What engagement model to pick for your project?

This post is about understanding the various engagement models in which we offer our services to our clients. We have given links to our existing work or client websites wherever possible to make it clear what type of clients fall in which category.

At Turnkey Tech, we help our clients in 3 ways.

1. Product Development
2. Resource Staffing
3. Venture Building

Product Development Model

In this engagement, we work on projects that have a fixed scope of work and timelines. Any of the following clients fall into this engagement model:

A startup founder looking for an MVP development of their business idea. They generally have a product PRD or UI/UX design ready with them.

An entrepreneur looking for a generic product, for example, an e-commerce website, landing page website, or some other simple portals that can be developed with technologies like WordPress.

An existing business, that is running its business offline for some time and wants to build a system or portal to help them go online.

Under this model, the cost and payment terms are calculated as below:

• For a simple landing page and WordPress website, we calculate the time and cost upfront and sign an agreement with the client. The payment terms for such projects are 50% upfront payment and the remaining 50% made after completion and delivery of the project. In such projects, we gather all the requirements while starting the project and those requirements do not change over the course of development. Once the development is completed from our side, we deliver a version of the work to the client that we call pre-snagging. We take only 1 round of feedback from clients for the pre-snagging product and deliver the final work to them.
• For MVP or any other custom requirements, setting hard boundaries on the scope of work is hard. In such work, we give a tentative timeline with the number of developers required. We charge the client on a monthly basis (the cost varies between INR 80,000–150,000 per month for a developer depending on the project requirement) till the duration of the project. We provide a product manager (no cost for PM) also as a point of contact to the client. The Product Manager drives the work and stays in touch with the client consistently for feedback.

Resource Staffing

In this model, the scope of the project need not be fixed initially. The clients can have daily meetings with developers and drive the project in the Agile method. The following is an ideal client persona:

A company (generally revenue positive or VC funded) that already has their product live, or is in an initial stage and has tested the market with some form of MVP. The company wants to scale its tech product or wants to venture into new product development. They want to hire some developers or a team (2–3 developers, QA, and tech lead) for a period of more than 6 months and have enough finances allocated for the project.

The engagement models work as below:

• We deploy a required number of developers or a pod/team consisting of developers, QAs, and a tech lead as per the client’s requirements. The client has regular stand-up meetings and the pod works in an Agile environment.
• We ensure the smooth running of the project by providing additional resources as and when required as per the development pace.
• The payment terms in such engagements are monthly and costs are in the range of INR (80,000–150,000) per resource per month.

Venture Building

In this engagement, we help founders in different aspects of building their startups along with product development. We help them in creating or review their business plans and pitch decks. We help them raise early-stage capital by

• Connecting them with various Angel syndicates or VC firms
• Participate in their pitch as their tech partner

For our services, we have 2 types of payment structures

• Fee-based model, where we discuss the efforts required from our side for their engagement and charge a fixed cost to them
• Fee-based + equity share, in some projects where our interest in the product aligns with the founders, and where we see ourselves working for a longer duration, we also offer our services with a nominal fee for services along with an equity share of the company.