MVP Development in the US

About MVP Development

One core loop, built properly, in front of real users in four to eight weeks. Auth, payments and multi-tenant data are done right from the start, so you're not rebuilding at your first hundred customers. We ship our own products too, so we know which corners are safe to cut.

What the engagement includes

• A one-page scope that names the core loop and, just as important, what's left out of version one
• A stack chosen for the next two years, not the next demo: usually Next.js, a Node.js or Laravel API, and PostgreSQL
• Auth, roles and per-customer data isolation built in from the first commit
• Payments working end to end, including failed payments and refunds
• Analytics on the core loop, so you can see whether people actually use the thing
• Full code ownership in your GitHub from day one, and documentation a future hire can pick up
• The same senior engineers from scope to launch, not a sales team followed by juniors

What Section 174, SBIR and chain of title change about an offshore MVP

The tax treatment of an MVP now depends on where the code is written, and a lot of founder advice is a year out of date. Federal law treats any amount paid to develop software as a research or experimental expenditure. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed on 4 July 2025, created Section 174A, which lets a company deduct domestic research costs in full for tax years beginning after 31 December 2024, or elect to spread them over at least 60 months. It left foreign research where the 2017 law had put it. Under Section 174 as amended, research conducted outside the United States is capitalized and amortized over 15 years from the midpoint of the year, so a build paid for this year yields a deduction of one thirtieth of its cost on this year's return. The IRS's interim guidance in Notice 2023-63 ties the period to where the research is conducted rather than to who pays for it, and leaves the cost with the company that commissions the work, so an MVP written by an engineering team in India is foreign research for a Delaware company even when every invoice is paid from a US account. Two more catch founders out. Section 174(d) allows no write-off when the software is abandoned or sold, so a first version thrown away after a pivot keeps amortizing for the years that remain. And the Section 41 research credit excludes research conducted outside the United States, which also rules that work out of the payroll tax offset of up to $500,000 a year that a young company with under $5 million in gross receipts can elect. What the split rewards is records: product work by founders or US contractors can still be domestic, so invoices should state where each piece of work was performed and by whom. Whether the deduction helps this year or only adds to a loss carryforward, and how to allocate a mixed team, is for your accountant.

If the MVP is meant to be paid for with a federal SBIR or STTR award, the rules on who writes the code matter more than the rate. Both programs lapsed on 1 October 2025, and agencies could not make new awards until the Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act, Public Law 119-83, was signed on 13 April 2026 and extended them to 30 September 2031. Three requirements decide whether an offshore team fits. The research and R&D must be performed in the United States, with a portion done abroad only in rare and unique circumstances, such as a material or project requirement that is not available here, and only with the agency's written approval. In Phase I at least two-thirds of the research effort, measured by budget, has to be done by the awardee itself, and at least half in Phase II, with the principal investigator primarily employed there. A Phase I proposal that sends the prototype to a development company in India fails the first test before it reaches the second. The company also has to be more than 50 percent directly owned and controlled by US citizens or permanent residents, which a founding team made up entirely of visa holders does not meet on its own. The 2026 act adds a security review on top: agencies must weigh an applicant's disclosed funding sources and affiliations and reject proposals tied to lists such as the list of Chinese military companies, so a proposal is now read for who stands behind the company as well as for the science. The pattern that works is to keep the funded research with your own US staff and pay for any offshore build of the commercial product around it, the admin panel, billing and onboarding, from separate money under a separate scope. Whether a given split fits your solicitation is for your program officer and your own counsel.

In a US round the diligence question that stalls an offshore MVP is whether the company owns the code. Software written by someone who is not your employee cannot become a work made for hire by contract, because Section 101 of the Copyright Act limits commissioned works made for hire to nine categories and software is not one of them. On its own such a clause transfers nothing, and ownership moves only by a signed written assignment. In Stanford v. Roche, affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2011, ownership of the patents turned on the verb: the Federal Circuit read "agree to assign" as a promise and "do hereby assign" as a present transfer. Code written in India adds a link under Indian law. Section 17(c) of the Copyright Act, 1957 makes an Indian company first owner of what its employees write, and section 19 decides how it reaches you: the assignment must be in writing and name the rights, the duration and the territory. Leave out the duration and it is deemed five years, leave out the territory and it is presumed to be India, and rights the assignee does not exercise within a year lapse unless the document says otherwise. A one-line US-style clause can leave a Delaware company holding a five-year, India-only right to its own product. So the assignment should be worldwide, for the full term of copyright, take effect as each invoice is paid rather than at handover, and reach every contractor who committed to the repository. Investors ask about open source too, and the NVCA model stock purchase agreement carries a representation built to surface licenses that would oblige the company to publish its own code. For a hosted MVP the one to catch is the AGPL, whose section 13 makes a modified version used over a network offer its source to those users, so the dependency list and licenses come with the code. Whether your chain of title holds is for your own counsel.

How we work with US clients

A US engagement gets agreed twice. Once with the person who wants the thing built, and then again with legal, security, procurement and finance, who arrive separately and rarely in the same week. That second round is where a supplier outside the country loses the calendar: a master services agreement to redline, a security questionnaire, a certificate of insurance, and a vendor portal that assumes everyone it onboards can sign a W-9. Send all of it while the scope is still being written rather than in the week you wanted to start, and where the honest answer to a row is that we do not hold something, we write that in rather than leaving it blank.

You are also buying from a company you cannot drop in on, so the evidence has to do the work an office would otherwise do. What we send is live production URLs rather than a deck, a written scope with one fixed number against it, and the names of the people who will do the work rather than a bench that changes after signature. What we will also tell you is the shape of what you are hiring: a small team in Noida that has been building since 2021, not a firm that can put four more people on your project next Monday. If that is what your timeline needs, we say so before the contract rather than after it.

Questions US clients ask

MVP Development: common questions

Other markets we work in