Approach
How an engagement actually starts.
There is no discovery call to book before you know the prices — they are on every practice page. The five steps below are the whole process.
01
You send the form
The questions below are the qualification. There is no discovery call to book before you know the prices — they are on this page.
10 minutes
02
I reply either way
Including a no, with a reason and, where I know one, a pointer to someone better suited. Roughly a third of enquiries get that answer.
Within 3 working days
03
A call
Forty-five minutes, free, no deck. Mostly me trying to work out whether the thing you asked for is the thing you need.
45 minutes
04
A written scope
What is being done, what it costs, what is explicitly out, and what I need from you. Fixed price for builds, monthly for retainers. Nothing starts before you have this in writing.
Within 3 days of the call
05
The paid entry point
Almost every engagement starts with the small one — the diagnostic, the teardown, or a single session. It is the cheapest way for both of us to find out whether this works.
1–2 weeks
Boundaries
What this is not
Written before the sales copy, and kept where a buyer can read it before the first call rather than discover it in month two.
- Not an agency with a bench. It is me, plus Acro Studios where the work is build work. If you need twelve people on it in January, this is the wrong supplier and I would rather say so now.
- Not staff augmentation. I am not going to sit in your standups as a cheaper developer.
- No success fees, no equity-instead-of-cash, and no rev-share. All three sound founder-friendly and all three end with the consultant optimising for their own upside.
- No NDA before a first conversation. Happy to sign one before anything confidential is shared; requiring one to discuss whether we should talk wastes a week.
- Not a guarantee of any outcome. What is guaranteed is the scope, the price, and that you will be told when something is not working.
Questions
The ones that actually get asked
- Why is the pricing public?
- Because hiding it screens for people who will not ask, and that is a bad filter. It also means the first call is about the work rather than an hour of both of us circling the budget question.
- Who actually does the work?
- Me, on the diagnostic, the teardown, the memos, and the strategy. Acro Studios' people on build and design execution. If that ever changes on your engagement you will be told before it does, not after.
- What if it is not working?
- Say so and we stop. Retainers cancel before the next bill with no notice period, and on a fixed-price build you pay for the stage completed and keep everything produced up to that point.
- Do you work with competitors?
- Not inside the same niche at the same time on the e-commerce line — that one is a genuine conflict. Ask, and you will get a straight answer about what else is on.
- Where are you, and does it matter?
- Dubai, UTC+4, and mostly no. The fractional line works best with some overlap; the build and teardown work is asynchronous by nature. In-person is possible in the UAE and billable for travel elsewhere.