Real Humans.
BUILDERS.
We help non-Techie founders go from idea to mvp. fast, affordable, and built right the first time.
Why the hell us ?
Because we’re small, senior, and scrappy — and we actually give a damn. You’ll talk directly to the people building your product. Want to tweak a color or re-think a flow? We’ll hop on a call and do it live with you.
We’ve spent literally decades shipping startup products across every corner of tech — from edtech and adtech to cloud infrastructure, games, HR, and AI for mental health. We’ve built things that served tens of millions of users, kept 99.99% uptime, and handled thousands of requests per second. We’ve also built the kind of weird, beautiful MVPs that helped tiny bootstrapped startups land their first customers.
Between us, we’ve got over 40 years in the trenches. So yeah. We know our stuff, and we know what makes an MVP actually work.
We move fast. Weeks-fast. And the code we hand you won’t need a rescue rewrite when you hire your first engineer.
We take the work seriously, but not ourselves. We’re weird, honest, and allergic to buzzwords. You’ll get thoughtful humans who love what they do, not AI-generated slop.
And if we’re not the right fit? We’ll tell you straight up and connect you with someone who is. We’ve been around long enough to know a lot of good people.
Our
Services
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MVP & Product Development
We design and build your first product end-to-end, fast. You’ll get a real product, not a “demo” you’ll have to throw away. Secure, maintainable, ready for customers, and built to grow with you.
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Fix your vibe-coded MVP
Already have an MVP that’s… let’s say creative? We’ll clean it up, shore up the infrastructure, and make it stable, secure, and ready for real users (and real revenue).
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Fractional CTO
Technical leadership without a full-time hire. We’ll act as your CTO, setting technical strategy, assessing and mitigating risks, and helping you make smart build vs. buy decisions. Senior startup-savvy engineering judgment, on tap.
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Hiring Support
We’ll help you find and hire your first in-house engineers, writing job descriptions, running technical interviews, and vetting for skill and fit. You’ll avoid expensive hiring mistakes and build a team you can trust.
How it works (MVP Development)
1. Figure out exactly what we’re building (before you pay us).
We’ll hop on calls, talk through your idea, and help you nail down what your MVP really needs (and what it doesn’t).
You’ll walk away with a clear plan. Scope, timeline, and hosting setup, before spending a dime. No vague quotes or “we’ll figure it out later.”
2. Small Retainer, Big Kickoff.
Once you’re ready, you put down a small retainer so we can clear space in our schedule and start prepping. Then we dive straight into designs, setup, and architecture so everything’s ready to roll.
3. Build Fast, check in often.
We work in quick, intense cycles, usually over a week or so. Every milestone comes with real deliverables and a short feedback loop. You’ll get to see what’s being built, test it, and sign off as we go. No disappearing devs.
4. You own everything.
From day one, you get full access to the code, tools, and environments. It’s all yours. Your product, your IP, your future team’s clean starting point.
5. Launch (for real).
At the end, you get a solid, secure, user-ready product, not some vibe-coded mess you’ll need to rebuild. You can start selling it, demoing it, raising money with it, whatever you want.
And if you want us to stick around, to fix bugs, add features, or help hire your first engineers, we’re here for that too!
what founders say
spotlight: from idea to launch in weeks
When Amber came to us with a vision for a performance management tool, she had the kind of idea that makes you say, “Okay, this needs to exist.” What she didn’t have was a product, or the technical expertise to build it herself.
In collaboration with designers at Robot Heart Studio, we helped her shape the MVP, built the full app end-to-end, and iterated live — testing features, tightening UX, and polishing details in real time. In no time, she had a secure, fully functional product ready to demo.
The collaboration clicked so well that Amber asked Darla to join as a cofounder! Darla’s now helping grow that startup and leading new builds here.
When I got the idea for Merritt I was so excited, but honestly a little freaked out. I'm not technical and I worried about getting taken advantage of by an eng or dev firm that would cut corners and build sloppily.
Darla came highly recommended to me and working with them far exceeded my expectations. First of all they took the time to really understand what I was building and double check all assumptions. They explained in plain language what different trade offs were for technical decisions. Second, they had impeccable organization, shared a clear and detailed execution timeline and hit the milestones to the day. And finally, the end result is a perfectly executed product that has even impressed my friends who work in technical positions at billion dollar organizations.
I could not recommend Darla more highly. Going from 0 to 1 is so hard, knowing you can trust the people building your MVP frees up your mind to focus on the 500 other things on your list.
— Amber Madison, Founder & CEO, Merritt
We’ve worked with companies across edtech, publishing, adtech, AI, and HR, from pre-seed bootstrappers to venture-backed startups.
They’ll all tell you roughly the same thing:
We’re easy to work with (even if you don’t “speak tech”)
We build fast, clean, and thoughtfully
We make the process feel fun and human
If you’d like to hear directly from other folks we’ve worked with, we’re happy to connect you!
Ready to Build Your Vision?
Tell us about your idea, and we’ll tell you what’s possible.
Contact us.
info@commanderbroccoli.com