Four ways founders use the retainer.
A senior engineer already runs your product? Great — the retainer exists to make that person's job easier, not to replace them. If you don't have one yet, the retainer buys you the same brain in the room for the decisions where getting it wrong is expensive.
- 01
Architecture reviews
A written review of the current or planned system diagram — trade-offs called out, risks flagged, the two or three decisions that will define the next year highlighted. Delivered as a document, walked through on the sync call.
- 02
Product & PRD counsel
Taking an idea, a founder's memo, or a scattered thread of Loom videos and turning them into an engineer-readable PRD the team can ship against. Includes acceptance criteria, edge cases, and the questions the team will ask on day two.
- 03
Senior hiring calls
Interviewing your senior engineering candidates on your behalf. Rubric-based scoring, written debrief, hire/no-hire recommendation with reasoning. Includes offer negotiation counsel when asked.
- 04
On-call second opinion
A private channel for the decisions that don't belong in Slack: stack switch, first senior hire, a rewrite, a security posture, whether to say yes to that acquirer. Async by default; a 30-minute call when it matters.
Engagement shape
- Monthly retainer. 5–15 hours per month, capped in writing. No overage without written agreement.
- Async by default. One weekly sync (usually 30 minutes) — the rest is written: comments in your repo, PRD in your doc tool, thread on your Slack.
- Evenings and weekends. Gulf time zones welcome. No weekday daytime commitments — the retainer runs in parallel with existing senior work.
- NDA standard. Mutual NDA on request before the discovery call. Every prior client stays private, and so will you.
- Pauseable, cancellable. Written notice, no long-term lock-in. When you outgrow the advisory scope, I hand off cleanly — usually a documented architecture, a hiring shortlist, and two weeks of overlap.