non-technical founders since 2019
Compare For non-technical founders · UK senior studio
Software for non-technical founders. We translate the engineering so you decide, not guess.
You have the customer insight, the sector, the relationships. What you don’t have is a senior CTO on payroll. We build with non-technical founders: plain-language scoping, weekly Loom updates without a glossary, a fixed-price £8K audit before any code ships. You stay the decision-maker.
24hreply, from a senior
200+projects shipped since 2019
Senioronly, on the spine
You don’t need to learn React. You need a studio that translates the trade-offs.
You came with a sector you know cold and a problem worth solving. The bit that stalls you isn’t the idea. It’s every conversation with a developer where you can’t tell the smart answer from the expensive one. We sit on your side of that table and make the choice legible.
Founders, not features
Thirty-two non-technical founders we’ve scoped, built with, and shipped for since 2019. You’re not our first translation job.
English, every Friday
No JS-bundle talk. A weekly Loom and a one-page note that a CFO can read on a phone. What shipped, what’s next, what blocks us.
Price you see first
A £8K 5-day audit, then a fixed sprint price quoted at audit end. You see the number before you commit a penny more.
Imran ran a property brand for six years. Then he decided to ship software.
Three studios pitched him. Two used acronyms he didn’t understand and refused to translate. One quoted £180K with no breakdown. Imran couldn’t tell what was reasonable, so he came to us with two questions: am I being ripped off, and what does “multi-tenant” actually mean.
01
The 1-page brief
We sent him an audit-week brief in plain English. He read it on his phone in ten minutes and booked the £8K audit.02
Day 5, the walk-through
A 30-page brief in language a CFO can read, and a £62K fixed-price sprint quote. He took it home, talked to his wife, signed Monday.03
First paying customer, week 5
Real account, real card, real invoice paid. He still calls Mohit before he makes any product decision. That’s the relationship we’re after.Where you are today decides the first move.
Most non-technical founders we hear from arrive in one of three shapes. None is harder than the others, and the right next step looks different for each. Tell us where you’re sitting in the first email and we’ll match the response.
You have the sector, the customers, and not a single line of code.
You don’t need to pick a stack. The 5-day audit ends with a recommendation in plain English: the choice, the trade-off, the hire-pool, the long-term cost. You decide; we explain it so the decision is actually yours.
- 5-day fixed-price audit · £8K
- Stack recommendation in plain English
- Fixed sprint quote at audit end
- Walk-away from day 1
You hired a freelancer or a no-code tool and it’s wobbling.
You can’t tell whether the build is fine, fixable, or a rewrite. We audit what you have in week one, give you a severity-ranked fix list, and rebuild the spine on a fixed scope so the next 50 customers don’t break it.
- Independent audit of what you have
- Severity-ranked fix list in writing
- Fixed-scope rebuild, 8 to 14 weeks
- IP assigns on every commit
You have customers and an investor call you can’t answer alone.
When your VC asks a technical question and you can’t answer it, we draft the response inside two hours. We’ve done it 14 times this year for non-technical founders meeting their investors. You walk in sounding like you own the build, because you do.
- Translation on demand · WhatsApp + email
- Architecture brief your investor reads first
- Advisory beside your future CTO hire
- Direct founder line · from £5K/mo
Six things, no jargon. Every one of them weekly.
You shouldn’t have to translate your own update before you can act on it. Here’s exactly what lands in your inbox, and how often, so you always know where the build stands.
Weekly Loom + 1-page note
Every Friday: a 5-minute Loom and a one-page plain-English note. What we shipped, what’s next, what blocks us. No tech-debt jargon.
Audit brief in English
A 30-page brief at the end of the 5-day audit, written so a CFO can read it. Diagrams, plain language, GBP costs called out.
Fixed price + signed scope
You see the £8K audit cost before you commit. The sprint price is fixed at audit end. No day-rate, no surprises, no scope creep.
Translation on demand
WhatsApp and email. When your investor asks a technical question you can’t answer, we draft the reply inside two hours.
30-day walk-away
You keep everything if you leave. IP assigns on every commit. No lock-in. No deposit forfeiture. The exit is written down.
Direct founder line
Mohit replies inside 24 hours. No sales funnel, no SDR. You email the founder, the founder reads it, the founder answers.
One fixed week. A brief you can read, a price you can shop.
Listen, no slides
A call about your sector, your customer, your deadline. We listen first. No demo, no pitch deck.
Draw the spine
One-page architecture diagram. Stack picked and explained: the choice, the trade-off, the hire-pool.
Cost it in GBP
A fixed sprint price, milestones around your runway. Every line in plain English, no day-rate fog.
The hand-over
A 30-page brief and a fixed quote. Take it home. Shop it elsewhere. We’d rather you did.
Boring choices that hire well. Nothing experimental on the spine.
You shouldn’t inherit a stack you can’t hire for. We pick tools that survive a Series A diligence call and that a future engineer wants to maintain. Fashionable tech layers on top once the boring core is paying for itself, never before.
