Startup Software Development

Startups don't fail because the idea is bad. They fail because they run out of money before they find product-market fit, or because they spent too long building the wrong thing.
We build startup software with that constraint in mind. Fast enough to validate before the runway runs out. Solid enough that you don't have to rebuild it at Series A. Scoped for what you need now, not what you might need in three years.

See our work
  • MVP to production-ready product in 8–16 weeks at a fixed cost

  • Web apps, mobile apps, and AI products for seed through Series A startups

  • 100+ products shipped since 2019. We know what breaks startups.

  • Full source code ownership, no lock-in, no dependency on us to run your product

Recent outcomes

Mobile app · Community events startup

Built a community event management app from zero to App Store in 14 weeks.

50K users in 6 months

B2B SaaS · Food ordering platform

Built multi-platform food order management SaaS for a founder from Indonesia. Acquired by Runchise.

3x revenue, 0% order errors

Voice AI · Group decision platform

Shipped anonymous voice platform for group decisions with 300+ concurrent users in 14 weeks.

75% faster decisions
4.9 / 5 on ClutchSee all work

Recognition

Sound familiar?

  • Spent months and significant money on a development agency and still don't have a working product?

  • Worried about choosing the wrong tech stack that will need rebuilding as you scale?

In short

RaftLabs builds startup software for seed through Series A founders in the US, UK, and Australia. 100+ products shipped since 2019 across fintech, SaaS, and mobile. MVPs deliver in 8-16 weeks at a fixed cost with full source code ownership.

Trusted by

Vodafone
Nike
Microsoft
Cisco
T-Mobile
Aldi
Heineken
GE

MVP development, by the numbers

MVPs shipped in the last 24 months
20+
minimum time to a production-ready MVP
8 weeks
rated by clients on Clutch
4.9/5
years shipping software products for founders and teams
9+

Build what you need to get to your next milestone, then build the next thing

Most startups build too much too early. Features for users they don't have yet. Architecture for scale they haven't reached. Every week of additional scope is a week before you know if the product actually solves the problem.

We build the minimum product that gives you real signal from real users. Not the complete vision, the core that tests the assumption.

Capabilities

What we build

MVP development

The smallest product that puts real functionality in front of real users and generates real learning, not a clickable prototype, but a working system with a database, actual user accounts, and core data flows that work end-to-end. Typically 2-3 user flows that test the core value proposition: the search-and-book flow, the post-and-respond flow, the upload-and-process flow, whatever the heart of your product is. Essential data model designed to support the MVP use cases without over-engineering for scale you don't have yet. Deployed and accessible in 8-12 weeks. The product you hand to your first 50 users to validate whether the problem you're solving is real and whether your approach to solving it is the right one, before you spend more time and money building features for assumptions you haven't tested.

Web application development

Full-stack web applications built with React or Next.js for the frontend and Node.js (Express, NestJS), Python (FastAPI, Django), or Go for the backend, language and framework chosen for your specific requirements, not default preferences. PostgreSQL or MySQL for relational data, Redis for caching and real-time features, S3 for file storage. Deployable on AWS (ECS, Lambda, RDS) or Vercel + PlanetScale for modern serverless architectures. Authentication via Clerk, Auth0, or custom JWT depending on your multi-tenant and SSO requirements. From SaaS dashboards to marketplace platforms to internal operations tools, built with an architecture where adding a new feature in month 6 doesn't require refactoring what was built in month 1.

Mobile app development

iOS and Android mobile apps built with Flutter for cross-platform deployment from a single Dart codebase, reducing development time by 30-40% vs. building native apps separately when platform feature parity is the requirement. Native Swift/SwiftUI (iOS) or Kotlin/Jetpack Compose (Android) when the use case requires deep platform integration: HealthKit, ARKit, background Bluetooth, or hardware-specific sensor access that Flutter's plugin ecosystem doesn't cover reliably. We've built food delivery apps with real-time tracking, booking platforms with complex availability logic, IoT dashboards connected to hardware devices, and AI mobile tools processing on-device inference. Push notifications, offline-first architecture, in-app purchases, and App Store / Play Store launch included.

AI product development

AI-native products built with production engineering, not just API wrappers: LLM integrations using OpenAI (GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini) or Anthropic (Claude Sonnet, Haiku) with streaming, tool use, and structured output; RAG systems with Pinecone or pgvector for document and knowledge retrieval grounded in your data; and AI agent workflows using LangGraph for multi-step automation that requires planning and tool use. Evaluation pipelines built alongside the product so you can measure quality before launch and detect regressions after. We've shipped AI products for healthcare diagnostics, legal document review, financial analysis, and operational automation, 20+ AI systems in production. PSi's voice AI platform supports 300+ concurrent users; Perceptional's research chatbot delivers insights 4x deeper than traditional survey methods.

