Jakarta · GMT+7 · Inside your working day
Hiring someone technical is expensive. Not having one is worse. Theleo is a two-person studio in Jakarta with ten years in tech behind it, seven of them inside overseas product teams. We build your product, then stay on as the technical side of your business.
Sound familiar?
Most people who contact us aren’t starting from zero. They’re somewhere in the middle of something that isn’t working, and they’ve usually paid for it once already.
“The person who built it stopped replying.”
You have a site you can’t edit, hosting under someone else’s email, and no idea what would break if you touched it. We start by getting everything back into your name, then decide what’s worth keeping.
“I don’t know if this quote is reasonable.”
You’ve been sent a number with no way to judge it, and asking feels like admitting you don’t know. Bring it to the first call. We’ll tell you what’s fair and what’s padding, even if you don’t hire us.
“It looks fine, but nothing actually works.”
The site looks good in a screenshot and does nothing for the business: no enquiries, no way to update it, no reporting. Design that ignores the operation is decoration.
“I’m the one doing all of this, and I shouldn’t be.”
You’re answering technical questions between running the business, and every decision waits for you. That’s the role we take over. Permanently, if it suits you.
How we learned to work this way
Before Theleo, we spent seven years embedded in overseas product teams a few hours ahead of us, first as staff and later contracted through a partner. Nobody could tap us on the shoulder. Every question cost half a day if it was asked badly, so we learned to ask it properly the first time, write decisions down, and hand over work that made sense without a meeting attached.
That’s the habit you’re actually hiring. The industries below are where it was formed.
01 · Finance
Real-time market data and financial accuracy, in systems where a bug costs money before anyone opens a ticket.
02 · Retail
Storefronts and the internal tooling behind them, built to survive traffic spikes and the reality of live inventory.
03 · Media
A video news product aggregating major international publishers, shipped across web, iOS and Android with personalisation underneath.
These were teams in Australia, three to four hours ahead of Jakarta. Close enough to talk the same day, far enough that the work had to stand on its own. We’re under NDA, so we can’t name the companies, but we can walk you through exactly what we built on a call.
What that means for you
You won’t be managing us.
You get written updates you can read in two minutes, one call a week if you want it, and work that arrives finished rather than needing a debrief.
And on the other half
The engineering standard came from those teams.
The product and interface craft came from building our own: every platform in the next section is our design, live and in use today.
Independent work
Three live platforms for organisations that had outgrown what they had, a national industry marketplace, a member association founded in 2005, and a private practice. Different sizes, same job: make the thing work, then keep it working.
01 / 03
Marketplace platform · Live
Indonesia's integrated aquaculture platform, a marketplace carrying thousands of farming products from more than a hundred supplier partners, plus the industry news desk and event listings the sector actually reads. Three systems that most companies would run separately, in one place, managed from a single admin.
Association platform · Second project
The national shrimp farmers' association, founded in 2005 and now spanning more than twenty branches. We rebuilt their public platform around membership registration, publications and a working agenda, then they came back to us for a second project.
Practice website · 2026
A counselling practice working in PRH, Brainspotting and Family Constellation. Beyond the site: a discovery-call intake flow that qualifies before the first conversation, a self-managed events system for workshops and modules, and a published journal.
What we do
Marketing sites and commerce storefronts that load fast, rank, and are built so you can update them without calling us every time a price changes.
The admin side most agencies treat as an afterthought: orders, inventory, users, reporting, the screens your team actually spends their day inside.
Full products when a website isn't enough, marketplaces, booking systems, or a first version worth putting in front of real users. One codebase for both app stores.
The part you can't hire cheaply: deciding what to build, what to skip, which quote is unreasonable, and which developer to hire when you outgrow us.
Working together across borders
Jakarta sits at GMT+7, inside the business hours of Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, India and most of Australia, and still overlapping with Europe every afternoon. Here's how that works out for you, right now:
Your local time
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detecting your time zone…
Our local time
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Jakarta, Indonesia · GMT+7
Shared working hours
…
based on a 9 to 6 day on both sides
Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Dubai, India and most of Australia. Message us at 10am, get an answer before lunch.
UK and Europe. Our afternoon is your morning, enough for a real conversation without anyone working odd hours.
United States. Send feedback at the end of your day and review finished work the next morning.
We spent seven years working exactly like this with teams a few hours ahead of us, so the habits arrived with us: decisions in writing, one call a week if you want it, and no meeting that could have been a message.
Pricing
A website and admin dashboard, live and working.
$4,500from · about 2 weeks
A real product, marketplace, booking system, or an app.
$8,000from · 3 to 4 weeks
Bigger scope, multiple systems, or an existing product to take over.
$15,000from · scoped together
Most clients keep us monthly once they're live. Not a maintenance plan, a technical partner. Cancel any time with 30 days' notice.
Care
$500 /mo
Hosting, updates, backups, security, small fixes.
Partner
$1,500 /mo
Everything in Care, plus new features monthly and direct access for technical decisions.
Embedded
$3,000 /mo
We act as your technical lead, roadmap, hiring input, vendor decisions.
All prices exclude third-party costs like hosting and domains, which stay in your name. Fixed quote confirmed in writing before we start.
How it runs
Step 01
Thirty minutes, free, in your hours. You explain the business; we tell you what's worth building and what isn't, including when the answer is "you don't need us for this."
Step 02
One page: what's included, what isn't, the timeline and the price. Not a range, and not a forty-page contract that needs a lawyer to read.
Step 03
A deposit confirms the slot and work begins. No procurement process, no onboarding weeks.
Step 04
You review real working software at each milestone and pay as it's delivered. Nothing is a surprise at the end, because nothing is hidden until the end.
Step 05
Code, hosting, domains, accounts, all in your name, all yours. Whether you stay with us afterwards is entirely your call.
Client words
They understood our market and delivered a platform our users actually enjoy using.
Who you'll work with
One of us learned the standard working inside teams overseas. The other spent that time learning how to make software people don't need training to use. You get both, and you talk to both.
Founder · Engineering
Architecture, backend and delivery. Seven of his ten years in production systems were spent embedded in overseas teams a few hours ahead, which is where our way of working came from. He’s also the one who’ll tell you when a feature costs more than it’s worth.
Co-founder · Design
Product and interface design, brand, and mobile craft. Every platform in our work section is his design. He works in the browser as often as in Figma, so what gets drawn is what actually ships.
Agenda
Workshops, talks and the occasional industry event. Published from the dashboard, so this list is never out of date.
Nothing scheduled at the moment.
Writing
What we learned shipping the last thing: technical decisions, the tradeoffs behind them, and the ones we would make differently.
No articles published yet.
Questions
Start a project
Thirty minutes, no pitch. We'll tell you what we'd do, what it would cost, and whether you need us at all, sometimes the honest answer is that you don't.
