We'll be your technical co-founder.
Dev Luma partners with a small number of early-stage founders each year as their technical co-founder — building the product and leading engineering in exchange for equity, a reduced rate, or a blend of both. You bring the market insight; we bring the engineering team you'd otherwise spend a year trying to hire.
What you get
A full engineering team from day one — architecture, build, DevOps, and technical leadership.
What it costs
Equity, a reduced cash rate, or a blend. Agreed in writing before any work begins.
Who it is for
Pre-seed and seed founders with domain expertise but no technical co-founder.
From application to shipped product.
Five stages, roughly three months from first call to a product in the market.
Apply and tell us the idea
A short written application followed by a 45-minute call. We want the problem, why you're the right person to solve it, and what you've already validated.
Technical and market review
We spend a week pressure-testing feasibility, build cost, and market size — then come back with an honest verdict, including if we think you shouldn't build it.
Structure the partnership
We agree equity, any cash component, vesting, milestones, and IP ownership in writing before a line of code exists. No handshake deals.
Build the MVP together
6–10 weeks to a real product in users' hands, with weekly demos. You focus on customers and fundraising while we own delivery.
Scale as your engineering team
Post-launch we keep going: iterating on usage data, hardening infrastructure, and hiring your in-house team when the time comes.
We say no to most applications.
Taking equity means we only win if you do, so we're honest about what makes us say yes.
Founder-market fit
You understand this problem better than we ever will, from working inside it — not from a market report.
A problem, not a feature
Something people already pay to solve badly. We're wary of ideas that need a behaviour change to work.
Evidence of demand
Waiting-list signups, letters of intent, a manual version you run in spreadsheets — any signal beyond conviction.
Commercial seriousness
You're full-time on this, or have a concrete date when you will be. We match the commitment we're asked to make.
A market that scales
Room to build a real business in at least one of our core markets: the EU, US, Australia, or South Africa.
Willingness to be challenged
We will push back on scope and strategy. The partnerships that work are the ones where that's welcome.
What these partnerships look like.
Illustrative examples of the engagement shape. Named references available on request.
Compliance workflow platform
Non-technical founder from a regulatory background. We built the MVP in eight weeks, took the technical lead on a seed round, and stayed on as the engineering function through to 40 paying customers.
8 weeks to first paying customer
Trades booking marketplace
Founder had a manual operation running on spreadsheets and phone calls. We productised it, automated dispatch, and now cover CTO responsibilities while they scale city by city.
6× bookings in 12 months
AI document review tool
Domain expert with deep legal knowledge and no engineering. We designed the retrieval architecture, shipped a working product in ten weeks, and structured the partnership around equity plus a reduced rate.
10 weeks idea to launch
Co-founder program questions.
Tell us what you're building. We'll tell you how to build it right.
Book a free 30-minute consultation with our team — no sales pitch, just a straight answer on scope, timeline, and approach.
info@devluma.io
Response within 1 business day · UK / US / EU hours covered