MVP development in New York
Many New York founders come from the industry they are building for: a former trader, a publishing executive, a broker who has watched the same manual process fail for a decade. They understand the problem better than any engineer will, often have a first customer willing to pilot, and have no technical co-founder. What they need is a working version in front of that customer before the interest cools.
We cut the scope to the one flow the pilot customer will actually use, and build it properly underneath: a real data model, sign-in, permissions and deploys the next version can build on. If the pilot customer is a bank or an insurer, they will want to know who can sign in and what changed, so multi-factor sign-in and a change history are built in the first week. The fixed-price two-week starter shows whether the idea survives real data, and you keep the code either way.
Most software bought in New York is bought by companies that do not think of themselves as software companies. Banks, insurers, asset managers, publishers, agencies, fashion houses and property firms all run on systems that sit beside the real business: a client portal, a pricing engine, a reconciliation job, a content pipeline. Those systems rarely start from nothing. They connect to a vendor platform, a core system older than the team, and a folder of spreadsheets someone updates by hand, and the brief is usually to make all three agree.
What those companies need built follows the industry. Asset managers and insurers need client portals where a family office sees two funds and not a third, and overnight jobs that reconcile custodian, market data and order feeds before the market opens. Publishers and ad-tech firms need event pipelines whose delivery numbers agree across vendors, and front ends that stay fast under the ad stack. Property firms need apps for technicians working in basements with no signal. And founders who left one of these industries need a first version in front of a pilot customer before the interest cools.
Hiring is the constraint. Engineers here are courted by banks, big tech offices and funded start-ups at the same time, and Built In puts the average software engineer base salary in the city at about $160,000 before bonus. The shape this produces is a small in-house team that keeps the core systems running, and behind it a list of well-defined projects that nobody on that team will reach this year. That list is where we are useful: each project is a defined piece of work, it starts with a fixed-price two-week piece, and the code belongs to you from the first commit.
We are in Bengaluru and move our working day for New York. Four hours of every working day overlap with your morning in Eastern time, stand-up included, so decisions and code review happen live with the engineer who writes the code. Runbooks and architecture notes are written as we go, so your in-house team can run what we build long after the project is finished.
We are the right fit for the defined projects your in-house team is too stretched to reach this year: a client portal, a reconciliation job, an event pipeline, a first version for a pilot customer. Senior capacity starts within days, the first piece is a fixed-price two-week engagement, and agencies can ship the work under their own name.
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 New York teams.
How do you work with teams in New York?+
We are in Bengaluru and move our working day for New York, so four hours of every working day overlap with your morning in Eastern time, stand-up included. Calls, reviews and decisions happen in that window, and the rest of the conversation runs in your tools: Slack, GitHub, Linear. The person on every call is the engineer who writes your code, and the code sits in your repositories from the first commit.
Do you build for New York financial firms?+
Yes. The work is usually the systems beside the trading or underwriting desk: overnight jobs that reconcile custodian, market data and order feeds before the open, client portals where investors, brokers and their accountants each see exactly what they should, and internal tools that replace a pricing or renewals workbook only one person understands. We build them to be idempotent and traceable, so every figure can be followed back to the file it came from.
How does your rate compare to hiring in New York?+
Built In puts the average software engineer base salary in New York City at about $160,000, before bonus and benefits. Our published rate is $35/hour, or $5,400 a month for an embedded engineer, with a $5,000 minimum. There is no recruiting time and no employment overhead, and work starts within days of the call. The first piece is a fixed-price two-week engagement at $2,800, so you judge us on working code.
Can you take over a system another vendor built?+
Yes. In New York that is often a client portal or an internal tool built by an agency that has since moved on, with nobody in-house who knows how it runs. We start by reading the code and running it, then write down how it works and where it is fragile before changing anything. A good first two-week piece makes the riskiest part safe and leaves your team runbooks it can use.
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.