A field-service SaaS from zero to paying teams

The challenge

A founder came to us with a validated problem: small field-service companies — cleaning, maintenance, installations — were scheduling crews over phone calls and spreadsheets, losing jobs to double-bookings and unbilled hours. The vision was clear; the product didn’t exist. Every week without it was runway burned.

Our approach

We scoped a genuinely minimum product with the founder: scheduling, dispatch, job tracking, and invoicing — nothing else in version one. Architecture decisions were sized for a startup that needed room to grow without enterprise overhead:

• Multi-tenant Django + DRF backend with tenant isolation and role-based access from day one, because retrofitting multi-tenancy is the most expensive mistake a SaaS can make.
• React web app for dispatchers and owners — the people planning the day.
• Flutter field app for crews: today’s jobs, navigation, photos, signatures, and offline support for basements and dead zones, from one codebase on both stores.
• Subscription billing with a free trial, wired for plan upgrades and dunning.

We shipped a working slice in week five and iterated on real dispatcher feedback for the remaining sprints — the launch product was shaped by users, not by a spec written in week one.

The outcome

The platform launched with design partners already onboard, converted its first paying teams during the trial period, and has run without a major incident since. The founder pitches investors with a live product and real usage data instead of mockups.