Arcadia SaaS
Full product build for a B2B SaaS targeting HR teams — applicant tracking, performance reviews, payroll integration, and a custom reporting engine.
0→$180K ARR in 8 months · 4.8★ on G2 · 3 enterprise clients
Arcadia's founder had validated the problem with design partners — HR teams at mid-market companies were managing applicant tracking in spreadsheets, performance reviews in email chains, and payroll in legacy software that hadn't been updated in a decade. The market gap was clear. What they needed was a production-quality product, shipped fast enough to outrun competitors who were circling the same opportunity.
Weeks 1–3: Product scoping and architecture
We ran a focused discovery sprint with the founder and two design partners to define the MVP scope ruthlessly. We cut features that were 'nice to have' and protected features that were 'deal-breaker for purchase'. The resulting MVP had four modules: applicant tracking, performance reviews, a reporting engine, and Stripe-powered billing. We designed the database schema to support multi-tenancy from day one — a decision that saved significant rework when enterprise clients came with data isolation requirements.
Weeks 4–12: Core build
We built on Next.js App Router with a PostgreSQL database managed via Drizzle ORM. Auth was handled by Clerk with SAML SSO support for enterprise clients. The reporting engine was the most technically complex piece — it needed to support custom report definitions, scheduled email delivery, and data exports across multiple formats. We built a query builder abstraction that let users compose reports without writing SQL, backed by a query optimisation layer that kept report generation under 2 seconds for datasets up to 100K records.
Weeks 13–17: Integrations and billing
We built native integrations for the four payroll providers that covered 80% of the target market. Each integration required careful mapping of data models — payroll systems have notoriously inconsistent schemas — and robust error handling for the partial-sync scenarios that happen when payroll and HR data drift. Stripe Billing was implemented with usage-based pricing for some features, supporting the freemium-to-enterprise upgrade path the founder wanted.
Weeks 18–20: Hardening and launch
We spent the final two weeks on load testing, security hardening, and onboarding optimisation. We tested the system under 10× expected initial load. We ran a penetration test focused on multi-tenancy isolation — verifying that no tenant could access another's data under any scenario. We built an onboarding flow that got new teams from signup to first candidate tracked in under 8 minutes, which became a key differentiator in early sales demos.
“Hostwire didn't just build what we asked for — they pushed back on scope decisions that would have hurt us, suggested architectural choices we wouldn't have made, and delivered a product that our enterprise clients consider genuinely enterprise-grade.”
