Austin, Texas
Senior engineering for
Austin founders
Austin's VC deal count nearly matched the Bay Area in Q4 2025. The catch: senior engineers know it, and they're charging accordingly. Indeed pays $290K. Tesla pays $310K plus stock. You're not going to outbid them at seed stage. Different play: one named senior engineer plus AI agents, two-week first deploy, flat price quoted after a 30-minute call.
Day 0
Your product is live on the web
Day 0
Source code lands in your GitHub
From $0K
Flat-price quote, no retainer
Day 0
Your first paying user
Day 0
Your product is live on the web
Day 0
Source code lands in your GitHub
From $0K
Flat-price quote, no retainer
Day 0
Your first paying user
How this works
One AI-native engineer.
The output of a team.
One senior engineer plus AI agents now ships what four engineers used to. Same code quality, half the cost, three-week timelines instead of three months. Built for pre-seed to Series A founders in Austin who need to ship before the next round closes.
The local read
Why this works for Austin
Austin's tech wave brought the SF cost structure with it. 60+ days to fill the role. $310K all-in for the kind of engineer you actually want. And the local agency option is mostly staffing shops billing hourly with a bench problem you'll end up subsidizing.
We're the other thing. One engineer owns your build from spec to deploy. Flat price quoted up front — not by the hour, not by milestone padding. Code in your GitHub from commit one. When the build ends, you walk away clean: no retainer, no notice period, no key-person dependency you didn't sign up for.
Did you know · Austin
South by Southwest started in 1987 as a music conference. The interactive (tech) track launched in 1994 with around 150 attendees. It now pulls north of 50,000.
Time zone
--:--:--
CT
We work on Central Time, so we overlap with your in-house team, your investors, and your customers in the same window.
Sectors we work in here
What you actually get
A working product.
Live in weeks, not quarters.
30-minute call, then a flat-price quote. One named senior engineer from spec to deploy — no hand-offs, no juniors, no "team of three" billed for one person's work. Source code in your GitHub from commit one.
The three builds founders in Austin ask for most
Production web apps in 1 to 4 weeks
AI features and LLM integrations
Mobile apps for iOS and Android
Every build ships with
Live production URL
On your domain, day of launch
Your GitHub repo
Code yours from commit 1
Stripe + auth wired
Login, payments, webhooks done
Shared Slack channel
Async updates, same-day replies
Built from Austin
Founders here shipped these
Real Austin founders. Real shipped product. Not a stock-photo lineup of "trusted by" logos.
Xperiencify
Gamified online course platform that increased student completion rates by 300%. We built a complete learning management system with gamification mechanics, progress tracking, and social features.
Visit the productThe math
Why founders pick
path B in Austin
Same shipped product. Different cost, different speed, different risk. Here is how year one plays out.
Hiring in Austin
Year-one total
before shipping a line of code
Time to fill
discovery, interviews, offers, onboarding
Retention risk
leaves inside year one · 3-month notice
What's inside the $310,000 year-one cost: Salary $170,500 · Recruiter $49,600 · Benefits $46,500 · Equity $18,600 · Ramp $24,800
From $5K.
This week.
Named senior engineer.
One call, one quote, one named engineer. Code in your GitHub from commit one. Walk away at the end clean — no retainer, no notice, nothing held hostage.
Working with us · 9 out of 10 Austin founders pick this
What we build in Austin
Six things we ship,
all on a flat price
Each one is a focused engagement — one engineer, fixed price, your code from commit one. Pick the closest match and read the city-specific page.
MVP Development in Austin
Ship a working v1 in two weeks, not two quarters.
SaaS Development in Austin
Multi-tenant, billed, deployable. Not a prototype.
React & Next.js Engineering in Austin
Production frontends shipped on a flat price.
Mobile App Development in Austin
iOS and Android from one engineer, in your stores in weeks.
Fractional CTO in Austin
Senior technical leadership without the $300K base.
AI Product Development in Austin
LLM features that actually ship to users.
Vibe Code Rescue in Austin
Cursor or Claude Code shipped your MVP. We rebuild the engine without throwing the product away.
Agency Transfer in Austin
Your current dev team stopped shipping. We pick up where they failed and ship in two weeks.
Cloud Engineering in Austin
Production cloud infra without the DevOps headcount. CI/CD, observability, secrets management, on-call.
From our blog
How we think about shipping
Long-form on pricing, workflows, why we don't take equity, and the engineering economics of 2026.
Not in Austin?
We ship from 11 cities.
Worldwide.
Tap any pin to read what working with us looks like from that founder ecosystem. The Austin pin is where you are now.
Got a question about working from Austin?
Ask me anything.
Right now.
Real chat. Real answers from our FAQ. If I don't have a clean match, I'll email you back within a day.
Founders here usually ask
- How fast can you start a build?
- What does a typical quote look like?
- Do we own the code from day one?
- Do you have customers in Austin?
Valery Satsura
CEO · Start Matter · usually replies in minutes
Hey, I'm Valery. Ask me anything about working with us from Austin.
Ship your next thing from Austin
30-minute discovery. Flat-price quote in 24 hours. Code in your GitHub from commit one. No retainer.