Growth
The two engagement models are not tiers. One trades cash for shared risk; the other trades risk for ownership. The right answer follows from the balance sheet, not from ambition.
Complete Package: fixed scope, you own it
A written scope, a price, milestones, and an asset that belongs to the business at the end - code, brand, accounts, data. It is the right model when the work is definable, when the business is funded well enough to pay for delivery outright, and when control matters more than conserving cash.
Its constraint is honest: a fixed scope is only as good as the definition behind it. Anything discovered mid-build becomes a change, and changes cost time.
Growth Partnership: shared risk, shared upside
A reduced fee against an agreed share of the outcome. It suits businesses with a proven offer and limited runway, where the gap is execution capacity rather than product-market fit, and where both sides can agree on how the outcome is measured.
It only works with instrumentation. A revenue share on numbers nobody trusts turns into a dispute in the second quarter, so the tracking, attribution and reporting definitions are agreed before the first campaign runs.
A partnership needs an agreed number before it needs an agreed percentage.
How to choose in one pass
- Less than six months of runway and a validated offer: partnership, because cash preserved is the binding constraint.
- Funded, with a board expecting an owned asset: package, because the deliverable has to sit on the balance sheet.
- Unclear demand: neither yet - a paid discovery phase first, so the scope is written against evidence.
- Regulated or data-sensitive sector: package, because ownership and audit trail are usually non-negotiable.
Both models produce the same artefacts - written scope, named owners, reporting a board can read. What differs is who carries the risk in the first two quarters.
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Written by the team in New York - engineers, strategists and marketers who build and grow the companies they write about.
