We build high-performance product organizations.
We work cross-functionally to build scalable digital products and the business processes that support them.
An app is more than just drawing wireframes and writing code—it is a collaborative exercise in stewardship of relationships, processes, resources, and roadmap.
We are committed to delivering outsized ROI by combining a people-and-process focused approach with a rigorous engineering methodology.
Values
We believe that these principles matter:
Trust, autonomy, transparency
Automation, process, documentation
De-risk, measure, and improve
These aren’t just buzzwords—this is how our projects succeed.
The engineering trilemma: budget vs. scope vs. timeline
Here’s what we’ve learned:
budget is the overriding constraint
scope will evolve—because it always does
and timeline? A one month delay is always cheaper than a wrong turn.
We don't play the "foot in the door" game—an initial SOW that promises the moon, followed by a series of costly change orders. Instead, we work within your budget to build a right-sized, sustainable product organization and platform that you own.
Always be shipping
We apply the kaizen principle of continuous improvement in our approach. Changes are incremental and frequent—any team member can confidently ship to production, at any time.
Our first “in the code” task on any project: set up your platform to support fast, safe, reliable shipping.
What gets measured, gets improved
Recurring revenue or requests-per-second, lead time or latency—whatever drives your business, we prioritize identifying and instrumenting key metrics early.
Instrumentation isn’t an afterthought. It's how you know what’s working, what’s not, and where the leverage lives.
Continuous delivery enables continuous improvement
When you can ship at will, you can improve at will. And when you're instrumented, you’re not guessing—you’re steering.
This is where velocity stops being chaos and starts being strategy.
Service menu
apéritif
Business plan and budget build-out
Operational/technical architecture review
Product/platform planning session
starters
Technical, financial, legal due diligence
Management, engineering, and product coaching
Continuous integration / continuous delivery setup and training
mains
Initial build-out and go-to-market
Platform migration planning & execution
Targeted product development
private party!
Execution of 12+ month roadmap
Fractional CTO, senior engineering, product design, PM & subject matter experts
Headcount planning and recruitment of your in-house engineering team
About
veen
Benjamin van der Veen—Veen, for short—has over 20 years experience in software consulting. Early wins include:
writing the first 3rd-party iPhone app to smoothly scroll a list of images, way back in 2007
leading an open source effort to standardize .NET web service hosting around 2009
introducing automated testing and deployment automation at a large email service provider in 2011.
In 2013, he co-founded Survant James with Benjamin Vulpes. Their mission: partner with SMBs to unlock growth through pragmatic product design and software engineering—whether glamorous or not.
Survant James has helped startups go from concept to launch, taken tech off of the plates of sales-focused owner/operators so they can do what they do best, and, notably, ran an engineering org through a critical cloud migration, 4x revenue growth, and a successful acquisition.