Onwards Labs — Code is cheap. Finished is rare.

01 / THE HONEST COMPARISON

Four ways to build the same product.

PATH

REAL COST

WHAT YOU END UP WITH

DIY vibe-coding

$50/mo plus ~300 evening hours. No finish line.

A 70% demo — stuck on auth, payments, deploy.

Freelance marketplace

$3k–$8k, plus you become the project manager.

No spec, no warranty, no clarity on who owns what.

Traditional agency

$80k+ and four months.

A fine product at a brutal price and pace.

Onwards Labs

ONLY IF THE SPRINT PROVES IT

Fixed price. Six weeks. A warranty with teeth.

Revenue-ready: a stranger can sign up, pay, and use it.

DIY vibe-coding

$50/mo plus ~300 evening hours. No finish line. You end up with a 70% demo — stuck on auth, payments, deploy.

Freelance marketplace

$3k–$8k, plus you become the project manager. No spec, no warranty, no clarity on who owns what.

Traditional agency

$80k+ and four months. A fine product at a brutal price and pace.

Onwards Labs

ONLY IF THE SPRINT PROVES IT

Fixed price. Six weeks. A warranty with teeth. Revenue-ready: a stranger can sign up, pay, and use it.

SIX WEEKS FROM NOW, THIS TABLE IS ACADEMIC.

SEE IF YOUR IDEA CLEARS THE SPRINT →

02 / DEFINITION OF DONE

We don't sell MVPs. We sell revenue-ready.

"MVP" is the marketplace's word — it can mean anything, which is the point. Our word is checkable: done means a stranger can sign up, pay, and use it, without you in the room.

✓

Payments live

Stripe in production. Real money can move on day one.

✓

Auth & accounts

Sign-up, login, reset — the boring 30% where DIY tools stall.

✓

Deployed

On your infrastructure — not a preview link in someone's sandbox.

✓

Analytics wired

You see what users actually do, from the first session.

✓

Terms & privacy

The legal pages real customers — and app stores — expect.

✓

Onboarding

A stranger reaches value without a demo call from you.

✓

Payments live

Stripe in production. Real money moves day one.

✓

Auth & accounts

The boring 30% where DIY tools stall.

✓

Deployed

Your infrastructure — not a sandbox link.

✓

Analytics wired

See what users do from the first session.

✓

Terms & privacy

The legal pages real customers expect.

✓

Onboarding

A stranger reaches value without a demo call.

03 / HOW IT WORKS

Sprint first. Build only if it's worth building.

Most founders spend $50k+ finding out what they should have built. The sprint answers that question first — and the deliverable doubles as your build plan, whether you build with us or not.

PHASE 01 · TWO WEEKS

Build Readiness Sprint

Two weeks of engineering judgment applied to your idea: what to build, what it really costs, and whether it's worth building at all — before you spend $50k finding out.

— Scoped product spec
— Stack decision
— Real budget & timeline
— Build-vs-buy calls
— Risk map

Billed in sixths as stages clear — never prepaid past the gate you're at. No viable build path inside your budget? Full refund.

PHASE 02 · SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS

The Build

A senior delivery pod builds to the sprint spec, with Ryan as your fractional CTO making every technical decision. Weekly demos, billed stage by stage at each gate.

— Revenue-ready product
— Your repo, your infra
— Docs + handover video
— 60-day defect warranty

Fixed scope, fixed date. Every week we run late, you're credited $1,000.

PHASE 03 · ONGOING

Fractional CTO

After launch: iteration sprints driven by what the analytics say, infrastructure that scales with you, and engineering resource on tap — part-time from us, or dedicated staff we help you hire.

— Post-launch iteration sprints
— Infrastructure & security
— Part-time or dedicated engineers
— Hiring & team guidance

A CTO's judgment on retainer — without giving up co-founder equity.

THE DELIVERY LEDGER

Six stages. Six things in your hands.

De-risked by design: every stage ends with an artifact you can hold and a gate you control. Billing follows the same rhythm — one-sixth of the fee per stage, never a dollar past the gate you're at.

STAGE — 1/6 OF FEE EACH

WHAT HAPPENS

IN YOUR HANDS / THE GATE

01 — SPRINT · WK 1

Draft & alignment

The idea becomes a written structure: scope, user flows, what's in, what's out — argued over with you until it's right.

