GrimalkinRates
Fixed fees. No meters.
Every Grimalkin engagement is a fixed fee tied to a deliverable, agreed before work starts. You will never receive an invoice itemized in hours.
| Engagement | You get | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| The Diagnostic The front door for every engagement |
An intake call, a stretch of offline agentic research, and a results call — 60–90 minutes of conversation total, plus a written brief you keep. It answers your question outright or scopes exactly what will. | $999 |
| Decision brief Idea evaluation, bid second opinion, or AI/agentic strategy |
A deep dive on one decision, delivered as a forwardable written brief — the document you hand your cofounder, board, or bidder. | from $2,500 |
| Working prototype Zero to a working v0→v1 |
Working software scoped to the question it needs to answer — a demo, a validation build, or a sharp internal tool — plus a clear-eyed hardening plan. | from $10,000 |
| The owner's engineer A second opinion, ongoing |
Independent oversight of a vendor or offshore build, on your side of the table — delivery review, architecture and code audits, estimate pressure-testing, and plain-language reporting. One aligned retainer instead of a US team, or an offshore team running twice as long as necessary. | from $3,500/mo |
| Turnaround / fractional stewardship Fractional CTO, advisor, or embedded lead |
A stuck team unstuck — process, architecture, mentorship, and the hard calls, always with an exit plan. Priced on scope and stakes, monthly. | from $5,000/mo |
Why there's no hourly rate
Because you aren't buying hours. When the answer arrives in ten minutes, you didn't pay for ten minutes — you paid for the twenty years of engineering that made it take ten minutes. (And, honestly, for the thousand-plus hours of Oxygen Not Included spent internalizing exactly how complex systems cascade into failure.) Judgment doesn't accrue by the clock, so it isn't billed by one.
Fixed fees keep the incentives pointed the right way: Grimalkin gets paid for the outcome, not for taking longer. If scope changes mid-engagement, we re-scope — we don't run a meter.
Nonprofit, early-stage, and friends-of-Grimalkin consideration available on request.