How we work
Domain expertise, applied directly. No dev shop in the middle.
Most custom platforms take 6–12 months and $200K because a product manager translates a COO's insight into a Jira ticket, and an engineer translates the Jira ticket into code. We skip both layers. The person building your platform has sat in your seat.
The problem we keep seeing
Most mid-market companies are stuck between two bad options. Off-the-shelf analytics tools are fast to deploy, but generic. You spend the next two years filing support tickets, building workarounds, and reshaping your workflow around software that wasn't designed for your business. Your team opens Tableau, can't find what they need, and goes back to the spreadsheet.
Traditional custom development does exactly what you want. It takes 6–12 months and costs $200K or more, and by the time it ships the requirements have changed. Only enterprises with deep pockets and dedicated IT teams can absorb that kind of engagement.
We work in that gap. Senior expertise, applied precisely where it matters, without the overhead that makes it inaccessible.
Three options, two bad ones
The decision rule is straightforward. Buy off-the-shelf if your workflow is standard enough that generic SaaS will cover 90% of your needs and the last 10% is worth compromising on. Build custom if you have an engineering team, $200K+, and 6–12 months of runway. Use a custom-outcome provider if you need a purpose-built platform but don't have engineers, a product manager, or six months to wait. Most mid-market companies ($10M–$100M revenue, no in-house software team) fall into the third category, and most don't know the category exists.
Option 1
Buy off-the-shelf
- Fast to deploy. You're live in weeks. The vendor handles hosting, updates, and support.
- Generic by design. It was built for every company, not yours. You reshape your workflow around the software, not the other way around.
- 70% of what you need. Your team opens it, can't find what they need, and goes back to the spreadsheet. Feature requests go into a backlog you don't control.
- Tool sprawl. By the time you hit 100 employees, you're running 25–30 SaaS tools. Half overlap. Most are on auto-renewing contracts.
Option 2
Build custom
- Exactly what you want. Purpose-built for your workflow, your data, your team.
- 6–12 months to ship. Requirements gathering, design sprints, development cycles, QA, deployment. By the time it launches, the requirements have changed.
- $100K–$500K+ to build. You need a product manager, a design team, and a dev team. Or you hire a dev shop that bills weekly and hopes the spec was right.
- You need engineers. Most mid-market companies have an IT department, not a software engineering department. IT manages laptops and SaaS licenses. They don't build software.
Option 3
Kyro
- Custom outcome, not custom development. You get a platform purpose-built for your workflow. You don't manage engineers, sprints, or a product backlog. You describe the problem. We handle everything else.
- Working prototype in days. Not a wireframe. Not a slide deck. A functioning platform with real data you can click through on your phone.
- Business experience behind the build. Goldman Sachs, Wharton, 20+ years as investor, CFO, and CEO. The output matches how you think because we've sat in your seat.
- Security built in from day one. Dedicated infrastructure, row-level database security, protected API routes, and SSO included. Every build goes through a multi-model security review before it ships.
- We might tell you not to hire us. Before we recommend building anything, we research your specific problem. If there's existing software that gets the job done, we'll tell you and help you evaluate it.
Typical cost
$500–$5,000/mo per tool
Multiplied across 5–10 tools that don't talk to each other, plus per-user fees.
Typical cost
$100K–$500K+ upfront
Plus $15K–$25K/month to maintain.
Typical cost
From $10K setup + $1,500–$3,000/mo
Everything included. No per-seat fees. No surprises.
Better software starts with better questions
Why this works
The traditional way to build a custom platform: hire a product manager to interview your team, write requirements, hand them to an engineering team, wait six months, and hope what comes back matches what you needed. By the time a PM translates a COO's insight into a Jira ticket and an engineer translates the Jira ticket into code, the signal is gone.
We skip that chain entirely.
Our platforms are designed by someone who has sat in the CFO seat, built EBITDA bridges for PE firms, and spent two decades analyzing how executives actually read and act on data. That's not a requirements document. It's firsthand knowledge of what the output needs to look like, why it needs to look that way, and how it'll be used between meetings on a phone.