SaaS platform development

Multi-tenant SaaS platforms built with the architecture decisions that determine your product trajectory for the next three years: tenant isolation strategy (shared schema with tenant ID vs. schema-per-tenant vs. database-per-tenant), subscription billing via Stripe Billing with trial periods, proration, usage-based components, and dunning sequences, feature flags (LaunchDarkly or Unleash) for controlled rollout and plan-based feature gating, admin tooling that lets your team manage customer accounts without engineering involvement, and a REST or GraphQL API if your product needs to integrate with your customers' systems. B2B and B2C SaaS models handled differently, B2B requires organization/team constructs, RBAC within organizations, SSO via SAML, and audit logging; B2C requires individual account models, self-serve upgrade flows, and payment method management.

Marketplace and on-demand platforms

Two-sided marketplace platforms where the core product is the matching of supply and demand: buyer and seller onboarding flows with verification and trust mechanisms, listing creation and search with filtering and ranking, booking or transaction flows with availability management and conflict prevention, payment routing with Stripe Connect (split payments, automatic payouts to sellers, commission deduction), dispute and refund workflows, and review systems. On-demand platforms add real-time dispatch: driver or provider assignment, live location tracking via WebSocket, and status updates pushed to all parties. We've built food delivery platforms with 30% reduction in order processing time, booking systems with 3x direct booking conversion improvement, and B2B marketplaces connecting enterprise buyers with specialized suppliers.

How we work

From idea to shipped product

100+ products shipped since 2020. This is the process that gets startup ideas into production without wasted sprints or surprise invoices.

  1. Week 1
    01

    Discovery and scope

    We map the problem space: what specific friction does this product address, and for which user? We identify the core user journey and surface technical risks early. You leave week 1 with a written scope document and a fixed-price quote. No development starts without your sign-off.

  2. Weeks 2-3
    02

    Design and wireframes

    Low-fidelity wireframes in Figma before a line of production code is written. High-fidelity UI produced from your brand guidelines. The design file becomes the specification developers implement from, with no interpretation required.

  3. Weeks 4-12
    03

    Build, QA, and iterate

    Development in two-week sprints. Working software at a staging URL by the end of sprint one. Bi-weekly demos. QA runs in parallel with every sprint. Direct Slack access to the team throughout.

  4. Weeks 12-20
    04

    Launch and post-launch support

    Production deployment with monitoring activated. For mobile apps, we handle App Store and Google Play submission. 8 weeks of post-launch support included — bug fixes, performance tuning, and minor UX adjustments as real users reveal what needs to change.

100+ products shipped since 2019. We know what breaks startups.

Fixed cost. 8–16 week delivery. Full source code ownership. No dependency on us to run your product.

Process

How we work with startups

Scope before we build

We don't start writing code until the scope is clear. Discovery session to understand the user problems, wireframes to validate the flows, and a defined scope document before the fixed cost is set. What's in scope and what's not in scope is documented before development starts.

Feature prioritisation uses MoSCoW (Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, Won't-have) to separate the core value proposition from the nice-to-haves. A two-sided marketplace has a Must-have set of roughly 8-12 features and a long tail of 30+ that wait until you have traction data to justify building them. We walk every founder through this exercise because the natural instinct is to build the full vision. Scope creep kills startup timelines faster than any technical problem. Wireframes are built before a line of code is written, Figma flows covering the critical user journeys, reviewed with you before the engineering estimate is set. The wireframe-to-code workflow means your frontend engineers aren't making UI decisions; those decisions are made and approved first, then implemented. This single step prevents the most common source of mid-project rework: designs that work on paper but fail in use.

Fixed cost, defined delivery

We quote a fixed cost based on defined scope. The cost doesn't change unless the scope changes, and if you want to change scope mid-project, we tell you the cost impact before proceeding. No hourly billing, no surprises at invoice time.

The standard stack for a seed-stage web product: Next.js or React frontend, Node.js (Express or NestJS) or Python (FastAPI) backend, PostgreSQL as the primary database, Redis for session management and caching, S3-compatible object storage for file uploads. Deployed on Vercel (frontend) plus Railway or Render (backend and database) for rapid iteration without DevOps overhead, both platforms offer one-command deployments and environment variable management out of the box. For payment collection, Stripe Checkout or Stripe Billing handles subscription and one-time payment flows, including webhooks for fulfillment triggers. Feature flags via LaunchDarkly or open-source Unleash let you gate new functionality by user cohort or plan tier without deploying new code. Error tracking via Sentry catches runtime exceptions in production with full stack traces and session replay context. Product analytics via PostHog, Mixpanel, or Amplitude (depending on your self-hosted vs. cloud preference) tracks the funnel events that tell you whether users are reaching the aha moment. This stack is battle-tested, well-documented, and hireable, your future engineering team will know it.

Working software at every milestone

We build in sprints with deployed builds at the end of each. You see working software every two weeks, not a completed product at the end. If something isn't right, we catch it early when changes are cheap, not at launch when they're expensive.