→ A draft spec you can read, mark up and tear apart.

GATE: SCOPE SIGN-OFF — NOTHING IS DESIGNED UNTIL THE WORDS ARE RIGHT.

02 — SPRINT · WK 1–2

Working concepts

Your core screens, designed for real — so you react to something concrete, not a description.

→ Concept designs of the screens that matter.

GATE: YOU PICK THE DIRECTION.

03 — SPRINT · WK 2

Clickable prototype

A prototype you can tap through and put in front of real customers — before a dollar of build budget is committed.

→ A prototype link + the full dossier: spec, stack, budget, timeline, risk.

GATE: BUILD / DON'T BUILD — YOUR CALL, WITH REAL NUMBERS.

04 — BUILD · WK 1–6

The build

The senior pod builds to the signed spec. A staging link is live from week one; demos every Friday.

→ Working software you can click, every single week.

GATE: DEFINITION-OF-DONE CHECKLIST, ITEM BY ITEM.

05 — BUILD · FINAL WK

Test

Tested the way a stranger uses it: sign up, pay, reach value. You and your first users run it before launch — defects die here, not in production.

→ A passed launch checklist, in writing.

GATE: IT SHIPS WHEN IT PASSES — NOT WHEN THE CALENDAR SAYS.

06 — ONGOING

Maintain

Sixty days of defect cover, monitoring from day one, then iteration sprints driven by what the analytics say — with resourcing that scales: part-time engineering from us, or dedicated staff embedded in your team.

→ A live product with warranty in writing — repo and infra in your name.

GATE: MONTH TO MONTH. WALK AWAY ANYTIME; YOU OWN EVERYTHING.

ANY GATE CAN SAY STOP. YOU PAY ONLY FOR STAGES COMPLETED — 1/6 EACH — AND EVERYTHING PRODUCED WALKS WITH YOU.

START AT STAGE 01 →

THE SPRINT DELIVERABLE

You walk away holding the plan.

The sprint output is a build-ready dossier: the spec, the stack, the budget, the timeline and the risk map — priced and sequenced. It doubles as our proposal if we build, and as a brief any competent team could execute if we don't.

Either way, you stop guessing.

APPENDIX B — RISK MAP

ONWARDS LABSCONFIDENTIAL

Build Readiness Report

SPEC · STACK · BUDGET · TIMELINE · RISK

BUILD WINDOW

6–8 WEEKS

DECISION

BUILD / DON'T

Yes — we use AI-assisted development too. That's why it takes six weeks, not four months. The tools generate code. They don't make decisions.

SAME ENGINE. DIFFERENT DRIVER.

04 / RECEIPTS

Founders who were exactly where you are.

Case-study product screenshot — 16:10

CLIENT — [NAME]BUILD — 6 WKSSTATUS — LIVE & BILLING

PLACEHOLDER — SWAP FOR VERBATIM CLIENT QUOTE

"Two or three sentences, in the client's own words: where they were stuck, what shipped in six weeks, and what it's doing for them now."

— [CLIENT NAME], FOUNDER, [PRODUCT]

PLACEHOLDER — SWAP QUOTE

"One or two sentences — a specific moment of proof: the first stranger payment, the deadline that actually held."

[NAME] · FOUNDER, [COMPANY]

PLACEHOLDER — SWAP QUOTE

"One or two sentences — ideally from a rescue: what the salvage review found, and what happened next."

[NAME] · FOUNDER, [COMPANY]

05 / IN WRITING

The mechanics nobody else will put in a contract.

G-01 / LATE PENALTY

If we're late, we pay.

$1,000 credited back for every week past the delivery date. The deadline isn't a hope — it's a clause.

G-02 / WARRANTY

60 days of cover.

Any defect in the first 60 days after launch gets fixed at our cost. Marketplaces hand you code and vanish; we stay.

G-03 / OWNERSHIP

You own everything.

Your repository, your infrastructure, documented, with a recorded handover video. No hostage code, no lock-in.

G-04 / SPRINT GUARANTEE

No path, no fee.

If the sprint can't define a build path inside your budget, the sprint is free. We'd rather refund you than build the wrong thing.

G-05 / WALK-AWAY CLAUSE

Leave at any gate, take everything.

