We take investment into our own projects. Not a fund and not a round: a named project, a written arrangement, and a share of what it produces. Here are the shapes we would enter into and the ones we would refuse.

00

Building something together.

We take part of the build in exchange for part of the outcome, where the outcome is something both sides can measure.

Occasionally the right arrangement is not an invoice. Somebody has a market and no engineering; we have engineering and no interest in that market. A share of the outcome can price that better than an hourly rate.

It only works when the outcome is measurable by both sides without arguing, and when both sides can walk away at a known cost. Everything else is a way of not deciding.

What makes it workable

• An outcome both sides can measure from their own records
• A stated split, with the arithmetic written out on an example
• A term, and what happens at the end of it
• A way out for each side, priced, that neither has to litigate
• Named people on both sides who can decide without a committee

What we bring

• Design, build and the operational half nobody costs properly
• Infrastructure, if it should run on ours
• The refusal to build the thing when the assessment says not to
• Documentation from the start, so the arrangement can end cleanly

Not included: an arrangement where one side carries all the risk and the other all the upside. If it cannot be stated symmetrically it is not a partnership, it is a discount.

01

You sell it, we run it.

You sell it, we run it, and the split is written before either of us starts.

The common shape: you have the customers and the relationship, we have the machines and the people who get woken up. You sell a service; the service runs on infrastructure we operate.

The parts that decide whether this works are unglamorous: whose name is on the contract with the end customer, who answers at nine on a Monday, and what happens to the deployments if either of us stops.

How it is set up

• A per-deployment price to you, published and stable
• Your name on the service; ours nowhere on the screen unless you want it
• A support boundary written down: what reaches us, what you handle
• Provisioning you can drive yourself, without asking us each time
• Reporting you can put in front of your own customer

How it ends

• Deployments hand over to you, or to whoever you name
• No exit fee, and no notice period dressed up as one
• Your customers keep their addresses and their data
• The configuration is yours to keep and to read

Not included: an exclusive that stops us serving anyone else in your sector. We will not sign one, and a supplier who would is telling you how they will treat you later.

02

Under your name entirely.

Everything under your name and nothing on the screen that says ours.

Everything we build can be delivered so that nothing on the screen mentions us: login pages, applications, mobile builds in your own developer account, documentation in your voice.

This is a normal arrangement rather than a favour, and it is priced the same as anything else.

What carries your name

• Every service on your own domain, with certificates and mail to match
• Themes, icons, first-run text and the wording of errors
• Mobile applications published under your developer account
• Runbooks and user guides written for your support desk
• Nothing on the screen that says who built it

What stays true anyway

• The engines are open source and keep their own licences
• We do not name you as a customer without written permission
• What we can technically reach is the same, and is stated in the access section at /open-stack/G
• Your right to take it all away is unchanged

Not included: pretending your organisation wrote the open-source software. Its licences travel with it and say who did.

03

Taking over something somebody left.

Somebody built it and left. We will read it, price it, and say whether to keep it.

A common call: somebody built an estate, it works, and they have gone. Nobody left knows how it was built, whether it is patched, or what happens if it stops.

We will read it and tell you what you have. That is a bounded piece of work with a written result, and it is deliberately separate from any decision about who runs it afterwards.

The read

• What is deployed, what version, and what is past end of life
• What is exposed to the internet that should not be
• Whether backups exist and whether a restore has ever been run
• What is undocumented, and what only worked because of a hand edit
• A price to bring it to a state somebody can maintain

Then a decision

• Keep it and maintain it, on your infrastructure or ours
• Rebuild it properly, with the data carried across
• Stand it down and move the people to something supported
• Whichever it is, it is your decision and it is priced before it starts

Not included: a promise to keep it. Sometimes the honest advice is to stand it down and move the people, and we will say so in the report rather than after the contract.

04

Giving something towards the work.

A gift towards the work we publish rather than sell. It buys nothing, which is what makes it a gift.

Some of what we build is published rather than sold, and people have asked how to put something towards it. This is the answer, and the reason it is short is that a gift with conditions on it is not a gift.

