We carry the risk. Here is what that means for you, line by line.
Four commitments in every contract, each with what it does not cover. Who pays for a wrong estimate, how a price is set, what we turn down: written before you ask.
Four commitments, and what each one does not cover.
The third line of each is the one that took the longest to write. A page that lists only promises reads like marketing. A page that names the edge of each promise reads like a contract, which is what this is meant to be.
Commitment 1
An overrun is not invoiced to you.
- What is written
- Contractual commitment on scope, schedule and quality. If the effort actually needed to deliver the scope exceeds our estimate, the difference is ours and is not invoiced to you.
- What it changes for you
- The question a buyer needs answered is not what a day costs. It is who pays for the week nobody planned. The contract answers it, and the answer is us.
- The limit
- A new requirement is not an overrun: it is priced separately, and you are free to refuse it.
Commitment 2
Your team runs it without us.
- What is written
- Architecture documentation, one person on your side trained during the engagement rather than in its final week, and a decision log explaining why each significant call was made.
- What it changes for you
- On the day we leave, you can run it without us. That is the point, and it is also why our engagement count does not climb fast.
- The limit
- Trained means able to run it and change it. Not able to rebuild it from nothing: a week of handover makes nobody the author of a system.
Commitment 3
You work with the team that delivers.
- What is written
- Laurent Tulpan scopes and runs every engagement. The people who carry it out are named in the quote, and any replacement is proposed to you in writing before it takes effect. Two large engagements in parallel at most.
- What it changes for you
- The person you meet on the first video call is the person who scopes the engagement, signs it and runs it.
- The limit
- That is also why we turn work down. When the limit is reached, we propose a start date rather than an immediate start.
Commitment 4
You know the price before you sign.
- What is written
- Scope, schedule and price are set in the quote before signature. No day rate, no counter of days. Two exceptions, published rather than discovered, are set out under the overrun chart below.
- What it changes for you
- An estimate that turns out wrong is our problem, not a change order three months in.
- The limit
- A fixed fee needs a scope: a subject nobody can describe yet gets scoped first, in a short paid engagement, and priced after. And it commits us on the deliverable, never on a business result: not revenue, not adoption, not a hire you make afterwards.
Also in every contract
Your data. Where data moves, an explicit commitment on no data loss: if data is lost through something we did, restoring it is at our expense.
Your code. On delivery and payment in full: the source code written for you, the content produced for it, the credentials to every third-party tool. Ownership, not a license. You can hand the work to your own team, or to another provider, the day after we leave. We keep authorship attribution, and unless agreed otherwise we may name you as a reference.
Who pays when your estimate turns out wrong?
Every estimate is wrong by some amount. The only thing that varies between providers is whose budget absorbs it, and almost nobody puts that in writing on a website.
- Time and materials
- Every extra week is invoiced. The overrun is on your side.
- Fixed fee
- The line does not move. The gap is at our cost, in the contract.
Two exceptions are published rather than discovered along the way: a two- or three-day expert audit is billed by the day because it is exploratory, and a procurement framework that only admits time and materials gets a written cap and a defined exit. That expert audit is not the technical due diligence, which has a fixed price.
The same need, bought four different ways: where the risk sits for you.
Not compared on price: a day rate only compares to another day rate. This is about what happens when things go wrong.
| Four ways of buying the same need, criterion by criterion | Fixed fee, with us | Staff augmentation | An independent contractor | Hiring in-house |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who carries a wrong estimate | We do, in writing. | You do: every extra week is billed. | You do, usually with no written cap. | You do, plus a salary. |
| Who you actually get | The person from the first video call, who signs and runs it. | Whoever is on the bench, reassigned the same way. | Exactly who you interviewed, on one skill set. | Whoever accepts the offer, in three to six months. |
| What happens when they leave | A documented handover and a trained person, in the contract. | A replacement, ramping up on your time. | Whatever was in their head leaves with them. | Notice period, then a hiring cycle. |
| Where it is the wrong answer | A permanent role with no exit: we point you to a hire. | Right, if you can direct the people you rent. | Right, for bounded work on one technology. | Right, if the work is permanent and you can wait. |
Three of these four columns are the right answer for some situations, and we say which on the first video call rather than after a proposal.
Your price never comes out of a rate card.
It comes out of a short paid scoping engagement, whose document is yours even if you stop there. That scoping is the only price we publish, and it is firm.
2000 € to 3000 €excluding VAT, for 2 to 5 days of work and a written, costed plan.Credited in full against the engagement if you continue.
What the technical due diligence containsWhy scoping is paid, and why nothing else is published
The scoping fixes the scope, the acceptance criteria and the schedule, and it produces a document with its assumptions written out, so your procurement team can contest the estimate line by line before anyone signs anything. It is written to be usable by any provider, including a competitor of ours.