The Rating Bridge exists because someone with 20 years of PE finance experience looked at customer feedback data and thought: this should be decomposed as a waterfall with mix/volume versus sentiment attribution and accountability tagging. No engineer would have had that instinct. No product manager would have written that requirement. It came from domain expertise that can't be replicated by hiring a dev shop.
The result: platforms that are architecturally sound (ours go through three independent rounds of technical review before a client touches them), purpose-built for your workflow, and delivered in weeks, because the bottleneck was never the coding. It was always the thinking.
Why this works
Built by someone who’s sat in your seat.
Domain expertise, not just engineering
Our platforms are designed by someone who’s been the CFO, run the operations, and managed teams across dozens of locations. That means the output matches how you actually think, whether it’s a bridge analysis for your board or a workflow tool that replaces the email chain your team dreads every week.
Built for your workflow, not ours
Every screen, every interaction matches how your team actually works. We replace the manual processes (PowerPoints, spreadsheets, email chains) with tools your people open every day because they’re faster than the old way. When you want a change, it happens in days, not quarters.
48–72 hours to a working prototype
Not a wireframe. Not a slide deck. A functioning platform with real data that you can click through, filter, and evaluate on your phone. If it doesn’t make you say “my team needs this,” we haven’t cracked it yet, and we’ll try a different angle.
What we build, and what we don't
We build internal tools, not customer-facing products. We're not here to replace your CRM, your accounting software, or your ERP. We're not building your product for your customers either. You know your customers. What we build are the tools your team uses behind the scenes to serve your customers better.
That means platforms for your COO, your operations team, your regional managers, your marketing team, your finance team. The people running your business who need insights and don't have time to dig for them. We connect the tools you already use, surface what they can't show you on their own, and give your team one place to see the full picture.
Before we recommend anything, we research your specific problems, use cases, and workflows. If we believe a custom platform is the right answer, we'll tell you why. If there's existing software that suits your needs, we'll tell you that too and help you evaluate it. We'd rather have an honest conversation that saves you six months than a sale that wastes them.
That means when we do recommend building something custom, you know we mean it. We've already ruled out the alternatives.
What we're here to do
Surface the insights hiding in data you already have
Your team is sitting on thousands of reviews, call transcripts, survey responses, and operational records. The patterns are there. Nobody has time to find them. Custom analytical frameworks make the invisible visible.
Free your best people to do their best work
The person spending 30 hours a week reading reviews should be making strategic decisions. The government affairs director manually tracking regulatory filings should be advising on policy. We remove the busywork so your team can focus on what actually moves the business.
Give you an analytical edge
Off-the-shelf tools give everyone the same charts. Custom analytical frameworks, bridge analysis, variance decomposition, accountability tagging, give you a way of understanding your business that nobody else in your industry has. The Rating Bridge is one example. The mindset applies everywhere a number moved and someone needs to know why.
How engagements work
- 1
Discovery
We start by understanding your actual workflow. Not your org chart, not your tech stack. How the people doing the work actually spend their time. Where are they buried in manual processes? What questions do they wish they could answer? This isn't a 12-week discovery phase. It's 1–2 focused conversations.
- 2
Prototype
Within 48–72 hours, we build a working prototype using your actual data or representative industry samples. Not a wireframe or a slide deck. A functioning platform you can click through, filter, and explore. You see exactly what your team would see on day one. If it doesn't make you say "my team needs this," we haven't cracked it yet, and we'll try a different angle.
- 3
Production
We take the validated prototype to production: real authentication, role-based access so your regional lead sees their region and your executive sees everything, mobile support, Slack and Teams integrations, and automated data ingestion. Production build typically takes 2–4 weeks depending on data integration complexity.
- 4
Operation
The platform runs on dedicated infrastructure. Your data never shares a server with anyone else's. The monthly retainer covers hosting, AI costs, maintenance, and support. New features and data sources are added as your needs evolve, each scoped and priced without disrupting what's already working. Nothing changes unless you ask for it.
What you're actually getting
For the person who needs to explain this engagement to their boss.
