A micro venture studio.
VelocityDev co-builds category-focused SaaS businesses with non-technical founders. We provide the complete technical build and a 24-month technical co-founder role, in exchange for a co-founder equity stake — not fees. One to two ventures per year, and not a single one more.
What we actually do
We are not a development agency and we do not take fee-for-service work. A dev shop cannot profitably take a meaningful equity stake; we can, because we take fewer engagements and stay involved after launch.
Full technical MVP
Architecture, application code, database design, infrastructure, deployment and monitoring. Production-ready, not demo-ware.
Technical product direction
Pushing back on scope. Simplifying where founders over-specify. Identifying what to ship first and what to defer.
A 24-month co-founder role
Bug fixes, scaling work, integrations, infrastructure and technical hiring decisions, for the duration of the vesting period.
Clean handover
Post-vesting, we transition to a hired CTO or continue in an advisory capacity. Company IP belongs to the founder from day one of incorporation — not to us.
What we do not do
- Marketing, sales and brand. These remain the founder's responsibility. Full stop.
- Funding the venture. We contribute build effort, not cash. Founders who need capital should raise from angels or grants in parallel.
Equity tiers
The 50% headline is a starting point, not a fixed price. The model is tiered against what the founder contributes, and every grant vests over 24 months with a six-month cliff.
Idea-only founder. Brings concept, brand vision and time, with no technical capability, customers or revenue. VelocityDev contributes the full build, architecture, infrastructure, product direction and post-launch support.
Domain-expert founder. Brings industry expertise, customer access and signed letters of intent or pilot users. VelocityDev contributes the full build, architecture, infrastructure and ongoing technical leadership.
Revenue-stage founder. Brings existing revenue or paying pilots, typically migrating from an MVP, no-code or contractor build.
How we select
Selection is the most important decision in the model. Picking the wrong venture costs six to twelve months of capacity, so every concept passes three tests before a term sheet is drafted.
- Customer evidence. Have you spoken to at least ten potential customers, and can you articulate specifically what they said they would pay for?
- Founder leverage. What do you bring that we cannot replicate — domain expertise, network access, brand presence, regulatory knowledge?
- Build feasibility. Can we ship a production-ready MVP in eight to twelve weeks of focused effort? If not, we reduce scope or pass.
Why the cap matters
We hard-cap at two ventures per year. Build start dates are scheduled rather than immediate, with a typical lead time of four to eight weeks from term sheet to build start. Existing portfolio products always take priority in capacity allocation. Above two per year the model degrades into a dev shop wearing venture-studio branding, and the constraints exist to prevent exactly that.
Portfolio
VelocityDev operates inside an active portfolio of live products across SaaS, marketplace, infrastructure and B2B tooling — including ezSign, FixMySEO, FlyMyAd and eish.biz. The existing portfolio's infrastructure compounds the build-speed advantage.
Where we are
VelocityDev operates from Cape Town and London, and is operated by Cloud WiFi Ltd (company number 13521157). Concept submissions are asynchronous and require no NDA — see how to submit a concept, or read the honest questions and risks.
Contact: hello@velocitydev.ai