Service 01
Product design
Research with your users, flows, prototypes tested every week and a design system your next hire can pick up.
Usually 4 to 8 weeks
Est. 2019Product studio · Little Rock, AR
We build your first product alongside you.
Sidecar is a 14-person design and engineering studio. We join seed-stage founders for about twelve weeks and ship the first version, the rebuild or the launch, then hand over everything, including the people who will keep it running.
- Shipped
- 38 products
- Length
- 12 weeks
- Still live
- 34 of 38
Founders we have built with, from pre-seed to Series A
01 / What we do
One small team for design, code and the launch.
Founders hire us when the product has to exist before the next raise, and there is no time to hire a whole team first. You get senior people who have done this 38 times, working in your Slack, your repo and your calendar.
Service 02
Engineering
Web and mobile apps, APIs and the integrations that make them useful, built to be grown by your own team.
Usually 8 to 16 weeks
Service 03
Launch
Positioning, the launch page, onboarding and the first 30 days of numbers, planned with you week by week.
Usually 3 to 6 weeks
02 / Featured work
Shipped, and still running.
SeedDesignEngineeringLaunch
Brineworks: an oxygen alarm 140 catfish farms trust at 2 a.m.
Stuttgart, AR · 14 weeks · team of 4
The sensor worked; nobody checked the app in time. We rebuilt it around one moment, the night alarm, and launched it through feed stores.
Read the case study
SeedDesignEngineering
Pawpaw Health
After-hours nurse line scheduling for pediatric clinics. Live in 38 clinics within a year.
SeedEngineeringLaunch
Mulecart
Wholesale ordering for rural grocers: $2.4M in orders in the first six months.
03 / How it runs
Twelve weeks, demoed every Friday.
No disappearing for a month. You see working software from week six, you make the product calls, and on launch day you already own every account, every line of code and every document.
Weeks 1–2
Frame
Weeks 3–5
Shape
Weeks 6–9
Build
Week Wk 10
Harden
Weeks 11–12
Launch
↑ working software from week 6, on your phone
04 / From founders
They hired a studio. They got a cofounder for a quarter.
“They sat in a pond truck with us at two in the morning. Nobody else we talked to asked to do that. The alarm screen came straight out of that night.”
“Our first prototype was pretty and could not take an order. Sidecar rebuilt the core in eight weeks and sat in on our first fifty sales calls.”
“We are a Series A company with good engineers. What we lacked was someone to say no to features. Ten weeks later fleet managers could use our product without us.”
05 / Start
Tell us what has to exist by your next raise.
Send a short brief. A partner reads every one and replies within two working days with honest questions, a rough plan or the name of a better fit.
Next open start
Monday, Dec 7
1 of 2 pods open
- ThenMonday, Jan 4
- AndMonday, Feb 1
We start new engagements on Mondays, about every four weeks, with two pods of three to five people.