Pacterms

I submitted my YC application for Pacterms about a month ago. I still don't know if I'll get an interview. But I wanted to write this now, before I know the answer, because I think what already happened is worth more than the decision itself.

I'm building Pacterms solo, a bilingual freelance agreement and invoicing tool, mainly for US Hispanic trade workers and contractors. I don't have a technical co-founder. I direct AI coding agents (mostly Claude Code) to build everything, while I hold the architecture, the product decisions, and the QA in my head. I still work a full-time DevOps job. I build nights and weekends.

Before the application, my pace was... fine. Steady, but soft-edged. Bugs sat for a few extra days. "I'll clean that up later" was a real sentence I said to myself often.

The application deadline changed that.

Not because I thought a YC partner was watching my commit history. They weren't. But a real date, with a real form, with real fields I couldn't fudge my way through ("Are people using your product?" "Do you have revenue?") forced a kind of honesty I hadn't been sitting with. You can't write a vague answer to "how far along are you" and feel good about it. The form makes you confront the gap between what you've been telling yourself and what's actually true.

So in the weeks before submitting, I:

• Finally pushed to get SMS/OTP verification through carrier approval instead of letting it sit feature-flagged

• Went from scattered notebook reminders to actual Jira tickets with feature/bug tracking

• Did a full audit of my own production environment and caught real bugs I'd been circling around

• Got honest about what wasn't ready (mobile UI still isn't) instead of pretending it was

None of that was for YC's benefit. It was for mine. The deadline was just the thing that made me stop negotiating with myself.

Here's the part I keep coming back to: even if the answer in August is no, none of that work goes away. The SMS system still works. The tracking system still exists. The audit still happened. I'll have a sharper product and a clearer story than I did a month ago, YC or not.

And if it's a no, I'll apply again. Not because I'm chasing a badge. Because somewhere out there is a freelancer who did the work and didn't get paid for it, the same way my father did years ago. That's the actual job. YC was never the point. It was just the deadline that made me finally move, as the point mattered.

If you're sitting on an application (YC or otherwise) and telling yourself you'll tighten things up "later" — the deadline is doing you a favour. Let it.

You get the message. "We'd love to work with you." And for a minute, everything feels like it's working out. You did this no boss handed you this job, you built something people wanted, and someone just said yes to you.

You shake hands (or these days, send a text back with a thumbs up) and there's this quiet rush. Not just money coming in. Proof. Proof that the skill is real, that the hours you spent getting good at this weren't wasted, that you can actually do this for a living.

Then the job starts, and somewhere underneath the excitement, a second feeling shows up that never fully leaves: will this one pay out the way it was supposed to.

You don't say it out loud. You just start doing the things you've learned to do without even deciding to screenshotting the text where they agreed to the price, keeping every email, remembering exactly what was said on that call three weeks ago in case you need to repeat it back later. You're not paranoid. You're just someone who's been burned before, or knows someone who has, and you'd rather have the receipts and never need them than need them and not have them.

You finish the work. You're proud of it genuinely proud, the kind of proud that's hard to explain to people who've never built something with their own hands or their own hours. And then you send the invoice, and the waiting starts.

Maybe they pay on time. Maybe they don't. Maybe the messages slow down, then stop. Maybe you start rehearsing what you'll say in the next follow-up text so it doesn't sound too pushy, too desperate, too much like you actually need this money even though you do. Chasing a client for money you already earned is its own specific kind of tired. It's not the work that wears you down. It's the not-knowing.

And underneath all of it, there's the reason you're doing any of this in the first place. Maybe it's a kid who needs school shoes. Maybe it's rent due on the first. Maybe it's just wanting to give your family the version of "we're okay" that doesn't come with you quietly doing math in your head at 2am, moving numbers around, hoping a payment lands before something else is due.

Nobody starts freelancing because they wanted to become an unpaid debt collector for their own labor. You started because you were good at something and wanted the freedom to be good at it on your own terms. The chasing, the screenshotting, the rehearsing that's not the job. That's the tax you pay for a system that was never built to protect people like you in the first place.

You keep going anyway. Because the work itself still feels good. Because the handshake still means something, every time. Because somewhere in there, it's still worth it.

It just shouldn't have to cost this much to find out if you'll actually get paid for it.

So this week I went down a rabbit hole I did not expect to go down.

Someone asked me a simple question about Pacterms: "what happens if the client or freelancer wants to cancel after the deposit's already paid, before work even starts?" Fair question. I didn't have a real answer. So I went looking at how normal freelance contracts handle it.

