Avi Santoso

Work with me on retainer

Traditional engagement models create misaligned incentives and unnecessary overhead. A retainer structure solves these fundamental problems while maximizing value for both parties.

Why traditional models fall short:

Four common engagement approaches. Each creates friction, misalignment, or unnecessary overhead.

Fixed Price Projects

Scoping Overhead

Fixed-price work sounds simple, but it starts with a lot of upfront scoping. As you learn, the scope always shifts, and every change turns into a negotiation. That adds overhead and delays while everyone tracks scope instead of solving the problem. In the end, both sides spend more time managing the contract than delivering value.

Employment

Requires Consistent Workload

Hiring full-time can be steady, but it only works with a consistent, well-planned workload. It needs detailed roadmaps, regular check-ins, and ongoing management. You also absorb hidden costs - benefits, tools, and admin. This add up quickly. When work slows you pay for idle time, and when the workload spikes the team can't scale fast enough.

Hourly Consulting

Misaligned Incentives

Billing by the hour puts everyone on different sides of the table. Consultants are incentivized to increase hours, while clients are incentivized to cut them. Important but not urgent work gets pushed aside because it's hard to justify in the moment. Quality suffers when decisions revolve around time logs instead of outcomes.

Technical Co-Founder

Requires Compatibility

Bringing on a technical co-founder means giving up meaningful, permanent equity. It ties you into a close personal and professional partnership that must work under pressure. If vision, pace, or values misalign, the fallout can hurt the business. Unwinding the relationship later is legally complex and often expensive.

Enter the Retainer Model

A flexible engagement model that aligns incentives and maximizes value

How It Works

  • Fixed monthly price with guaranteed minimum hours
  • Fortnightly reporting of hours used and remaining
  • Unused hours "bank" and carry over month-to-month
  • Flexible scope - focus on delivering maximum value

Tier 1 - Bug Fixing & Maintenance

Monthly Price
4x day rateinc. GST
Dedicated Hours
30 hoursmonthly
Priority Level
Standard

Your systems work, but things break. Small issues become urgent fires because there's no one to address them quickly.

Labor Time Equivalent
0.2 LTE
Role Level Equivalent
Software Developer
Why choose this tier:
  • •Perfect for stable businesses with occasional technical needs
  • •Ideal when you have existing systems that just need maintenance
  • •Great starting point for businesses new to technical retainers
  • •Cost-effective solution for predictable, routine technical work
Best Value

Tier 2 - Feature Development

Monthly Price
8x day rateinc. GST
Dedicated Hours
60 hoursmonthly
Priority Level
Higher

You need ongoing development plus strategic technical guidance. Your business is evolving and your systems need to evolve with it.

Labor Time Equivalent
0.4 LTE
Role Level Equivalent
Solutions Architect
Why choose this tier:
  • •Best for growing businesses that need regular feature development
  • •Ideal when you need strategic technical guidance alongside execution
  • •Perfect balance of development capacity and architectural oversight
  • •Great for businesses scaling their technical capabilities

Tier 3 - Technical Leadership

Monthly Price
16x day rateinc. GST
Dedicated Hours
120 hoursmonthly
Priority Level
Highest

You need comprehensive technical leadership without the overhead of a full-time executive hire. Strategy, execution, and team guidance all in one.

Labor Time Equivalent
0.8 LTE
Role Level Equivalent
Temporary CTO
Why choose this tier:
  • •Essential for businesses preparing for funding rounds or major growth
  • •Perfect when you need C-level technical strategy and execution
  • •Ideal for companies requiring board-level technical reporting
  • •Best choice for comprehensive technical transformation projects

Priority Response System

T1
Standard

Guaranteed up to 72 hour response time for non-urgent requests

T2
Priority

Guaranteed up to 48 hour response time with dedicated development focus

T3
Highest

Guaranteed up to 24 hour response time with highest priority

Note: All tiers include access to urgent support when critical issues arise.

Example Timeline

December 2024

T1
Available
30h
Used
4h
Remaining
26h
Activity Summary

Minimal maintenance work during business downtime

January 2025

T1
Available
30 + 2656h
Used
16h
Remaining
40h
Activity Summary

Minor feature development and bug fixes

February 2025

T2
Available
60 + 40100h
Used
100h
Remaining
—
Activity Summary

Major reporting functionality development

March 2025

T1
Available
30h
Used
25h
Remaining
5h
Activity Summary

Return to base tier for ongoing maintenance

April 2025

T2
Available
60 + 565h
Used
65h
Remaining
—
Activity Summary

Customer growth drives feature expansion and optimization

May 2025

T3
Available
120h
Used
115h
Remaining
5h
Activity Summary

Funding round preparation: scalability improvements, technical due diligence support

Flexible scaling: Scale up or down based on business needs
Hour banking: Unused hours accumulate for larger projects
No waste: No wasted hours, use banked hours in busy months
Predictable costs: Fixed monthly pricing with clear hour tracking

Frequently Asked Questions

Key questions about our process, pricing, and guarantees, answered with full transparency.