Billing tracks the six stages — one-sixth of the fee each. Stop at the clickable prototype? You've paid for three stages, and the spec, the concepts and the prototype leave with you. No exit fees, no haggling.

EVERY CARD ABOVE IS A CONTRACT CLAUSE, NOT A MARKETING LINE.

APPLY TO BUILD →

06 / WHO YOU'RE WORKING WITH

The translator.

Ryan's photo — 4:5 portrait

RYAN RICHARDSONFOUNDER · FRACTIONAL CTO

06 / WHO YOU'RE WORKING WITH

The translator.

Ryan has spent a decade sitting between mining executives and engineering teams — at KPMG, BHP and South32, and across ventures of his own. His job has always been the same: turn what the business needs into what engineers build, and catch the expensive mistakes before they're made.

Onwards Labs pairs that judgment with a senior offshore delivery pod that has shipped together for years. You get agency-grade engineering with one accountable decision-maker — not a ticket queue.

BACKGROUNDKPMG · BHP · South32

DELIVERYDedicated senior offshore pod

YOUR INTERFACEOne person. Every decision explained in plain English.

BASEDPerth, Western Australia

07 / ASKED ON EVERY CALL

Straight answers, before you ask.

09 / SHIPPED

Products that made it out the door.

PRODUCT 01 — DATA & ANALYTICS

Nexlytics

A custom analytics pipeline integrating with Microsoft APIs — from raw tenant data to a frontend people actually open.

MICROSOFT API PIPELINE DEPLOYED PYTHON BACKEND MULTI-TENANT SSO CUSTOM FRONTEND

PRODUCT 02 — MARKETPLACE

MobiPet

A two-sided marketplace connecting pet owners with mobile vets — search, book and manage visits without the clinic waiting room.

TWO-SIDED MARKETPLACE BOOKING & SCHEDULING SMS NOTIFICATIONS ROW-LEVEL SECURITY REACT + SUPABASE

PRODUCT 03 — ENTERPRISE SAAS

Method8

An enterprise platform for running operating-model assessments and live workshops — in production with global mining companies across three languages.

MULTI-TENANT LIVE WORKSHOP ENGINE EN / FR / ES RAILS API + REACT AZURE CI/CD

PRODUCT 04 — MARKETING INTELLIGENCE

Mockingbird

Competitive ad intelligence for SaaS founders — mine the Meta ads already winning in your niche and generate on-pattern creative.

META ADS OAUTH AD PATTERN MINING AI CREATIVE GENERATION MULTI-WORKSPACE SUPABASE BACKEND

PRODUCT 05 — BENCHMARKING

Campus Scorecard

A performance scorecard for universities — 48 metrics across 3 dimensions, scored against peer percentiles with a regulatory compliance map.

48-METRIC FRAMEWORK PEER PERCENTILE SCORING REGULATORY MATRIX POSTGRES SCORING RPCS

PRODUCT 06 — BI & AUTOMATION

Onwards Analytics

A BI & analytics company serving enterprise reporting teams — and the proving ground for the rest of the portfolio, run day to day on its own AI-agent back office.

BACKEND AUTOMATION SUPPORT AUTOMATION AGENTIC BACK OFFICE INBOX → TICKET PIPELINE OPS DASHBOARD + DAILY REPORTS

Code is cheap.
Finished is rare.

Stuck at 70% in Lovable or Bolt?

Four ways to build the same product.

We don't sell MVPs. We sell revenue-ready.

Sprint first. Build only if it's worth building.

Six stages. Six things in your hands.

You walk away holding the plan.

Founders who were exactly where you are.

The mechanics nobody else will put in a contract.

The translator.

The translator.

Straight answers, before you ask.

Apply to build.

Products that made it out the door.

Code is cheap.Finished is rare.

Stuck at 70% in Lovable or Bolt?

Four ways to build the same product.

We don't sell MVPs. We sell revenue-ready.

Sprint first. Build only if it's worth building.

Six stages. Six things in your hands.

You walk away holding the plan.

Founders who were exactly where you are.

The mechanics nobody else will put in a contract.

The translator.

The translator.

Straight answers, before you ask.

Apply to build.

Products that made it out the door.

Code is cheap.
Finished is rare.