CLIENT STORY · CUPPA AI · AI CONTENT PLATFORM · DELRAY BEACH, FLORIDA
One hire on payroll. Three people for sixty days. No percentage of salary.
Cuppa AI is a bring-your-own-key content platform for SEO teams and agencies: keyword research, bulk generation, brand DNA and publishing integrations. Growth needed a faster product cycle than a small founding team could run. Odesa recruited a senior full-stack lead at a flat $7,999 and ran a three-person pod for sixty days, about $97,000 below the agency-and-contractor path.
Hybrid engagement · One flat-fee hire with 90-day guarantee · Three-person pod for one 60-day feature push
RESULTS AT A GLANCE
4
professionals: 1 recruited to payroll, 3 on the pod60 days
feature push closed on schedule$7,999
flat fee, against about $34K at 20% of a $170K package$97K
saved: $71K on the pod, $26K on the hireOne converted. Cuppa hired a pod engineer as a second full-time employee after the sprint.
THE COMPANY AND THE CHALLENGE
Three workstreams, a founding team, and recruiters at 20%.
Cuppa AI lets SEO teams run keyword research, bulk generation, brand voice and publishing from one workspace on their own model keys. The next stage of growth needed concurrent work on multi-model routing, a content grader, and publishers for WordPress, Webflow and Sanity. The founding engineering team could not carry all three at once.
Agency recruiters priced two seniors at 20% of $170,000-plus packages. Cuppa did not want fifteen candidates or a percentage fee. It wanted one recruited lead who would stay, plus a short pod that had shipped LLM product surface area before and could plug into a small Florida team.
✓ One senior full-stack lead on payroll, at a flat fee
✓ Three engineers who had shipped LLM products, for sixty days
✓ A clean handoff with the lead as internal owner
WHAT ODESA DID
One hire for the long run. A pod for the push.
Odesa recruited the platform lead and matched the pod, coordinated interviews and the first two sprints, and stepped back once the team was running. Cuppa's founders interviewed and chose every person.
Recruit the platform lead at $7,999
A senior full-stack engineer hired directly onto Cuppa's payroll with a 90-day replacement guarantee, to own the generation orchestration layer.
Match a three-person pod
A senior backend engineer for LLM orchestration, a frontend engineer for the grader UI and an integrations engineer for the CMS publishers, all with prior LLM product work.
Ship the 60-day push
Multi-model generation router with per-brand key handling; content grader scoring integrated into the bulk queue; publisher connectors for WordPress and Webflow, with Sanity in flight at handoff.
Hand off, keep who you need
The recruited lead stayed as internal owner of the orchestration layer. Cuppa converted one pod engineer to a second full-time hire and released the rest on schedule.
THE RESULTS
One lead. Three engineers. Two now on payroll.
Figures for the Cuppa AI engagement, provided by Cuppa AI.
1
Platform lead recruited at $7,999
A senior full-stack engineer hired directly onto Cuppa's payroll, against about $34,000 at a 20% agency fee on a $170,000 package.
60 days
Feature push closed on schedule
Multi-model router, content grader and WordPress and Webflow publishers shipped by a three-person pod, with Sanity in flight at handoff.
$97K
Saved across hire and pod
About $71,000 on the pod versus a US contractor bench, and about $26,000 on the recruitment fee.
2
Full-time engineers at the end
The recruited lead stayed as internal owner of the orchestration layer. Cuppa converted one pod engineer to a second full-time hire.
Figures are for the Cuppa AI engagement and were provided by Cuppa AI. Every engagement is scoped to its own roles and timeline.
WHY IT HELD
Three things let a small team ship three streams.
LLM product experience, not just the stack
Every pod engineer had shipped LLM product surface area before, so orchestration and grading logic did not start from zero.
A lead who would stay
The recruited full-stack engineer owned the orchestration layer from the first sprint and was the internal owner at handoff.
Odesa stepped back on purpose
Interviews and the first two sprints were coordinated by Odesa, then Cuppa ran the team directly. Conversion, not lock-in, was the exit.
ADD THE SAME KIND OF ENGINEERS TO YOUR TEAM
VERIFIED CLIENT REVIEWS
Cuppa is not the only one.
“Odesa.co requires little hand-holding.”
“Project management is responsive, offers solutions, and sets expectations.”
David Steffes
Head of Talent, HeyGen
“We were impressed with their cost, speed, and having a US-based interface.”
“The onboarded developers were able to help us develop and launch a specific feature quickly and under budget. Clear communication, very responsive, and a solid team.”
Erik Rivera
Founder & CEO, CertaPet
“Odesa.co's communication and delivery speed are very good.”
“They embedded a software developer in one of our teams, who has performed quite well from very first day.”
Ferran Caellas
CTO, MAD Collective
YOUR TEAM NEXT
Hire the lead. Borrow the push.
Tell us the roles, the stack and the timeline. Flat-fee recruitment at $7,999 per hire with a 90-day guarantee, and a pod that can convert when the push ends.
Prefer email? hello@odesa.co
Val Narodetsky
Founder, Odesa.co · Lighthouse Point, Florida
I ran the Cuppa search personally. I will run yours the same way.