$73,968 contract, Phase 1 not delivered after 11 months
If I could go back to June 2025, I'd ask more questions.
I'm the founder of Sixth Hive, a professional business matchmaking platform designed to be powered by AI. I'm not a software engineer, and when I signed the contract to build it, I didn't have a CTO in-house. I hired, via upwork, an agency I believed had the expertise to do it properly, ChicMic Studios, an India-based firm that publicly positions itself on their own website as specialists across mobile, web, AI, blockchain, IoT, gaming and the metaverse.
I signed a USD $73,968 fixed-price contract on 30 June 2025. Pre-contract delivery target: February 2026.
Over the following 10 months I paid ChicMic Studios in full. What I received was less clear.
In May 2026 I appointed Patrick as Sixth Hive's CTO who through an audit that the social graph was not built. His review of the platform led to an audit meeting at which ChicMic Studios themselves produced an internal report estimating 30 to 35 days of Priority 0 and Priority 1 remediation work still outstanding, covering JWT token storage, CSRF protection, and unit-test coverage. On 15 May 2026 I stopped development.
Patrick rebuilt the platform from scratch, using AI-augmented development. It went live in under eight weeks.
The AWS infrastructure of the ChicMic-delivered platform was costing us approximately USD $1,500 per month. The rebuilt platform runs at below USD $500.
During the handover, ChicMic's project manager asked Patrick how he had used AI in the rebuild.
Total direct cost of the engagement to Sixth Hive: approximately USD $85,000, plus the rebuild costs and my own founder time.
I'm sharing this because other founders considering social platform building or AI-related software engagements deserve to see how these things can actually unfold. Every fact above is documented, the contract, ChicMic Studios' own correspondence, their own May 2026 audit report, AWS billing records, and Upwork records.