The engagement after it is priced from that document, never from a grid. Other amounts on these pages are market ranges, labeled as such.
What never happens: a free proposal built on guesses, a day rate quoted before anyone has seen the work, extra days on an invoice without your decision, a price that depends on how urgent your problem sounded.
The record covers every engagement, not only the fixed-fee ones.
One caveat, because dates matter: the firm has worked since 2019, and the move to a fixed fee on every engagement dates from 2026. The record covers the engagements before the change too.
Reviewed in July 2026, across every engagement run since 2019: no client has called us back in an emergency after a handover, and the only three amendments signed after delivery extended the warranty and widened the handover. None of them repaired anything.
Among them: Expertise France (100% platform availability over the program), CFAO (10+ applications rebuilt wave by wave), Leads.fr (a product team handed to an internal manager) and the Liège metropolitan area (3000 resident reports across 24 municipalities).
The case studies in detailSix requests we turn down, and where yours should go instead.
You hear it on the first video call, with where to go instead.
Small development work, priced by the day
Better served by a freelance marketplace.
A brochure website, with no tools behind it
Better served by a web agency, or a site builder.
A project handed over, never looked at again
Better served by a provider who owns that model, with the schedule trade-off it carries.
A budget smaller than the cost of scoping it
Better served by well-chosen off-the-shelf tools, without custom integration.
Permanent reinforcement, with no exit
Better served by a hire, or a long-term partnership.
An AI project decided before looking at the work
Scoping first. What each wave recovers gets measured, and a wave that does not pay for itself is stopped.
Eight things procurement asks for, answered before the question.
The same content as our terms, arranged in the order a buyer works through it, so this page can be forwarded internally on its own.
A written quote comes first
Valid for thirty days. Nothing starts on a handshake with the paperwork to follow.
Service levels, in the standard agreement
Work begins within five business days, support responses within forty-eight business hours, a critical defect addressed within twenty-four. Tightened contractually where your situation needs it.
Insurance, with the insurer named
Professional indemnity and general liability cover with AIG. Certificates come with the contract, not after a chase.
Liability, and its cap
Capped at the amount invoiced for the engagement. Indirect consequences are excluded, including lost business and changes third-party vendors make to their own products.
Confidentiality
Confidential by default, and we sign a formal non-disclosure agreement on request without treating the request as distrust.
Compliance documents for your own file
The standard French set, on request: tax and social security clearance certificates, and a current company registration extract.
How it ends
A fixed-scope engagement ends on a material failure to perform, after formal notice left thirty days unremedied. A monthly one ends at the close of any period, with a month of notice. No cancellation penalty, no automatic renewal.
Who signs it, and who does the work
The person you meet on the first video call is the person who scopes the engagement, signs it and runs it.
Laurent, founder and CTO (his engagements include a French ministry, CFAO and Expertise France), scopes it, commits the firm to the estimate and runs it. David builds: development, integration, production releases. Clairmont builds as well, and takes over when two engagements run in parallel.
On peaks only, a network of vetted senior profiles, and never a junior presented as a senior.
Four questions buyers ask, answered without hedging.
How do I justify a fixed fee to a procurement team used to day rates?
A day rate can only be compared to another day rate, never to a commitment on an outcome. The useful question is not what a day costs, it is who pays for the overrun, and on a fixed fee the contract answers it: we do.
A technical due diligence gives your procurement team the estimate with its assumptions written out, so they can contest it line by line before anyone is committed to anything.
What stops you cutting corners, since the price is fixed?
Three things, and the third is the one that matters:
- The scope and the acceptance criteria are written before signature, so a deliverable that falls short is visible and gets reworked.
- The documented exit is part of the contract, and rushed work is legible in an architecture document.
- There is a record: across every engagement since 2019, no client has called us back in an emergency after a handover. That record is our main commercial asset, which is exactly why we protect it.
What if the requirement changes mid-engagement?
We price it, and you decide. A change of scope produces a priced amendment, itself at a fixed fee, which you are free to refuse. What does not exist is silent drift: extra days appearing on an invoice without a decision from you.
Does French law really apply if we contract from the United States or the UK?
Yes, in the standard terms, and it is the one clause that genuinely differs from what you may be used to: our contracts are governed by French law, and if a dispute cannot be settled amicably the competent courts are those of Paris, where the company is registered. It is negotiable on engagements where it matters enough to raise.
What would not be honest is to bury it and let you find it during redlines, so it has its own section in the terms.
And while we are being straight about the awkward parts: we have no US client list yet. If a domestic client roster is a requirement for you, we are not the right fit.
20 minutes, and you will know what we would sign for you.
Describe the situation on your side. We will tell you plainly whether a fixed fee makes sense for it, and if a hire or a provider on your own time zone would serve you better, we will say that instead.