Do I pay upfront or in stages?

In stages. A LaunchPad runs in four phases, Discover, Design, Build and Launch, and each one is invoiced in advance. You start by paying for Discovery only, and you never pay for the whole build on day one.

The total is fixed by your tier from the start, as set out in how much a LaunchPad build costs. Paying in stages changes when you pay, not how much.

How the payments line up

Your proposal sets out what each phase costs before you sign. All prices exclude VAT, which is added to each invoice.

Why you pay before each phase, not after

Paying in advance means each phase starts on time, with the team already booked for it. Nobody spends the phase chasing an invoice, which leaves more of it for your product.

It also means you’re never far ahead of us. You’ve only ever paid for the phase in front of you. Before each one starts, you’ve seen the work from the last.

The first payment is the safest one

Discovery is the only payment you make before you’ve seen a plan. It’s also the one with a guarantee attached.

At the end of Discovery, you have the scope, the plan and the price in front of you. If they don’t convince you, our refund policy returns your money. If they do, the next invoice goes out when you’re ready to start that phase.

What happens if you stop later on is in what if I want to cancel midway through the project?.

What it looks like in practice

Founders introduced to us through Envestors work exactly this way. A short Discovery comes first, then a fixed price paid stage by stage.

For one of them, a legal tech founder whose earlier offshore build had stalled, Discovery took two weeks. The build was agreed in stages, and the first stage was working in twelve days.

Why not pay it all at the end?

Some founders ask whether they can pay on delivery instead. We don’t work that way, and we’d be wary of any supplier who wanted all the money upfront either.

Paying everything upfront puts all the risk on you. If the supplier goes quiet, so does your money. Paying everything at the end puts all the risk on the supplier, which tempts them to cut corners you can’t see.

Paying phase by phase sits in the middle. Each payment matches a piece of work you can see and judge. Our guide to fixed price and time and materials lists payment by phase as one of the signs of a fixed-price quote you can trust.

What the payments cover

The phase invoices add up to your tier price: £25k, £60k or £100k, excluding VAT. That takes you all the way to launch, with the accounts, hosting and licences the build needs already inside it. What’s included in the price and what isn’t has the full list.

Running the product after launch is a separate, monthly cost. You can carry it on your own accounts, or TotalCare covers it at a fixed monthly price.

Planning your cash

If you’re funding the build from a round or from savings, staged payments help. You can see roughly when each invoice will land across the two, three or four months of your tier.

If your company is VAT registered, you can usually reclaim the VAT on each invoice. Ask your accountant how that fits your cash flow before you sign.