MVP development in Perth
Perth founders sell into a small local market and have to prove themselves to investors and customers on the east coast or overseas, usually from a distance. A pitch deck travels badly. A working product that a buyer in Sydney or Singapore can open on their own laptop travels well.
Our fixed-price two-week starter is built to produce that. We agree the one flow that proves the idea, build it on a stack you can grow rather than throw away, and hand it over with a written list of what must change before it takes real customer money or personal information. Because the overlap sits in your afternoon all year, you can take investor calls in the morning and review the build with us after lunch. If two weeks is the wrong size, we will say so first.
Perth runs mines it cannot see. Rio Tinto controls trains, trucks and drills in the Pilbara from its operations centre in Perth, BHP runs much of its Western Australian iron ore logistics from a remote operations centre in the city, and Woodside, Fortescue and Chevron Australia keep their head offices here. Around them sits a large sector of engineering consultancies, contractors and mining equipment, technology and services firms. Most of the software work in the city exists to serve that industry, and it comes with that industry's habits: safety first, careful change control and very little tolerance for downtime.
The line that matters is between operational technology and everything else. Control systems, autonomous haulage and plant automation belong to specialists. The opportunity for outside engineers is on the business side of that line: maintenance and shutdown planning, historian data read out for analysis, contractor and workforce systems for a fly-in fly-out workforce, reporting, and the internal tools that stitch them together. Energy and utility businesses need the same kind of work, and beyond resources the state has its own buyers, from agencies and universities in the city to the wineries of Margaret River selling across the continent.
Hiring is shaped by the resources sector, which competes hard for experienced engineers and can pay for them. Indeed puts the average base salary for a software engineer in Perth at A$100,253, from 59 reported salaries, and a consultancy or scale-up bidding against a mining major for the same person often waits a long time. That is where we fit: senior engineers on a defined piece of work within days, with the code in your repositories from the first commit.
Our four hours of daily overlap land in your afternoon, moved to suit your team. Perth is the closest Australian capital to India's time zone, and neither Western Australia nor India uses daylight saving, so the window sits at the same point in your day all year. Your morning is for your own team and the site calls; the afternoon is for stand-ups, reviews and decisions with the engineer who writes your code.
We are the right fit for defined work on the business side of the operation: data, reporting, maintenance and workforce tools, and contractor systems. Senior engineers start within days, the first piece is a fixed-price two weeks, and we can carry the roadmap through the months before your own hire starts. Agencies can put 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 Perth teams.
How do you work with teams in Perth?+
We are in Bengaluru, and four hours of every working day overlap with your afternoon, moved to suit your team. Perth is the closest Australian capital to India's time, and neither side changes its clocks, so the window stays put all year. Stand-ups, code reviews and design calls happen live in it. We work in your tools, whether that is Slack, GitHub or Linear, and every call is with the engineer who writes the code.
Do you build for mining and energy companies?+
Yes, on the business side of the operation. We build pipelines that read historian data out for analysis, maintenance and shutdown planning tools, contractor management platforms, apps that put a FIFO worker's roster, flights and documents in one place, and dense planning views for remote operations teams. We integrate with the maintenance, HR and procurement systems you already run, and start with the problem that costs you most on site.
How does your rate compare to hiring in Perth?+
Indeed puts the average base salary for a software engineer in Perth at around A$100,000, and the resources sector often pays more to win experienced people. Our published rate is $35/hour with a $5,000 minimum, or $5,400 a month for one embedded engineer. There is no recruiting time and no employment overhead, and work can start within days. The first piece is a fixed-price two-week engagement at $2,800, so you judge us on what ships.
What do the first two weeks look like?+
You share the context, with an NDA signed before anything specific. Within two days you are on a 30-minute call with the engineer who would do the work, and within a week you have a written plan. Then comes a fixed-price two-week piece for $2,800: one real thing, such as a maintenance report, a contractor portal screen or a data feed, built in your repositories and reviewed with you in your afternoons.
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.