scipio
hello@scipio.com.au

SaaS & startups

Ship the next thing without hiring for it.

Early teams have more jobs than developers. We take the defined ones — the billing bug, the onboarding flow, the marketing page — so your team stays on the product.

  • Concept homepage for a developer tool, on desktop and phone
  • Concept homepage for a hr & payroll saas, on desktop and phone
  • Concept homepage for a ai writing assistant, on desktop and phone
  • Concept homepage for a budgeting app, on desktop and phone
  • Concept homepage for a b2b analytics platform, on desktop and phone

The problem

Startups build fast and leave edges behind. Stripe webhooks that occasionally miss a payment. An onboarding flow that loses people on step three. A marketing site nobody on the team wants to touch because it is in a different stack from the product.

A lot of MVPs are now built with AI tools, which get the first version up quickly but can leave auth, data rules and deployment fragile. We stabilise what is there, fix the parts that will hurt at scale and leave notes so your team can carry on.

What we watch for

  • Secrets kept out of the browser and out of the repository
  • Database rules and auth tested with more than one user
  • Billing changes tested in Stripe’s test mode before they touch real customers
  • Launch dates, investor demos and other fixed deadlines
  • Handover notes, so your team or AI tools can continue from a clean base

Jobs we do for saas & startups

  • Stabilise an AI-built MVP

    Fix auth, data rules and deployment problems before real users arrive.

  • Stripe billing fixes

    Repair webhooks, plan changes, trials and failed payment handling.

  • Onboarding flow improvements

    Find where new users drop off and fix the steps that cause it.

  • Marketing site build or rebuild

    A fast, editable marketing site separate from the product codebase.

  • Third-party integrations

    Connect your product to the CRM, email or analytics tools your team uses.

  • Pre-launch review

    A written check of security, errors and deployment before a public launch.

Scoping agent

Tell us what’s stuck.

Two minutes of guided questions. You get a plain-English brief, and a developer replies within one business day.

  • Guided questions, not an AI chatbot
  • A person reviews every brief
  • Never asks for passwords or keys
Scipio agent Guided brief · human-reviewed
2 min brief
Hey — what are you trying to get over the line?Now

No account. No sales script. Never asks for passwords or keys.

SaaS & startups / Straight answers

Before you ask.

How much does it cost to fix an AI-built SaaS MVP?

Fixing an AI-built MVP usually starts with a paid diagnostic from $350, and most rescue fixes then cost between $500 and $4,000. The diagnostic takes 2–3 business days and gives you a written list of what is broken, what is unsafe and what is fine, in order of launch risk. Fixes usually take 3–10 business days. The price depends on how many structural problems there are, not on how many screens the app has. If the work is bigger than our range, the diagnostic says so.

Is my Lovable, Bolt or Cursor app safe to launch to paying users?

It may be, but AI-built apps often ship with a few predictable gaps that only show up once real users sign in. The common ones are Supabase row-level security that is missing or too loose, API keys exposed in the browser, auth that only works for the first user, and payment status that can be changed from the client. Our diagnostic checks those and gives you a plain yes, no or not-yet. Using Lovable, Bolt or Cursor is not a problem in itself. It just tells us where to look first.

Why isn’t Stripe updating subscriptions in my app?

Usually the app is not receiving or processing Stripe’s webhook events correctly. Common causes are a webhook endpoint set up in test mode but not live mode, a failing signature check, a missing event type such as subscription updates or failed invoices, or a handler that times out and never retries cleanly. We trace the events in your Stripe dashboard, fix the handler, test plan changes, trials, renewals and failed payments in test mode, then confirm in live. Most billing fixes cost $250–$1,200 or $600–$3,500 for larger integrations.

Should I rebuild my startup’s MVP or fix what’s already there?

Fix it in almost every case. Most MVPs, including AI-built ones, need targeted repair rather than a rewrite. A rebuild throws away working features and usually reintroduces bugs you already solved. We look at whether the data model, auth and deployment are sound. If they are, we fix the problems in place and leave notes so your team or AI tool can carry on. If a rewrite really would be cheaper, the diagnostic will say so and explain why. Full rewrites into a different stack are outside what we do.

Can you fix Supabase auth and row-level security in our app?

Yes. Supabase auth and row-level security fixes are among the most common jobs we do for startups. We review every table’s policies, test them with more than one user account, lock down sensitive columns such as plan or subscription status, and move any service-role keys out of the browser. We also work with Firebase rules and auth providers such as Clerk. The fixes are committed to your repository with a short note explaining each policy, and most land within a 3–10 business day rescue job.

Should our SaaS marketing site be separate from the product app?

Usually yes, because a separate marketing site lets your team edit pages without touching the product codebase. Common setups are Webflow, or a lightweight Next.js site with a CMS such as Sanity, with the app on its own subdomain. We keep sign-up, login and analytics working across both, so tools like PostHog still see the full funnel. A landing page starts from $900 and takes 1–2 weeks. A small site of up to five pages typically costs $2,500–$4,000 and takes 2–4 weeks.

How do we get our SaaS product recommended by ChatGPT and Perplexity?

Nobody can guarantee that an AI assistant will recommend your product, but you can make your marketing site easy for those tools to read and describe accurately. That means pages rendered as real HTML rather than only in client-side JavaScript, plain descriptions of what the product does and who it is for, a visible pricing page, public docs, and crawlers that are not accidentally blocked. A technical SEO audit starts from $600 and takes 3–5 business days. Positioning and content are yours to decide.

What privacy and Spam Act rules apply to a startup collecting sign-ups in Australia?

A startup collecting personal information should generally have a privacy policy, collect only what it needs, and send marketing emails only with consent and a working unsubscribe under the Spam Act. Whether the Privacy Act applies to you in full depends on factors like turnover and what you do, so check with your adviser. This is not legal advice. On the technical side we separate transactional and marketing email, record consent at sign-up, keep secrets and personal data out of logs and make onboarding usable by keyboard and screen reader.

Can Scipio join our startup team as an ongoing developer?

No. We do defined jobs rather than embedded, ongoing development, and we do not work for equity. That suits early teams with more defined tasks than developers: a billing bug, an onboarding flow, a pre-launch review or a marketing page. For a steady run of small jobs, a pre-paid block of small jobs usually costs between $500 and $2,000. If you need a full-time engineer, a fractional CTO or a product built from scratch over months, you need a hire or a larger team, and we will say so.

Do you need our production keys or database access, and will you sign an NDA?

We do not need your passwords or keys, and yes, we will sign a reasonable NDA. Never send secrets through the site. Once a job is agreed, you invite us to your GitHub, Vercel, Supabase or Stripe accounts with the access the job needs, and you remove it afterwards. We test against staging or test mode wherever possible, so most jobs do not need sensitive production data. The code, commits and accounts stay yours, with nothing locked to us.