[ In short ]
Lunarion Labs helps Austin startups and growing tech companies rescue, finish and scale their software: SaaS products, mobile apps, AI features, automations and search visibility. We work remotely with calls scheduled inside your Central Time day. One senior lead owns the project from the first call to launch, and every engagement starts with a fixed-price audit of your code, access, hosting and contracts that ends with a written diagnosis and a detailed, prioritized quote.
01The Austin market
Austin has grown from a state capital and university town into one of the busiest startup scenes in the country. The University of Texas at Austin feeds a steady stream of engineers and founders, and the city has drawn large tech employers, chip and hardware companies, and a long list of remote-first teams that relocated here. The result is a market with a lot of young companies at the same stage: a product with early traction, a small team, and pressure to grow quickly.
The tech ecosystem is broad rather than narrow. Alongside B2B SaaS you find semiconductor design and manufacturing, consumer apps, game studios and health tech companies, plus a strong events culture around South by Southwest that puts new products in front of buyers and investors every spring. Founders here often come from bigger tech companies, so they know what good engineering looks like, even when they did not have time to build it themselves the first time around.
For software, that mix creates a recognizable pattern. Many Austin products were built fast to prove demand, sometimes by a freelancer, an offshore team or an AI app builder, and they work well enough for a demo or a pilot customer. Then real customers arrive with real data, billing gets complicated, an enterprise prospect sends a security questionnaire, and the foundations start to crack. What these teams need is not a new idea. They need someone senior to make the product they already have dependable.
Sectors we know well in Austin
- SaaS startups
- Semiconductors and hardware
- Consumer tech
- Gaming
- Health tech
02Software challenges we see in Austin
The MVP that outgrew itself
A product built to win the first customers rarely survives the next wave of customers unchanged. Hardcoded settings, a single shared database user, no background jobs and no tests become real problems once usage grows. We see Austin teams spending most of their engineering time on firefighting instead of the roadmap, because nobody had the time to put proper foundations under the first version.
Billing that was never finished
Trials, annual plans, seat-based pricing, coupons and failed payments are easy to promise on a pricing page and hard to get right in code. Many early SaaS products handle part of this by hand, which works until finance cannot reconcile revenue or customers get charged twice. Billing debt quietly costs money every month and makes every pricing change risky.
Investor and buyer scrutiny
As companies raise larger rounds or talk to acquirers, someone eventually asks for a technical review. That is when gaps show up: secrets committed to the repository, production accounts owned by a former contractor, no documentation, unclear licensing on copied code. Finding these issues yourself, before a third party does, gives you time to fix them calmly.
Hardware companies with fragile software
Hardware and semiconductor teams often treat software as a side job: a dashboard for test data, a configuration tool, a customer portal for device fleets. These tools start as scripts written by an engineer between other tasks and slowly become critical. When that engineer moves on, nobody wants to touch them, and every change feels dangerous.
03What we do for Austin companies
Software rescue
For an Austin startup whose product was built in a hurry, rescue means reading every part of it before changing anything. We recover access to the repository, cloud and payment accounts, rotate exposed keys, put a staging environment in place and fix the bugs that block customers. If investors are asking questions, the audit doubles as technical due diligence, written so a non-technical board member can follow it.
SaaS & business software
We help Austin SaaS companies move from a promising MVP to software that can carry a sales team. That usually means proper multi-tenant data separation, roles and permissions, an admin panel your support team can use, and Stripe billing that handles trials, plan changes, proration and failed payments without someone fixing invoices by hand at the end of each month.
Mobile apps
Consumer and health tech companies in Austin often need an iOS and Android app that matches their web product. We build or finish apps in React Native or native code, set up push notifications, in-app purchases where they make sense, and handle App Store and Google Play review, with the developer accounts registered to your company rather than to whoever built the first prototype.
AI & agents
Austin founders are quick to add AI, and the first version is often a prompt wired straight into the product. We turn those experiments into features that hold up: retrieval over your own documents, agents that act inside defined limits, evaluation sets so you know when answers get worse, and logging so you can see what the model actually did for each user.
Automation
Small Austin teams cannot afford people copying data between tools. We connect your CRM, billing, support desk and product database with clean integrations or tools like n8n, Make or Zapier when they fit. Typical examples are onboarding flows that provision accounts automatically, usage data pushed to your CRM, and alerts when a key customer stops using the product.
