Agency transfer
Your dev team stopped shipping. We pick up where they failed.
Most weeks we get an email from a founder who is six months into a build that should have shipped in three. The agency promises next sprint every Friday. Standups stopped two months ago. The founder pays a retainer to watch nothing ship. We take these projects. We finish them. We have done eight in the last quarter.
Founder
“We are almost done has been said four weeks in a row.”
Auditor
“Demos got vaguer. Then they stopped.”
Engineer
“One named engineer rotated to another project. Two new juniors appeared.”
Investor
“Communication moved from Slack to email to silence.”
Co-founder
“You do not have a current build of your own product running locally.”
Hire
“Your invoice keeps going up. Your feature list does not.”
If you see this, this is you
The signals.
What they actually mean.
“We are almost done has been said four weeks in a row.”
They are not almost done. They are out of ideas about how to get unstuck. They keep saying it because the alternative is admitting it.
“Demos got vaguer. Then they stopped.”
Show is the metric. When show goes quiet, code is not happening. The slack is being burned on internal scope debates you are not in.
“One named engineer rotated to another project. Two new juniors appeared.”
Your account is being subsidized to staff someone else's launch. You are paying senior rates for juniors learning on your codebase.
“Communication moved from Slack to email to silence.”
When the agency stops volunteering status, the status is bad. Pulling for it is now your job.
“You do not have a current build of your own product running locally.”
Your code lives on their machines, in their git, behind their NDAs. You do not actually own the project right now.
“Your invoice keeps going up. Your feature list does not.”
Hourly billing without scope means infinite scope. Every meeting is billable. Every Slack message is billable. The build is not.
“The founder of the agency stopped joining calls.”
Account is no longer strategic to them. You are now a maintenance customer being run by whoever they could spare.
Our process
Five steps. 14 days.
Code-and-contract audit
We pull a copy of the repo, your contract, and the last 30 days of git history. We tell you in writing what works, what is half-built, and what does not exist yet.
Walk-away script
We give you the email to send your current team. Notice period, code handover, IP transfer, final invoice. We have done this enough to keep it cordial.
Take possession
Repo into your GitHub org. CI into your Vercel. Domain DNS into your registrar. Stripe into your account. Everything you should already own.
Finish the half-built
We close the gap between what they said is done and what is actually working. Usually 60 percent of remaining scope is finishable in week one.
Ship and document
Production deploy. End-to-end test pass. README and runbook so the next engineer is not lost. Handover whether you keep us on retainer or not.
What we do with the code
Three piles. Honest splits.
Keep
50%Working code, design assets, brand, anything passing tests.
Finish
35%Half-built features that were 70 percent done and need closing.
Replace
15%Code that fundamentally does not work or violates how the rest of the system is built.
Verdict
Who this is for.
FAQ
Questions founders ask.
Will my current team make this difficult?
Usually no. Most disengage cleanly once the final invoice is paid and the notice period is honored. We give you the script. The contracts we have written for clients survive every transfer we have done.
What if my contract has lock-in or IP problems?
Most engagement contracts assign IP to the client by default. If yours does not, we flag it during the audit and you can decide whether to negotiate or accept the loss. We have not seen a transfer killed by IP yet.
Can you finish what they started, or do you start over?
We finish what they started. Starting over throws away your investment and adds three months. We close gaps in the existing code. Roughly half the time we keep most of it and ship in week two.
What if my current team's code is actually unworkable?
Then the audit flags that on day two and we quote a hybrid: keep the parts that work, rebuild the parts that do not. Usually means a longer engagement, four to eight weeks instead of two.
How do I avoid this happening again?
Flat-price engagements. Named senior engineer. Code in your GitHub from commit one. Weekly demos that are recorded. We document our own engagement structure in the related blog posts below.
Deep reads
Long-form on this exact problem.
Ask anything
Got a question about agency transfer?
Frequent questions
Valery Satsura
CEO · Start Matter · usually replies in minutes
Hey, I'm Valery. Ask anything about agency transfer. I usually reply in minutes.
Engagement shape
This is one of our services.
Same engagement, on the services index: Agency Transfer from $500. Quote in 24 hours, audit free for 48 hours.
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Just the audit. No rebuild.
2 days · from $500
Written report on what your repo has and what it lacks. You decide who fixes it.
Request the auditOne feature
Ship a single feature.
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Scoped to one workflow. Tests included. Your repo stays the way you left it.
Scope the featureFractional CTO
A senior in the room.
Monthly · from $1K
Architecture review, hiring help, code review on every PR. Half-day per week.
Start a conversationSend us the repo.
We reply in 48 hours.
Read-only GitHub access is fine. One-page audit comes back inside two days. No charge for the audit.