MVP development in London
Early-stage London founders often need to put a working product in front of a large buyer before they have raised much. A pre-seed insurtech needs something a managing agent can try; a fintech needs a payment flow that works for its first pilot; a proptech needs a demo a landlord will actually use. The trap is building the whole platform before anyone has said yes to it.
Our fixed-price two-week starter is built for that moment. You get a working first version of the one flow that proves the idea, on a stack that can be hardened later rather than thrown away, and a written list of what would need to change before real customer money goes through it. The code is yours from the first commit, so it carries straight into the next stage.
Financial services drive more of London's software demand than any other sector. Payments companies, challenger banks, wealth platforms and brokers need ledgers that reconcile, APIs that stay correct when a partner retries, and apps customers trust with their money. Most of them reached the market fast, which was the right call at the time, and now run systems built for launch rather than for the size they have become. The work is making those systems dependable without stopping the business that runs on them.
Insurance is its own case. The specialty insurers, managing agents and brokers around Lloyd's still run much of their work on ageing policy administration platforms and spreadsheets that travel between firms by email. Lloyd's has moved away from Blueprint Two, the market-wide programme that was meant to digitise placement and claims, so each firm is modernising its own systems one integration at a time. The City's law firms and consultancies sit alongside them, holding decades of documents and few ways to search them by meaning.
Media, retail and the public sector bring different problems. Publishers run subscriptions, paywalls and content systems that have to hold up on a busy news day. Direct-to-consumer brands outgrow their first shop as they start selling into Europe and the US. Suppliers to councils and NHS bodies build services that have to work for every resident, including people using a keyboard or a screen reader. Hiring is the common constraint. ITJobsWatch puts the median advertised salary for a software engineer in London at £98,750 over the six months to September 2026, and banks, fintechs and the large technology firms compete for the same people.
Working with us from London is straightforward. Four hours of every working day overlap with yours, set across your morning, so stand-up, code review and the decisions that follow happen live. You talk to the engineer who writes the code, in your own Slack, GitHub and Linear. The rest of the day moves forward in pull requests you can read at your desk, with runbooks and architecture notes written as the work goes.
We are the right fit when you have a defined piece of work and need senior engineers on it this month rather than next quarter. Start with a fixed-price two-week piece and judge us on what ships. We add capacity while a London hire is still in progress, and we work white-label under your name for agencies.
Four ways this arrives.
Every feature is marked essential. We work with you to find the one journey a user must complete for the idea to be proven or disproven, build that properly, and write the rest down as a list for after launch.
It was built with a no-code tool or over a weekend, and real users are now finding its limits. We keep what works, move the data somewhere you own, and rebuild the parts that break without taking the product offline.
A demo that works in the meeting and then has to become the product. We build it on a real database with real sign-in from the start, so the version you demo is the version you keep, not a mock-up you throw away.
You need someone to make the technical decisions and explain them in plain language. We write down every choice that is expensive to reverse, why we made it and what changing it would cost, so whoever you hire next can pick it up.
Began in 2024 as a script that turned monthly exports into charts, and grew step by step into a web app, a mobile app, a technician phone page and the one backend under all three.
Read the write-up →Asked by London teams.
How do you work with teams in London?+
Four hours of every working day overlap with yours, set across your London morning, so stand-up and code review happen live. We join your calls and work in your tools: Slack, GitHub and Linear. You talk directly to the engineer who writes the code. Outside the overlap, the work carries on in pull requests you can read at your desk, and runbooks and architecture notes are written as we go.
Do you build for London fintechs and insurers?+
Yes. For payments companies, challenger banks and wealth platforms we build ledgers that reconcile, webhook handling that stays correct when a provider retries, and React Native apps with biometric sign-in and step-up checks for risky payments. For insurers, managing agents and brokers around Lloyd's we replace spreadsheet workflows with internal tools: bordereaux intake, referral queues and approvals, connected to the policy systems you already run.
How does your rate compare to hiring in London?+
ITJobsWatch puts the median advertised salary for a software engineer in London at roughly £99,000. Our published rate is $35/hour, with a $5,000 minimum engagement. There is no recruiting time and no employment overhead, and we can start within days of the first call. Most clients begin with a fixed-price two-week piece at $2,800, so you judge us on working code before committing to more.
Can you work white-label for a London agency?+
Yes. London agencies bring us in when a client project needs more senior backend, mobile or infrastructure work than the team has free. We work under your name, in your repositories and your client's tools, and you stay the face of the project. The NDA comes before specifics, the code belongs to the client from the first commit, and runbooks and architecture notes are written as we go.
What does the fixed-price two-week starter cover?+
A defined slice of the product, agreed in writing before we start. For an MVP it is usually the core flow, working end to end against a real database. It costs $2,800. You get something running at the end and you keep the code either way, so you can judge us on output before committing to the rest of the build.
How long does an MVP take?+
It depends on what the smallest honest version is, which is why we scope before we quote. The two-week starter usually answers the question: by the end of it one flow works, and you have a written estimate for the rest with its assumptions listed. We would rather cut scope with you than promise a date we would miss.
Why Next.js and PostgreSQL?+
Because they are boring in the right way. Both are widely known, so you can hire for them later. Postgres will carry you a long way past your first paying customers, and Next.js gives you a web app and an API in one codebase. If the product is mobile-first, we build the app in React Native on the same backend.
Will we have to rewrite it later?+
Not if we do our job. The shortcuts we take are in scope, not in structure: fewer features, plainer screens, manual steps behind the scenes. The data model, sign-in, permissions and deploys are built properly from the first week, because those are the parts that force a rewrite when they are wrong.
Who owns the code and the accounts?+
You do, from the first commit. Repositories, hosting, domains and payment accounts are created in your name, not ours. If we set something up ourselves to save time, we transfer it to you before the first invoice. An MVP you cannot take to another team is a liability, not an asset.