I build production AI software for founders and operators in Australia. Most of my time goes into teaching at buildAcademy and shipping at Shopfront, so I take on a small number of build projects myself each quarter. For smaller or lower-budget projects, I work with an associate product engineer who takes those on instead.
Tell us about your project and your budget below, and we'll match you with the right fit.
Fill in the form below - project, problem, budget and timeline. I review every enquiry personally and reply within one business day with a clear next step.
For projects that need it, a short paid discovery engagement turns your idea into a buildable technical scope and a fixed price - a document you own, before any code is written.
Once scope is locked, I build to it. You get production-grade code you own outright, plus a period of post-launch support after handover.
No obligation at step one. If discovery shows we're not the right fit, you get an honest "this isn't for us" and, where useful, a recommendation for who is.
Whatever your budget, tell us where it sits below. Larger, more complex builds come to me directly; smaller-budget projects go to the associate engineer I work with.
You want to learn to build it yourself. I run buildAcademy for that audience - a 3-week cohort where you build it yourself for under $1,000 worth of tools.
You want hourly billing or constant scope changes. We work on fixed scope and fixed price. Changes after scoping are change orders.
You need an ongoing engineering team or daily availability. We do one-shot builds. If you need a full-time team, I can refer you to people who do that well.
You're optimising for the absolute cheapest option regardless of budget. Overseas agencies will quote less than we will. Some of them are good. Talk to them too.
Still here? Good. Here's a bit about me.
| Typical agency | 13Labs |
|---|---|
| Junior devs or an offshore team you manage | A senior engineer builds it personally |
| Templated automations dressed up as custom software | Production-grade code, built for your actual problem |
| Hourly billing, scope creep absorbed quietly | Fixed scope, fixed price, agreed before building starts |
| Unclear ownership or vendor lock-in after handover | You own the codebase outright - hire anyone to maintain it |
| One team juggling many concurrent clients | A small number of projects taken on each quarter |
I'm Callum Holt. I'm a senior engineer at Shopfront, an AI-powered resale platform processing thousands of listings per day across eBay, Depop, Grailed, and Shopify. I built and own the AI enrichment pipeline that powers it. Before that I built LinkedIn automation infrastructure at BellaSales, an AI sales platform, on Temporal, Neon, and AWS ECS.
I run buildAcademy, a cohort program teaching non-technical founders how to ship real AI apps. I'm Head of Partnerships at MLAI Australia, and I run buildClub Melbourne, a weekly co-working session for AI builders.
I take on a small number of buildAgency projects each quarter when the work is interesting and the client is serious. That's what this page is for.
Tell us about your project and your budget. It takes about a minute. I review every enquiry personally and reply within one business day, either with a proposal, a recommendation to do something else, or an honest "this isn't a fit." No hard sell.
Tell Us About Your ProjectPrefer email? callum@13labs.au