What it is

• A one-off or a standing payment towards the open work: the systems we package, the write-ups we publish and the design system this site is drawn with.
• It is an ordinary gift to a UK limited company. We are not a charity and have no charitable status, so there is no Gift Aid, no tax relief and no receipt that does anything for your own return.
• Write to us and we will send the details. There is no button here and no payment page: a standing order to a company you have written to is plainer than a platform that takes a cut and keeps the list.

What it does not do

• It does not make you a customer. It carries no support, no response time and no place in any queue.
• It does not buy influence. What we build next is decided by what we think is worth building, and a gift does not move it.
• It does not buy a share, a stake or a return. That is what the rest of this page is for, and those arrangements are written down.
• It is not refundable, because it was not a purchase. If that matters to you, it is a sign the arrangement you want is one of the others.

We will say so publicly if a gift ever comes with a condition attached, and we will send it back. The point of publishing this section is that nobody has to wonder what money bought.

Not included: anything at all in return. No influence on what we build, no place in a queue, no support entitlement and no say in a decision. If you want any of those, the rest of this page is where they are priced.

05

What we will not enter into.

The arrangements we will not enter into, named here so nobody has to discover them halfway through a negotiation.

We will not

• Take equity in place of payment for ordinary delivery work
• Sign an exclusive that stops us serving others in your sector
• Agree scope that is not written down, at a price that is
• Work on a fee that depends on a decision we are also advising on
• Name you publicly as a customer without written permission
• Accept a term with no exit, or an exit priced to prevent it

We will

• Share risk where the outcome is measurable by both sides
• Publish the price of everything ordinary, so the unusual is visibly unusual
• Say when the arrangement is worse for you than simply paying us
• Write the exit before the start, and price it
• Put both sides of the arithmetic on one page before anyone signs

AVE17 LTD is not authorised to give investment advice and does not offer securities of any kind. Everything on this page is an ordinary commercial arrangement between two businesses.

Not included: exceptions for a large enough number. This list exists so that a negotiation does not have to discover it.

start

Propose the shape.

• Tell us what you have, what you need, and what each side would put in. Not a valuation.
• You get back whether the shape works, what it would take from us, and an honest note on whether you would be better off simply paying for the work.

Write to

hello@ave17.com

About

Investments

Not included: a term sheet from a first message. The shape comes first and the numbers follow it.

A

How an arrangement gets agreed.

Four steps, and the first two are free because they are the ones that stop it.

Not included: a signature at the end of the first conversation. Anything agreed that fast is agreed by only one side.

B

What each side puts in.

Stated symmetrically, because an arrangement that cannot be is not one.

You bring the market

The customers, the relationship, and the knowledge of what they will actually pay for. This is the part we cannot manufacture.

We bring the engineering

Design, build, and the operational half that nobody costs properly until it is three in the morning.

You bring the decisions

A named person who can decide without assembling a committee, because the cost of an arrangement is mostly the cost of waiting.

We bring the refusal

Including the assessment that says do not build this. It is worth more than the build and it is why the arrangement is worth entering.

Both bring the record

Everything agreed is written down, including what was decided against, so the review has something to read.

Both bring an exit

Priced, stated, and available to either side without a lawyer being the first call.

Not included: goodwill as a contribution. It is real and it is not something either side can be held to.

C

What it costs when it is ordinary work.

Most arrangements end up being ordinary work at ordinary rates, which is usually the right answer.

Setup, once

590 EUR

Engineering outside scope

110 EUR an hour

An assessment

from 3 days at 110 EUR an hour

Above 1000 users

the ladder stops and we quote

No VAT is added: we are not registered for it, so the figure shown is the whole figure.

Setup is charged once; everything else is monthly. Engineering is 110 EUR an hour. Anything that is not ordinary is written down before it is priced.

Not included: a share of your company. We are not asking for one and we are not offering one.

D

Who you are dealing with.

Who you are dealing with, and the paperwork that goes with it.

The terms of service, the privacy notice and the Article 28 data processing agreement are published on this site, before anyone is asked to sign anything.

Write to

hello@ave17.com

About

Investments

Not included: legal or investment advice. This states our own position; your obligations are yours to take advice on.

How it works

• A · How an arrangement gets agreed
• B · What each side puts in

Before you buy

• C · What it costs when it is ordinary work
• D · Who you are dealing with