Contact
Tell us what is breaking.
One form, read by the people who would do the work. We answer it ourselves — which is also why we would rather have the real problem than a polished brief.
What happens next
- First replyFrom a person who read the message, not an autoresponder or a sequence.
- Fit call45–60 minutes with the engineer who would lead the work. No deck, no discovery theatre.
- OutputA written point of view on the problem, a rough shape for the work, and a yes or a no.
Start a conversation
Five fields. The last one is the only one that matters — everything below exists to make it easier to write well.
Before you write
Four things that make a first message useful
None of this is a form to fill in. It is simply what we end up asking for anyway, and having it up front turns the first call into a technical conversation rather than an interview.
The failure mode, not the feature list
Name the thing that breaks and who feels it. “Four analysts rebuild the same reconciliation by hand every Monday” tells us more in one line than a page describing a data platform.
What has already been tried
The abandoned script, the vendor pilot that stalled at security review, the model that was excellent in a notebook and unusable in production. Where it fell over is the most useful thing you know.
The constraint that actually binds
A regulator, a date, a budget, or a team that has to own the result after we leave. Every architecture is an answer to a constraint — tell us which one, and the first call gets twice as far.
Who has to agree
Whether this is your call, a committee’s, or still an idea you are testing internally. It changes what we should send you next, and it saves both sides a fortnight of polite scheduling.
Questions
After you get in touch
Still unsure whether this is worth an email? How we work covers the rest.
The message lands in an inbox two people read. If the problem is in our range we come back with questions and a slot for a 45–60 minute call with the engineer who would lead the build. If it is not, we say so — usually with a pointer to a product or a firm that fits it better. Either way you get an answer rather than silence.
Meanwhile
Read the architecture first.
Four reference systems, with the decisions and the tradeoffs written down. If one of them looks like your problem, say which in the message and we can skip the preamble.