what sits outside our scope

a few kinds of work sit clearly outside what we do. body-shop staffing — placing one or two developers inside a client team to fill a headcount gap. pure short-term ticket work — a sprint of bug fixes without a scoping or delivery structure. ml model training and data science. pure marketing retainers — ongoing ads, social content, campaigns without a software build at the centre.

these are real needs and important work. they are just not what we are built to deliver well. a studio that scopes fixed engagements and ships complete systems is not the right vehicle for an indefinite time-and-materials arrangement.

what we do instead

we keep a small network of people whose work we know well — a developer in guwahati who is excellent at short-run wordpress contracts, a data science team in bangalore that works with northeast india startups, a content and performance marketing shop that does disciplined regional work. people we have worked alongside or whose output we have reviewed.

when the first call lands on a project outside our scope, the call ends with a working introduction — a message to the right person, with a one-line summary of what the business needs and why the fit is good. the business does not have to start the search from scratch.

why we do it

long-term reputation is built one introduction at a time. a business that came to us for one thing and was referred well for another still remembers who helped them find the right path. when they have a project that is the right shape for us — a system build, a rescue project, a technical audit — they come back. the referral is the relationship.

the alternative — taking on mismatched work because the revenue is available — costs more than it earns. the engagement runs longer than it should, the outcome is less than it could be, and the client does not become a reference.

what to expect on the first call

we ask the questions we need to understand the problem. by the end of thirty minutes, we know whether the work is inside our scope or outside it. if it is inside, a scoping note follows within a week. if it is outside, the call ends with an introduction.

we do not string calls out. if the fit is elsewhere, we say so and make the introduction. the business gets back the rest of the hour.