A platform, not a report
Your team gets something they open every day, on desktop and on their phone, between meetings. Not a quarterly PDF that lands in an inbox and gets filed. The answer is there before anyone thinks to ask the question.
Financial-grade analysis, not just charts
Bridge analysis, variance decomposition, accountability tagging. The same frameworks PE firms use to analyze portfolio companies, applied to your operational data. A compliance lead clicks a chart and sees which regulatory deadlines are at risk and why. No training manual required.
Natural-language Q&A across your data
Ask Kyro, our Q&A layer, lets anyone ask questions about their data in plain language and get answers scoped to their access level. A store manager asks "what are customers saying about our sizing?" and gets an answer citing actual reviews. A government affairs director asks "what EPA rules affect our Q3 timeline?" and gets a sourced briefing in seconds.
No forced updates, no vendor lock-in
Your platform runs on dedicated infrastructure. You own the rollback. Nothing changes unless you ask for it. No forced migrations, no quarterly updates that move buttons and break workflows, no feature requests filed with a vendor hoping they ship in Q4. When your team wants a change, it happens in days.
Plugs into your existing infrastructure
SSO, SAML, Azure AD, Google Workspace. Whatever your team already uses to log in, we integrate with it. Your IT team doesn't manage another user directory. When someone joins, transfers, or leaves, their access updates automatically. One less tool to provision, one less offboarding checklist to forget.
Security is built in, not bolted on
Every platform runs on dedicated infrastructure. Your data never shares a server with another client. Row-level security on the database ensures users only see what they're authorized to see. Every API route is authenticated and validated. There are no public endpoints, no unprotected data paths, no shortcuts.
Your data already lives on someone else's servers. Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Workspace, your payroll provider. The difference is whether you control the terms, who has access, and whether you can leave. With a Kyro platform, you own the data, it runs on infrastructure dedicated to you, and AI model calls run server-side through managed API keys. Your team gets intelligent insights without pasting sensitive information into a third-party chat window.
Before anything ships, every build goes through a structured review process: seven specialized review agents scan for security vulnerabilities, silent failures, data isolation issues, runtime errors, and integration bugs. Multiple AI models cross-check each other's work. We pen-test API routes from an attacker's perspective, not just a developer's. Your IT team should be able to look at what we built and trust it.
What it costs
Traditional custom development runs $100K–$500K for implementation and $15K–$25K per month to maintain. That math only works for enterprises with deep pockets and dedicated IT teams. It's why most mid-market companies never get the tools they actually need.
We work differently. Engagements start at a one-time setup fee of $10,000 and a monthly retainer starting at $1,500–$3,000 depending on the scope and complexity of the platform. The retainer covers hosting on dedicated infrastructure, AI and data processing costs, ongoing support, and new features as your needs evolve.
Every engagement is custom-scoped. No per-seat fees. No hidden costs. No surprise invoices for overages. The monthly retainer is the monthly cost, and it doesn't change unless you ask us to build something new.
The question isn't whether you can afford a custom platform. It's whether the ROI justifies the investment. A typical engagement recovers the equivalent of a full-time employee or more. $80K+ per year in time that was going to manual analysis, report building, and process busywork. Whether that means reducing headcount or freeing your best people to make faster decisions, handle customers better, and focus on work that actually moves the business. That's your call. We look for engagements where the platform delivers 4–5x return on the annual cost. If we can't make that case, we'll tell you.
Setup
From $10,000
One-time. Covers discovery, prototype, production build, data integration, and deployment on dedicated infrastructure.
Monthly
$1,500–$3,000+
Hosting, AI costs, support, and ongoing development. Scales with platform complexity, not headcount.
A typical engagement
First-year cost
$28K–$46K
$10K setup + 12 months at $1,500–$3,000.
Year 2+ cost
$18K–$36K
Monthly retainer only. No setup fee again.
Typical annual savings
$80K–$150K+
Recovered labor, faster decisions, eliminated tools.
Payback period
3–5 months
Tell us what problem you're trying to solve.
We'll tell you honestly whether we can help, and if we can't, we'll tell you that too. The first conversation takes 30 minutes.
We also run private AI training for SMBs. See AI for SMBs →