SEO & AI visibility
Competition for software buyers is intense, and many Austin SaaS sites were built for a launch, not for search. We fix technical SEO on the product site, structure comparison, integration and use case pages around what buyers actually search, and work on AI visibility so that assistants and AI search engines can understand and cite what your product does.
04Typical situations in Austin
- A seed-stage SaaS founder in Austin built the first version with an AI app builder and a part-time contractor. Customers like the product, but every new feature breaks an old one, and the next hire needs a codebase they can actually work in.
- A hardware company tracks test results in a web tool written by an engineer who has since left. The team wants to keep the tool, document it and add the reports customers keep asking for.
- A health tech startup is preparing for a larger round and expects investors to ask about security and data handling. They want an independent review and a prioritized fix list before the data room opens.
- A game studio runs its community, store and player support across several disconnected tools. They want one admin dashboard and a set of automations so the small team stops doing the same tasks by hand.
05How a project runs, step by step
- Fixed-price audit. We review the code, access, hosting and contracts, then deliver a written diagnosis with a prioritized, costed plan.
- Secure. Every account and the repository are moved into your company's name, backups are in place and exposed secrets are rotated.
- Fix and build. We stabilize what is fragile, refactor step by step and build what is missing, on a copy of your product.
- Launch and hand over. We publish only after checking, then hand over documentation any senior engineer can pick up.
06How we work with Austin teams
We work with Austin teams remotely. Austin is on Central Time and our working day is on Eastern Time, so a large part of your day overlaps with ours and calls are scheduled to fit your calendar. You get one senior lead who owns the project from the first call to launch, not a rotating cast of account managers. Progress, decisions and open questions are visible in the Lunarion client app, so you never have to chase an update.
We work on a copy or staging environment and only publish after checking, so your product stays live for customers throughout. We refactor step by step rather than betting the company on a big rewrite. Everything we touch stays yours: code, domains, repositories, cloud, app store and payment accounts are moved into your company's name and documented at handover. We can sign an NDA before you show us anything, and we work in English and French.
07What shapes the scope of a Austin project
We do not publish prices: every project is different, and the audit is what sets the quote. These are the factors that weigh most:
- The size and condition of the existing codebase, including how much is covered by tests and documentation
- How many accounts and services must be recovered from former contractors or personal logins
- The complexity of billing: plans, seats, usage, trials, taxes and the edge cases around them
- Integrations with third-party tools, devices or hardware data sources
- How quickly a fundraise, launch or enterprise deal requires the work to be ready
08Frequently asked questions
Can you review our codebase before a fundraising round?
Yes. Technical due diligence is part of our rescue work. We review code quality, security, hosting, running costs and scalability, then write it up in plain English with a prioritized list of what to fix first. Doing this before investors ask gives you room to address the important issues on your own schedule.
Do you work with Austin companies on Central Time?
Yes. We work remotely and our day runs on Eastern Time, which overlaps with most of the Central Time working day. Calls, reviews and releases are scheduled around your calendar, and you can follow progress at any time in the Lunarion client app.
How does a project start?
Every project starts with a fixed-price audit covering your code, access, hosting and contracts. It ends with a written diagnosis and a detailed, prioritized quote, so you know what is wrong, what matters most and what each step involves before you commit to anything larger.
Who owns the code and the accounts?
You do. Code, repositories, domains, cloud, app store and payment accounts are moved into your company's name if they are not already, and everything is documented at handover. If we stopped working together tomorrow, another team could pick up where we left off.
Our MVP was built with an AI app builder. Can you keep it?
Often, yes. We review the generated code, keep what works, secure what is exposed and refactor the weak parts step by step. A full rewrite is rarely the right first move, and the audit tells you honestly which parts are worth keeping.
Can you sign an NDA before we share our product?
Yes. We can sign an NDA before looking at your code, your data or your plans. Many Austin founders prefer that before an audit, especially when the product is not yet public or a raise is in progress.
09Other cities we work with
[ Lunarion audit ]
Need an outside view?
The Lunarion audit takes stock of your project: a written diagnosis, priorities and costs.