01
Start with the business result.
Before we write code, we agree on the operating metric the project is expected to improve. Product usage matters only when it contributes to that result.
People & Culture
Relationships by humans.
Strategy by humans.
Taste by humans.
Muscle by agents.
Sidu Ponnappa Aakash Dharmadhikari Steven Sule Rishi Ayyer Vinay Mimani Nikhil Mannikar Saurav Shah Ankit Pandey Manas Vaze Rajnish Dashora Prashant Mittal Jewel James Paulomi Gudka Akhil Chandran Megha BC Divya Gurunathan Srini Satyan Jeetal Shah Allison Wright Sumanth Raj Urs Aniket Hendre Aravind Karthik Anitha Thammineni Rajat Goyal Mohit Agarwal Piyush Sinha Nayan Jain Jigish Chawda Shishir Joshi Suraj Chandola Priyanshu Gaur Harsh Jain Animesh Das Asarar Ahmed Rishabh Garg Arul Praveen T Nameet Rajore Saran Kumar Isaac Sanctis Rohit T Saurabh Kamboj Shashwat Gupta Noel Mathew Harshit Agarwal Ashlesh Shenoy Omkar Narayankar Vaidehi Joshi Aviral Srivastava Saurabh Nandedkar
We keep project teams small and experienced.
A typical team has four or five people who work directly with the customer and use agents throughout research, development, and testing.
On the work
Our people are responsible for quality.
Engineers, designers, and product managers use agents throughout the work. They review the important decisions and sign off on what ships.
On hiring
We hire carefully.
Each person has considerable influence over the quality of a small team's work. We therefore keep the hiring process thorough and pay competitively for experienced people.
On your systems
We work with the systems customers already use.
We first map the workflow and the systems involved. We then build the new software around those systems, replacing components only when the project requires it.
Sidu Ponnappa CEO & Co-founder, realfast
realfast was designed around AI-assisted delivery.
We built the company to deliver useful software in shorter cycles without lowering the standard for production work.
Read Sidu's thesis Why realfast
A first-person note on choosing realfast, from the person behind our recruitment and branding. Experience the pitch as a fully working Windows 95 desktop.
Read the note"People call us when the deadline is impossible and the board is watching."
How we run an engagement.
These practices guide how our teams plan, build, review, and release software.
02
Restructure the work before applying AI to it.
We study the existing workflow before deciding where AI belongs. Automating a poor process usually preserves its delays and unnecessary steps.
03
An engineer is responsible for what ships.
Agents produce much of the first draft. The engineer leading the project reviews the important work, signs off on the release, and stays involved after launch.
04
Deliver working software every week.
Customers review working software throughout the engagement. That gives the team evidence, exposes mistakes early, and keeps the next week of work grounded in actual use.
The one skill has nothing to do with code.
It's reducing ambiguity faster than the next person. The bar has three parts, and the last one is what separates people.
Judgment under ambiguity
The thesis updates every three months. We hire people who make good calls on incomplete data and update as new evidence arrives.
Fluency with agents
Not autocomplete. Directing a model through a real piece of work: prompts, evals, review loops, to a quality bar.
Written reasoning
Prose is the visible surface of how you think. The agents amplify whatever you hand them. Muddy writing, muddy work.
Open roles
Interested in the role?
The work gets harder here.
If this sounds like the work you want to do, apply through your agent.