Setosys — software engineering and venture building, British Columbia
Setosys brings engineering, architecture and accountability to companies that don't have a technical side — whether we build it for you, build it with you, or hand you something we have already built.
Which one are you
They differ in what you bring and what you keep. The work is the same in all three.
01
Something is broken, stalled, or old enough that nobody wants to touch it.
We become your technical side. That might mean taking over a build that has stopped, replacing a system your business has outgrown, or building the thing that never got built. You pay us, you own all of it, and the handover is real.
02
You understand a market. You have no way to make anything for it.
We build it with you. Sometimes that is an engagement you pay for and own outright. Sometimes, when the idea and the operator are right, we come in as the technical co-founder and take equity instead of a fee. Which one it is gets decided together, not on a website.
03
You can take a product to market. You don't have a product.
We build ventures of our own, and some of them need a commercial founder more than they need more engineering. If you can sell, hire and operate, there may be something here that is already built and waiting for you.
What getting stuck looks like
Every one of them has arrived here in someone's first email. None of them is unusual, and none of them is really a coding problem.
How it works
The first thing we hand you is a written description of the system, in your language. It is the thing the price is attached to, and it is far cheaper to change your mind there than later.
Not how it is supposed to run. What people really do, where the exceptions are, and which system holds the truth when two of them disagree.
What gets recorded, who can see it, every process end to end, what each person uses, what it connects to, and how we both agree a thing is finished. In your words, not ours.
Read it, mark it up, send it back. We start once it says what you actually want, and anything that changes later comes back to you first.
You follow progress against the document you signed, section by section, rather than against a status update written to sound reassuring.
What you own
Every engagement ends with a complete handover: source code, infrastructure, credentials, documentation. Not a copy, not a licence, not an export. The thing itself, on infrastructure with your name on the account.
It runs wherever you want it to run. On your own servers, on a cloud account in your name — DigitalOcean, AWS, whichever you already use — or hosted by us if you would rather not think about it. That choice is yours to make and yours to change, and moving it later does not need our permission.
We build on ordinary, widely used technology rather than anything of our own, so another firm can pick it up and carry on. A system only we can maintain is a system we have trapped you in, and we would rather be kept than needed.
The arrangement
Most firms can only be paid. Most investors can't build. We can do either, and which one fits is usually obvious within a conversation.
A fixed scope against a signed specification. You own the result outright.
Existing businesses, funded founders, anyone who wants it to be theirs
We take equity instead of some or all of a fee, and carry some of the risk.
Founders with a market we believe in and no technical half
A venture of ours that needs a commercial founder more than more engineering.
Operators who can take something to market
A real technical person reads it, and you get an honest answer about whether we are the right people — including when we are not.
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