Services / 01
Development as a Service.
Your engineering department — on retainer, not on contract.
Hire a team, not a contract. We embed the people you’d otherwise spend a year recruiting and ship the software you’d otherwise rent forever.
The premise
You’re stuck choosing between two flawed options.
SaaS tools that almost-fit, and bend your business around their assumptions. Or agencies that ship something, hand over the keys, and disappear before you’ve discovered what you actually needed in the first place. Both leave you paying for software that doesn’t quite belong to you.
Thrive replaces both. We embed an AI-accelerated team — designers, developers, a project manager, a fractional CTO — into yours, and stay close enough to know which features are worth building and which aren’t. We sit at the table for the conversations that matter: where the bottlenecks are, where the opportunities are, and what technology can actually do to move the business forward.
Then we build it. Software you own, on a monthly retainer, at a price point that compounds in your favour the longer the partnership runs. This is what we call Development Department as a Service — DDaaS — and it’s the model the rest of this page describes.
What you get
A whole team, with the stamina to keep going.
Eight things every DDaaS engagement includes — not as line items on an invoice, but as the texture of how the partnership actually runs.
01
One blended rate, every skill set
Strategy, project management, design, engineering, and AI/cloud — one embedded team, one hourly rate, no per-specialist upcharges.
02
AI-accelerated delivery
Modern AI tooling baked into how we build, so timelines that used to take quarters take weeks.
03
Strategic clarity
We sit at the table for what to build, not just how. The roadmap matches your business goals, not a ticket queue.
04
Quarterly business review
Every 90 days we pause, look at what shipped, and adjust direction together. No black-box delivery.
05
Code, IP & architecture you own
Everything we build is yours, fully transferable, with no vendor lock-in or proprietary platforms.
06
Monthly retainer, no long lock
Scale the team up or down each quarter as needs change. No multi-year commitments.
07
Senior craft, no juniors
The people on your account are senior practitioners. We don’t farm work out or train people on your projects.
08
One throat to choke
Account, delivery, and strategy all flow through your dedicated team. No agency runaround, no handoffs.
How we work
From first call to compounded value.
The arc of a typical engagement. Most clients are with us for 12–24+ months, and the value compounds the longer we know your business.
Discovery call
A 30-minute conversation about where you are, what you’re trying to build, and whether we can help. No pitch, no deck.
Embed & access
Within two weeks of go-ahead we onboard into your tools, meet your team, and learn how the business actually runs.
90-day roadmap
We build a clear plan with weekly delivery milestones — small enough to ship, big enough to matter.
Continuous build
Sprints run weekly. The team flexes as priorities shift, with the same people throughout the engagement.
Quarterly review
Every 90 days we step back together, look at what shipped, and adjust the roadmap honestly.
When this fits
If any of these sound familiar, you’re in the right place.
You’re missing product deadlines, or you can feel competitors pulling ahead digitally.
You’ve been trying to hire a developer for months and watched two finalists go elsewhere.
You just closed a round and the roadmap demands move faster than the org can hire.
The scope just expanded — “we need to do X” — and no one knows where to start.
A platform you depend on is being sunset, and the migration has nowhere to live internally.
You tried an agency. It didn’t work out. You’d rather not spin up a third procurement cycle.
Compared to the alternatives
SaaS, agency, or DDaaS — honestly.
Where each model wins and where it costs you. Not all three are wrong; they’re just suited to different problems.
A scenario
What this looks like in practice.
Illustrative, not a specific client. The shape of the engagement is real.
Logistics · ~40 staff
Picture a 40-person logistics company that’s hit the ceiling of what spreadsheets and a patched-together SaaS stack can carry. They’ve been trying to hire a senior developer for six months and lost two finalists to bigger offers. The CEO knows the business needs custom software but isn’t sure what to build first.
They book a discovery call. Two weeks later, a four-person Thrive team is embedded — designer, two developers, fractional CTO. By month three, the spreadsheet that was running dispatch has been replaced by a custom system the team owns. By month six, three more workflows have moved off SaaS, the CTO is in quarterly planning sessions with leadership, and the team has shipped eleven distinct releases. Headcount on payroll: still 40.
Already running this way for
Public Outreach
Fulfillment Group
Support Society
Questions
What people usually want to know first.
How is this different from hiring an agency?
Agencies sell you a project. We sell you a team. The same people stay with you, learn your business, and compound in value. When the project ends, an agency disengages. With us, the engagement is the relationship.
What happens if we want to bring it in-house later?
That’s a sign we did our job. Everything we build is yours — code, architecture, documentation. We can run a structured handoff to a new in-house team, or stay on for fractional CTO support while they ramp.
How long is a typical engagement?
Most clients are with us for 12–24+ months. The retainer is monthly with no long-term lock — but the value compounds the longer we know your business.
Can we scale the team up or down?
Yes. We size the team to your priorities each quarter. Need to push hard on a launch? Scale up. Need to pull back? Scale down. We don’t penalize you for either.
Do we own the code?
Yes. All code, IP, infrastructure, and documentation belong to you, fully transferable. No proprietary platforms you can only run through us.
What technologies do you build with?
Whatever’s right for your business and your future maintainability. We don’t lead with a stack — we lead with the problem. In practice that’s usually modern web frameworks, TypeScript, AWS infrastructure, and tools your team can hire for later.
What does it cost?
Engagements typically start at C$15–25k/month for a small embedded team and scale from there based on roles and pace. Many builds also qualify for Canadian innovation grants that offset 25–80% of the investment — we can scope the work to be grant-friendly from the start.
Ready when you are
Tell us what you’re trying to build.
A 30-minute discovery call. No deck, no pitch — just an honest conversation about where you are, where you want to be, and whether DDaaS is the right shape for the gap between.