s in scope.
- 9-14 week MVP timelines for the typical wedge scope
- Senior-only bench: 2-4 engineers, designer, sometimes PM
- Production-ready auth, identity, observability, CI/CD from day one
- Data models engineered for 18-month survivability, not just demo day
- Regulated-vertical readiness (HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2) from week 1
- Investor-deck and demo-day support (technical diligence prep)
- Documented handoff to in-house team or successor vendor
- Optional: Managed Services through Series A and beyond
Stack
Tools we use in production.
- Default frontend
- Next.js (App Router)TypeScriptTailwind CSSshadcn/uiRadix UI
- Default backend
- Next.js Server ActionstRPCHonoFastAPINode.js
- Databases
- PostgreSQL (Neon, Supabase)Drizzle ORMPrismaDynamoDB
- Auth + identity
- ClerkAuth0AWS CognitoSupabase AuthCustom OIDC where required
- Hosting
- VercelAWSCloudflare WorkersRenderFly.io
- Ops + observability
- SentryPostHogDatadogVercel ObservabilityGitHub Actions
Selected work
Quantified outcomes, not adjectives.
Common questions
Asked before the first call.
- 01
How fast can you ship an MVP?
Wedge MVPs land in 9-14 weeks for typical scope. Anything claiming 4 weeks is selling demoware that'll be rebuilt before Series A. Anything claiming 6+ months has scoped a v1, not an MVP. We trim scope ruthlessly to ship the wedge inside the 14-week window while engineering the substrate properly.
- 02
What does an MVP cost?
Typical 9-14 week wedge MVP with a 2-4 engineer + designer bench: $180K-$450K. Regulated-vertical MVPs (HIPAA / PCI / SOC 2 readiness from day one) run higher: $300K-$650K. Enterprise spinout MVPs that need to inherit the parent's identity / audit posture: $400K-$900K. We give a fixed-scope or fixed-bench-rate quote - no hidden change-order economics.
- 03
What happens after the MVP ships?
Three options: (1) hand off to your in-house team with a 30-60 day shadowing period and full handoff documentation; (2) stay with us under Managed Services through Series A; (3) hybrid - your team takes the application layer, we operate the platform / infra. We'll help you decide which fits your hiring runway.
- 04
Do you take equity instead of cash?
Rarely, and only for founders we've worked with before or where there's a strong commercial rationale beyond cash conservation. Our default is cash because we're an engineering firm, not a venture studio - and equity-for-services arrangements have a long history of misaligning incentives at the worst possible moments. If you want to discuss it, we'll have an honest conversation about whether it fits.
- 05
Can we hire your engineers after the engagement?
Yes. We don't use non-solicit clauses to make it impossible. If a founder wants to hire one of our engineers post-engagement, we negotiate a placement fee that's standard for the industry - we'd rather you build a strong in-house team than hold you hostage.
- 06
What if our scope changes mid-build?
Most MVPs have one or two meaningful scope shifts during the 9-14 week build - usually because customer conversations change the wedge. We re-plan against the new scope and the same timeline / budget envelope, trading other scope out where needed. We don't use scope-shift as a change-order revenue tactic.
Within Product Engineering
Other capabilities in this practice.
Talk to us
Bring an MVP development problem. We’ll bring a senior engineer.
A senior engineer plus the LAUNCHPAD department lead joins the first call. No discovery gauntlet, no junior reps.