01
Web product
React + Next.js in TypeScript. The default for dashboards, B2B SaaS, and consumer web.React + Next.jsTypeScriptTailwindVercel + Cloudflare
02
Mobile
Flutter first, React Native when your team will maintain it. App Store and Play Store by week three.FlutterReact NativeFirebaseRevenueCat
03
Backend + data
Node on Express, MongoDB or Postgres. Stripe for payments. Choices investors trust.Node + ExpressMongoDBPostgreSQLStripeRedis
04
Infrastructure
AWS by default. Containerised, observable, costed. We’ll deploy where your team already is.AWSDockerGitHub ActionsSentryTerraform
Scale + receipts
Numbers, not adjectives.
The questions your CFO, your VC, and your future acquirer ask all come down to receipts. Here are ours: the figures that survive a diligence call without a single rewrite. Verifiable on a call, anonymised by contract.
In production
Cumulative value processed through code we shipped, with a clean seven-year safety record behind it. What it means for you: the studio scoping your build has already carried real money at real scale without an incident.
£540M+
value processed
0
data breaches
Founders funded
Founders we built with who went on to raise their next round, plus a median client tenure that shows people stay. What it means for you: the architecture holds long enough to fund the next stage of the company.
12
raised a follow-on
28 mo
median tenure
Trust + continuity
SOC 2 Type II achieved at Empyreal, with engineer retention high enough that your scopers stay your shippers. What it means for you: the seniors who signed your scope are the seniors who maintain it.
SOC 2
Type II
96%
engineer retention
Procurement, security + trust. What your CFO, CTO, and DPO see in writing.
When your first enterprise customer sends a 60-page security questionnaire, you shouldn’t be the one stalling. Every artefact below ships with the build, ready to forward, so the answer already exists before the question lands.
SOC 2 Type II achieved
Empyreal-internal SOC 2 Type II in place. Vanta or Drata evidence pipeline wired for your build from day one.
Signed DPA + SCCs
UK and EU GDPR-aware Data Processing Agreement on file. SCCs for cross-border. A versioned sub-processor list.
DSAR runbook + erasure
A 30-day Data Subject Access Request response, defendable. Right-to-erasure at the schema. ICO-audit ready.
30-day walk-away, both ways
You keep everything. IP assigns on every commit. No lock-in. Two handovers in seven years, both inside 48 hours.
White-label friendly
Comfortable behind your brand. A 12-month no-poach with referrer agencies on request, in writing.
Procurement pack
SIG-Lite and CAIQ pre-filled. Pen-test report. Architecture diagram. DR plan. SLA and uptime SLO.
Three ways to start
Pricing in GBP. On the page, not behind a call.
GBP throughout. UK VAT applies, reverse-charge for EU, no VAT for non-EU. Milestone payments structured around your runway, not ours. You see the audit cost before you commit, and the sprint price before you sign.
The audit
5 days. We listen, draw the spine, pick the stack, and hand you a 30-page brief plus a fixed sprint quote, all in plain English. Right when you can’t tell a reasonable answer from an expensive one.
£8K
fixed
5 days
duration
The sprint
The full build, fixed scope and fixed price quoted at audit end. Weekly Loom updates, three milestone payments around your runway. Right when the idea is real and the next few weeks decide the round.
£35–80K
fixed scope
8–14 wk
duration
Advisory
Translation on demand and a fortnightly architecture review. The call before the next investor meeting, the second senior voice you don’t have on payroll. Right when you don’t want to make the next technical call alone.
£5K
per month
Ongoing
cadence
Direct answers. No marketing fluff.
I have no idea what stack I need. Can you decide for me?
Yes. The 5-day audit ends with a stack recommendation in plain English. We explain the choice, the trade-off, the hire-pool, and the long-term cost. You decide, but you decide with the same information a CTO would have.
What does “multi-tenant” actually mean, and do I need it?
Multi-tenant means one app serves many customers, each seeing only their own data. You need it if you’re building B2B SaaS. We’ll tell you straight at the audit whether your product needs it on day one or later.
How do I know I’m not being ripped off?
The £8K audit is your insurance. You get a 30-page brief and a fixed quote, and you can shop that quote elsewhere before signing the sprint. We’d rather you did. A price that only holds up in the dark isn’t a price we’d quote.
Can I see what working with you actually looks like?
Yes. We’ll send a sample audit brief and a recorded Loom update from a comparable client, anonymised. You’ll see exactly what you’d receive every Friday before you commit a penny.
What if my investor asks a technical question I can’t answer?
WhatsApp or email. We draft the response inside two hours. We’ve done this 14 times this year for non-technical founders meeting their VCs. You walk into the room sounding like you own the build, because you do.
If I walk away, do I keep the code?
All of it. IP assigns on every commit, so the code lives in your GitHub org from day one. The 30-day walk-away runs both ways, there’s no deposit to forfeit, and we’ve handed over twice in seven years, both inside 48 hours.
In context
The surface you hand over.
non technical founders, in context — the dashboards, flows and components your team actually ships, reviews and maintains.