case study
Coaching CRM
$13,000 buildA coaching business tracking client stages, check-ins, and renewals in a spreadsheet that only the founder fully understood.
Client RecordsStage TrackingAutomatic Follow-upsRenewalsTeam Dashboard
a small studio for growing businesses
Custom internal software for service businesses that have outgrown the spreadsheet.
Three calls, under two hours of your attention, and the thing gets built around how you already work. The alternative is a three-month tool evaluation you never get around to finishing.
the truth?
Your process runs on someone remembering.
Check-ins, follow-ups, upsells, renewals, removals. They happen if a person recalls they're due. There's no system of record. Either a spreadsheet is the source of truth, or it's spread across four tools and nothing centralizes it.
A missed follow-up is a missed renewal. That comes out of revenue.
- 1.Somebody asks where a client stands and you have to go ask another person.
- 2.The same work gets redone because nobody knew it was already done.
- 3.Every new client makes it worse, because that's one more thing to keep track of.
- 4.Hiring somebody to keep track of it was your fix.
- 5.You tried tools. None of them stuck.
- 6.The project to fix it has been on your list for months.
who this is for —
Founder-led service businesses that have hit the wall.
Roughly 5 to 30 people. The founder is still personally in delivery. The process is repeatable, it's growing, and it has just hit the point where the current way of running it stopped working.
- ✓A process that runs the same way every time, as long as somebody remembers to run it
- ✓Roughly 30 to 300 active clients
- ✓A spreadsheet doing the job of a system of record
- ✓Adding contractors, practitioners, or ops staff
- ✓Somebody on payroll whose week goes on chasing this
- ✓An earlier attempt to fix it that stalled or was abandoned
why custom —
You don't have time to evaluate another tool.
Researching products, working out whether one really covers your process, configuring it, and then training your team on someone else's workflow — that's weeks of your attention. It's why the project keeps sliding down the list.
A build takes under two hours of your time across three calls, and what comes out is shaped around the process you already run. Nobody has to change how they work to match the software.
If a cheap off-the-shelf tool would genuinely cover your problem, I'll tell you that on the first call rather than sell you a build.
the process —
All three calls inside one business week.
Under two hours of your time in total, start to finish.
01
15 minutesIntro call
You tell me what the process is, who runs it today, and what you've already tried. I'm not going to demo anything at you. If it isn't a fit, I'll say so right on this call.
02
60 minutesRequirements call
We map the workflow end to end — where a client enters, what has to happen next, who decides, what the exceptions are. From there I go away and synthesize solutions for it.
03
30 minutesProposal call
I bring back up to three options shaped around what you need and what you said you wanted, and you pick the one that fits.
no guessing —
You see it working before you pay.
By the third call there's a working prototype of your process on screen, using your stages, your terminology, and your exceptions. You can click into it. It's a real thing running, so you're deciding against something you can actually see.
That's also why the scope gets fixed before the build starts. By then we've both seen what it is, so there's nothing left to guess at on either side.
what you end up with —
You own it. All of it.
The code and the infrastructure are yours, in your accounts, with your team's access. No lock-in, and nothing that stops working if you stop working with me.
01
Code and infrastructure
Handed over to you, running in accounts you control. Another developer can pick it up.
02
Training at launch
A live session with your team on deployment day, recorded so new hires can watch it later.
03
30 days included
The first month covers bugs and in-scope changes. It's in the build price already, so there's nothing extra to sign.
A subscription runs forever and climbs as your headcount and client count grow. A build is paid once. Look at it over two or three years rather than month one.
selected work —
Two builds, two different reasons.
One replaced a spreadsheet only the founder fully understood. The other beat a subscription that was cheaper on the day we ran the numbers.
case study
Field time tracker
$5,000 buildA construction firm that priced a per-seat time tracker, found it cheaper than a custom build, and built anyway.
Offline-FirstGPS VerificationField CrewCSV Payroll ExportOwned Infrastructure
a note from the founder —
Why I started Skaiward
I spent years building software inside other people's companies, including a startup I helped start. Good work, but I kept watching the same thing happen from the inside: the internal tools everybody depended on were always the last thing anyone got around to fixing.
So I went out on my own, and almost every business I've talked to since has the same item sitting on their list. Sort out the spreadsheet. It's been there for months. They care about it, but fixing it properly means researching tools, working out whether one really covers the process, configuring it, and then retraining the team, all while still running the business. So it waits. And the longer it waits, the more it costs.
I built Skaiward to take that decision off your desk. Three calls, a working prototype before any money changes hands, a fixed scope, and something built around the way you already run.
If a cheap tool covers what you need, I'd rather tell you that than sell you a build. What I care about is whether the thing is still getting used six months later.
Andrew
Andrew Castillo · Founder
let's talk —
Still running it on a spreadsheet?
Fifteen minutes. You tell me what the process is and what you've already tried, and I'll tell you straight whether this is worth building.
Book an intro call