Founders
I’ve been writing code for decades — 20 years professionally, most recently a decade as a Principal Engineer building systems that have served millions of users. I’m currently Co-founder and CTO at an AI-native startup.
I take a few of these per week, alongside running my own company — usually people building on Lovable, Bolt, Base44, or Cursor who want a Principal engineer’s eyes on their code for an hour. Not because I’m looking for clients. Because the right hour with the right person, at the right time, helped me tremendously when I was stuck, and I remember what that felt like.
Hiring a Principal Software Engineer with 20+ years of experience full-time typically costs $300,000+ a year, plus equity and a long-term commitment. I’m opening direct access at $249 an hour. If that’s useful to you, three options.
Founder Playbook — $99
A written playbook for taking an MVP from works-on-my-machine to production-ready. Auth and permissions, security, payments, observability, hosting and custom domains, cloud cost control, the agentic dev workflow that lets one engineer ship at team velocity. The decisions and the reasoning, not a tutorial. A great place to start for founders who want to dig in on their own — no live calls included.
→ Purchase ($99)30-day no-questions refund.
Founder Call: One Hour — $249
One sixty-minute video call. Use it for code review, architecture questions, AWS triage, Stripe help, security review, whatever you need a Principal engineer for.
→ Purchase and schedule a call ($249)Full refund before the first call.
Founder Call: Two Hours — $499
Two sixty-minute video calls, used separately. Typically one now, one a few weeks later when you’ve shipped the changes from the first call and have new questions. Same rate, scheduled independently. For the founder who knows the second touch matters.
→ Purchase and schedule two calls ($499)Full refund before the first call.
FAQ
Who is this for?
Non-technical and semi-technical founders building MVPs on Lovable, Bolt, Base44, Cursor, v0, or Replit who want a Principal engineer to look at what they’ve built before it breaks.
Who isn’t this for?
Founders who’ve raised institutional funding or are running real revenue — there’s a separate advisory practice for that, linked at the bottom.
What if I don’t know what to ask?
That’s most of why people book. We can talk through what you’ve built, an idea you’re considering, brainstorm what to build next, or work through whatever’s blocking you.
Do I need to be technical?
No.
Can I get a refund?
Full refund before the first call. After that, no refund.
How fast can I book?
Usually within the week. If the calendar is full, the next opening will be visible at booking time.
What if I need more time?
My advisory rate is $249 an hour, with monthly retainers starting at $999. See knbrlo.com/advisory for the full options or to book a discovery call.
If you’re past the early-stage MVP and running a funded company, the advisory practice is at knbrlo.com/advisory.