The banking system is designed to be simple and fair. If you don't use all of your dedicated hours in a month, the remaining are automatically "banked" for you. You can then use these banked hours in future months to cover additional work. The only conditions are: 1. Work (including work done using banked hours) can only be performed while you have an active monthly retainer. 2. The maximum number of hours carried over at any time is 120 hours. Any hours accrued beyond this cap will expire. This system ensures you never lose the value of your investment and provides a flexible buffer for bigger tasks down the line.
If you decide to end your retainer, you have a 21-day grace period to activate a new one. If you restart within this window, your previously banked hours are preserved and ready to use. If you don't restart within 21 days, any remaining banked hours will expire. Please note: The grace period is for preserving your previously banked hours. No work can be performed during this time unless a new retainer payment is made. Pausing a retainer is generally not supported and is only considered in extenuating circumstances, as the banking system is designed to provide the necessary flexibility for fluctuating workloads.
Very flexible! You can upgrade your retainer tier at any time with a simple request. If you need more hours urgently mid-month, we can arrange a pro-rata invoice to upgrade your plan immediately. For downgrades, the change will take effect in the next billing cycle since payment has already been made upfront for the current month.
The process is straightforward. For month-to-month plans, you can cancel at any time. While a week's notice is appreciated, it is not required. As retainers are paid upfront for the month, no refunds are issued for cancellations. You are, of course, welcome to use any remaining hours you've paid for within that final month. For longer-term contracts (e.g., 3-6 or 6-12 months), the specific termination details will be outlined in your agreement.
Work is managed through casual, ad-hoc communication. The goal is to minimize management overhead for both of us. We can use a simple chat or brief calls to discuss tasks and priorities. There's no complex ticketing system required (happy to use one if you prefer). If a task's scope is unclear, we'll discuss it. Because of the retainer model, there's no rush; we can take the time to get the scope right, turning it into a valuable planning activity rather than a costly blocker.
You will receive a clear and simple report twice a month. This report will detail the days worked, the hours used, what was accomplished, and your current balance of banked hours. This ensures you always have a transparent view of your investment.
Not at all. The tier names like "Bug Fixing & Maintenance" or "Technical Leadership" are suggestions to help guide you toward the most cost-effective solution for your goals. For example, building a major new feature usually requires more than one day a week. However, you are free to use your retainer hours for any type of technical work you need, regardless of the tier you've chosen.
This retainer model aligns our incentives. Hourly Consulting creates a conflict: the consultant is motivated to bill more hours, while the client is motivated to use fewer. This leads to a focus on time, not results, and important but non-urgent work often gets neglected. Our Retainer Model focuses on delivering value and outcomes. The fixed monthly fee encourages solving problems efficiently. It guarantees my availability and shifts our shared focus towards making consistent, meaningful progress on your goals.
A retainer embraces flexibility. Fixed-Price Projects require a massive, rigid upfront scoping effort. When a project inevitably evolves (as all good projects do), changing the scope becomes a slow, painful, and costly renegotiation process. Our Retainer Model allows the scope to evolve naturally as we learn more. We can pivot to new priorities and adapt to your changing business needs without bureaucracy, ensuring we are always working on what delivers the most value right now.
The retainer model offers senior-level talent without the cost and risk of hiring. Hiring an Employee involves high overhead (salary, benefits, taxes, equipment, management time) and a lengthy, risky recruitment process, especially for non-technical founders. You pay their full salary even when the workload fluctuates. Our Retainer Model eliminates all hiring overhead and risk. You get immediate access to expert talent and can scale your investment up or down to perfectly match your workload, ensuring maximum efficiency.
This model gives you technical leadership without surrendering ownership. A Technical Co-founder relationship requires you to give up significant equity. It's a "business marriage" that is extremely difficult, costly, and emotionally draining to exit if personalities or visions diverge, potentially destroying the business. Our Retainer Model is a clean, commercial agreement. You retain 100% of your equity and control. It adapts to the natural ebbs and flows of your business, allowing you to access technical leadership when you need it and scale it back when your focus shifts elsewhere.
Equity arrangements are something I'm open to discussing on a case-by-case basis. The specifics would depend on factors like the stage of your business, the equity percentage, vesting terms, and how it complements the overall compensation structure. I'm happy to explore creative arrangements that align our interests while ensuring the partnership works for both parties. If you're interested in discussing an equity component, let's schedule a conversation to explore what might make sense for your specific situation.
The key benefit is gaining a stable, reliable source of expert technical talent without the overhead, risk, and misaligned incentives of traditional models. It is the most flexible and financially intelligent way for a business to build a technical advantage, access strategic leadership, and turn ideas into valuable assets.

Ready to Explore a Better Way?

Let's discuss which retainer tier makes sense for your business needs and how we can maximize the value of our collaboration.

Schedule a Consultation