Sprint velocity is tracked and shared: how many story points were committed, how many were completed, and what changed if there was a gap. Every sprint ends with a demo of the working build, not a status update, but a live walkthrough of new functionality in a staging environment you can access and test yourself. Performance monitoring via Datadog or a lightweight alternative like Better Uptime goes live from the first deployment so you have visibility into response times and error rates from the start, not retrofitted after a production incident. For AI-first products, evaluation runs are part of each sprint: prompt changes and retrieval modifications are validated against the quality baseline before the sprint is closed. By the time you reach launch, the product has been tested in a real environment for weeks, not hours. This matters for seed/Series A readiness: investors asking about your product's performance metrics expect you to have data, not anecdotes.

Full source code ownership

You own the repository, the infrastructure, and the code from day one. We deploy to your accounts, AWS, Vercel, or wherever, and you have full access throughout. When the project ends, nothing leaves with us.

The repository is yours on GitHub or GitLab under your organisation account from the first commit. Infrastructure is provisioned under your AWS, GCP, or Vercel account, not ours. All third-party service credentials (Stripe, SendGrid, Twilio, Sentry, PostHog) are registered to your accounts. We do not use shared API keys or shared infrastructure that would create a dependency on us to operate your product. The codebase is documented: a README covering local setup, environment variable descriptions, database migration instructions, and deployment procedures. The architecture decisions that affect your future engineers, why PostgreSQL over MongoDB, why the multi-tenant model was built as schema-per-tenant rather than shared schema, are recorded in ADRs (Architecture Decision Records) in the repository. When you hire your first engineer, they can be productive without a week of knowledge transfer from us. This is how we've built 100+ products since 2019 that founders could hand to their own teams without friction.

The right product for your current stage, not your future hopes

We scope what you actually need to get to your next milestone. Then we build it.

Why us

Why startup founders choose RaftLabs

  1. Senior engineers build what they scope

    The engineers who assess your problem also build the solution. No bait-and-switch, no offshore handoff after the contract is signed. The team you meet in week 1 ships in week 12.

  2. Fixed price before development starts

    We scope the work, calculate the cost, and lock it in writing before any development starts. A scope change is a change request: priced, agreed, or dropped. It never absorbs into the project and appears on the final invoice.

  3. 9 years and 100+ products shipped

    Clients include Vodafone, T-Mobile, Aldi, Nike, Cisco, and Lockheed Martin. Track record across AI, SaaS, mobile, automation, and enterprise platforms across healthcare, fintech, logistics, and hospitality.

  4. Compliance built in from the start

    GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2 — compliance requirements are scoped in week 1, not retrofitted before launch. We have shipped HIPAA-compliant systems for US healthcare clients and GDPR-compliant products for European markets.

Frequently asked questions

An MVP with clearly scoped core features, typically 2–3 user flows, takes 8–12 weeks. A more complete first product with additional features, mobile apps, and third-party integrations takes 12–20 weeks. Timeline depends on scope, not optimism. We scope the product before committing to a timeline, if the scope is too large for your budget and timeline, we work with you to cut to the essential core.

We choose the stack based on your product requirements, not a house standard. For web apps with complex UIs, React or Next.js frontend with Node.js or Python backend. For mobile, Flutter for cross-platform or native Swift/Kotlin for platform-specific requirements. For AI products, OpenAI or Anthropic APIs with RAG pipelines where needed. For databases, PostgreSQL for most applications. We explain the tradeoffs and recommend based on your specific product, not our comfort zone.

You own the code completely, it's clean, documented, and built with standard frameworks your future team will recognise. We write code as if we're handing it to another engineering team from the start, because we usually are. Most clients continue working with us after launch while they hire internally, we can work alongside your new engineers during the transition. Nothing is proprietary and nothing is obfuscated.

An MVP, 2–3 core user flows, web app or mobile app, typically runs $15,000--$40,000. A full first product with multiple features, API integrations, and both web and mobile typically runs $40,000--$100,000. AI-first products with LLM integration and RAG systems run from $25,000 upward depending on complexity. Pricing is fixed cost based on scoped features, you know the cost before development starts, not after.

Yes. We sign an NDA before any detailed discovery conversation. Your idea, code, architecture decisions, and business data remain yours. All IP transfers to you on the final payment. Nothing is retained by RaftLabs and nothing is reused in another client's product.

We have shipped products across fintech, healthtech, marketplace, SaaS, logistics, edtech, and on-demand verticals. The common thread is not the industry but the stage. We work with seed through Series A companies that need a working product fast, not a consultancy that will run a 12-week discovery engagement before writing code.

Work with us

Tell us what you need. We'll tell you what it would take.

We scope Startup Software Development in 30 minutes. You walk away with a clear cost, timeline, and approach. No commitment required.

  • Scope and cost agreed before work starts. No surprises. No obligation.
  • Working prototype within 3 weeks of kickoff.
  • Pay by milestone. You see progress before each invoice.
  • 60-day post-launch warranty. Bug fixes, UI tweaks, and deployment support. No retainer.
  • All conversations are NDA-protected.