AI MVP Development Services: Six Weeks, $48K, Production-Ready

The numbers first, because they're the only thing that actually matters in AI MVP development services: six weeks, $48K starting, one core flow shipped to production, an eval suite that survives past you, and code you own on day one. That's the offer. The rest of this article is what each week actually looks like, what's NOT included, and how to know if you're a good fit.

I run Shape — an AI venture studio. We've shipped MVPs to our own portfolio (Wondercut, ProductAI, MomentClip) and to funded founders. Same team, same playbook. If you want the broader thinking on why MVPs go sideways, read how to ship a real AI product in six weeks (without the wrapper trap). This piece is the contract version.

The six-week MVP, week by week

I'll be specific because most agencies are deliberately vague.

Week	What we ship	What you do
Week 1	Spec, deployed skeleton with auth + one screen, eval harness with 20 base cases	Approve the spec, share customer access, join Slack
Week 2	Core AI feature working end-to-end (with first eval pass)	Use it, break it, send us the edge cases
Week 3	Second feature flow + billing/auth fully wired	Demo to first prospective user (we'll join if helpful)
Week 4	Polish pass — UX for AI uncertainty, error states, empty states	Decide on naming, pricing, branding
Week 5	Instrumentation, observability, first paying-user-readiness	Soft launch to 5–10 design partners
Week 6	Production deploy, handoff doc, 5-min demo Loom	Sign off, take ownership, start selling

You'll notice we deploy in week 1. That's not a typo. The first deploy is intentionally minimal — auth, one screen, one core flow — but it exists at a real URL with a real database. That single decision changes the texture of the entire engagement. From week 1 onward, every feature gets pushed to a thing the founder can poke. There's no "kickoff phase" where nothing ships.

What you get at week 6

A production deployment of your MVP with:

• One core flow, end-to-end. Not a demo. A real flow real users can complete.
• Auth, billing (if relevant), instrumentation. Logs, error tracking, basic analytics.
• An eval suite. Sized roughly 0.5–2x the feature code, depending on how much AI is in the surface.
• A handoff doc. Written by an agent, reviewed by us. Structured so the engineer you hire next can read it cold.
• Private repo on your GitHub org. Code is yours, day one.
• A demo recording. 5-minute Loom of the working product for fundraising or board updates.

What you don't get: a 60-page discovery document, a separate "design phase," a Notion roadmap with 100 stories you'll never build, an account manager.

Pricing

Three engagement models — pick by stage. Full version is in agentic AI development services; quick version:

• Fixed-Scope MVP — from $48K, 6 weeks. Default for founders shipping v1.
• Dedicated Pod — $35–60K/month, 3–12 months. For post-MVP teams scaling. Senior engineers + designer for AI products.
• Build-for-Equity — case-by-case. Founders we know in spaces Shape wants to take a position. Not a first-call ask.

The $48K floor is real, not a "starting from" trick. It includes everything in the week-by-week table. Larger MVP scopes are quoted on a one-page SOW after the first call. Most engagements come in between $48K and $72K all-in.

Three founders we've shipped MVPs for

Founder A (NDA). Funded seed, B2B vertical SaaS with AI at the core. Had a customer waiting on a pilot. We shipped the pilot in five weeks under Fixed-Scope MVP. Pilot converted. They raised Series A four months later on usage data from a product we built.

Founder B (Shape internal — ProductAI). Started as a 4-week internal build to test agentic photography workflows. Shipped to first paying users in week six. 1,000+ paying users eight months in. Eval suite is now twice the feature code, which is exactly the ratio I expect for a serious AI product.

Founder C (Shape internal — Wondercut). Video editing for short-form creators. A traditional agency had scoped this as a 9-month build. We shipped in 10 weeks (longer than 6 because we extended scope mid-build). Same delivery model, different timeline.

The pattern across all three: a working URL in week 1, an eval suite from day one, a small senior team running agents, and a product that shipped to real users before the agency-quoted timeline would have finished discovery.

Who this is for

1. Funded founders raising or post-Seed/Series A. Funding is the signal that you can move fast on a fixed-scope engagement.
2. An AI surface that's real. Real means image gen, agents, RAG over your data, LLM-driven workflows. Not "we'll add a chatbot."
3. A demo deadline or board commitment. Speed is where we beat traditional dev shops. If you don't need speed, you don't need us.
4. Comfortable with senior delegation. You're not going to review every PR by hand. You're going to trust the eval suite and the senior engineer running it.

Who this is not for

• Pre-validation founders. If you haven't talked to a real customer, validate first. We turn down two or three of these a month.
• Bootstrapped solo founders on a $5K budget. We're not the cheapest team. Look at no-code or off-the-shelf tools for first-validation builds.
• Static marketing sites or AI-flavored CRUD apps. A solid Webflow team beats our hourly rate.
• Procurement-heavy enterprises. Six-week fixed-scope doesn't survive a 14-week SOW process. The right read for you is picking an AI development partner.

FAQ

Why six weeks and not three?
Three weeks gets you a prototype, not an MVP. Six weeks is the shortest engagement that produces something defensible — instrumented, evaluated, billable, deployable. Anything shorter and the eval suite never matures.

Why $48K and not $25K?
Senior engineers running agents cost more than junior offshore staff with autocomplete. The total project cost ends up lower because we ship faster and don't need rework, but the line-item is higher. If you're optimizing on rate, we're not the team.

What if my MVP needs to grow after six weeks?
Two paths. Either we continue as a Dedicated Pod ($35–60K/month), or we hand off to your in-house engineer with a structured 1-week handover. Most clients pick handover.

Who's on the team?
Two to four senior engineers, plus a designer if it's an AI product (UX for non-deterministic outputs is non-trivial). No junior offshore. No project manager. The agents are the leverage; the humans are senior.

Do I own the code?
Yes. Day one. Private repo on your GitHub org. No license agreements, no royalty trap, no "we keep the IP" clauses.

Can I see the spec before signing?
Yes. The first 30-minute call ends with a one-page outline of what week 1 would ship. If you want to engage, we send a one-page SOW that day. If you don't, you keep the outline.

How to start

If you have a defined scope and want a Fixed-Scope MVP — book a 30-minute call. No deck. We talk about the product, agree on the spec, and you have a quote the same day.

If you're earlier and not sure what to build yet, read how to ship a real AI product in six weeks first — that piece is for the validation phase, this one is for the build phase.

Read next: How we ship MVPs agent-first — the engineering loop that turns six weeks into real production code.

Written by Marko Balažic, founder of Shape — an AI venture studio building AI products agent-first. Reach out when you're ready to ship.