Turns out most templates out there use a 10-30 day written notice period before you can terminate. Makes sense for a consulting retainer or a months-long dev contract. Makes zero sense for Pacterms, where the whole point is you're standing on a job site and the contract gets signed and the deposit clears in like a minute.

So I kept digging, and that's where it got interesting.

Turns out in a bunch of places (varies by state/country) there's an actual legal cooling-off period, commonly a few days, that kicks in when someone agrees to a service at their home, in person. It exists to stop people from being pressured into signing something on the spot and then being stuck. Which, ironically, is basically the exact motion Pacterms is built around — sign fast, on-site, deposit clears immediately.

There IS an exception though. If the work is genuinely urgent (a leak, no AC, whatever) and the client wants it to start right away, that cooling-off thing doesn't apply, but only if the client explicitly says "yes I want this to start now" and that gets documented.

Which means Pacterms currently has a gap. Every job goes through the exact same flow whether it's "my pipe is flooding right now" or "let's do the kitchen remodel next month." Those two should legally NOT be treated the same way, and right now they are.

So now I'm building an actual Emergency vs Scheduled toggle into the agreement creation step. Two separate job profiles, basically. Immediate Jobs work basically like they do today, instant, because that's the case the law expects to be instant. Scheduled Jobs get a proper cancellation window before the deposit becomes non-refundable, unless the client explicitly opts to waive it.

Kind of a good reminder that the "boring legal plumbing" stuff is not something you can skip just because you're moving fast. Would've been a genuinely bad look to have a contractor's tool that quietly ignores contractor law.

Anyone else building something client-facing run into a version of this? Curious how other people have handled the "move fast vs actually reflects the law" tension.

Hey Indie Hackers,

Posted about Pacterms yesterday and honestly the response kind of caught me off guard. A few comments really stuck with me — people saying they actually quit freelancing at some point because something like this didn't exist to save them from the admin/chasing-payment burnout.

My dad was an independent contractor for years and I watched him go through this exact stuff — clients ghosting, no real leverage, just hoping people pay you. So yeah this one's personal, not just a "market opportunity" for me.

Whenever people check out the app they usually ask me to list every feature. I keep avoiding that on purpose. Dumping a big list of tools in front of someone just overwhelms them and honestly it doesn't even explain why the thing works. Pacterms isn't really a bunch of separate tools bolted together, it's more like one loop that keeps feeding itself, and every piece exists to give the worker more leverage at a different point in the job.

Here's roughly how it plays out:

Phase 1 — the fast part: No sitting at a desktop uploading PDFs or messing with signature fields. You're on the job site, you type in the basic project details, and it turns that into a proper contract outline in like 30 seconds.

Phase 2 — the bilingual handshake: You text the client a link. No app download, no password. They get a clean mobile page, read the terms in English or Spanish (built bilingual from day one since a huge chunk of trade workers are Spanish-speaking and most tools out there ignore that), and sign with a one-tap SMS code. Deal's locked in before you even leave.

Phase 3 — deposit enforcement: Once they hit "agree," it splits out the payment milestones automatically (50/50 down, whatever you set). Work doesn't officially start until that deposit actually clears. So no deposit = you're not obligated to show up. Filters out the clients who were never serious anyway.

Phase 4 — crew jobs Bigger job, bringing a crew? Instead of everyone signing separate contracts, the lead adds up to 4 people onto one shared agreement, sets everyone's cut, and each person gets a text to confirm their share. Honestly, this bit is doing a lot of the acquisition for me without me having to do anything — every crew member added is basically a new user pulled in for free.

Phase 5 — proof from the field: Once work starts, there's a start/stop timer and workers upload before/after photos or video. Once the client approves the progress, the progress on milestones moves forward. If the client requests for the re-work or is not satisfied with the work, they can simply click on needs improvement and mention the details. That way if a client ever tries to claim the work was bad, there's already a timestamped record sitting there.

Phase 6 — invoicing that just happens: Invoices go out automatically when milestones are hit. Client also gets a soft reminder text before the due date so nobody has to send an awkward "hey following up" message themselves. Right now invoicing is actually free and unlimited for everyone, even non-pro users it just comes with Pacterms branding on it. Honestly, that's on purpose; every free invoice that goes out is basically a tiny ad for the product landing in front of someone new. If you want your own branding instead of ours, that's $0.50 an invoice.

Phase 7 — the money side: Once payment clears, it splits the funds per the crew agreement, logs any fees, and drops everything into a running summary so you're not staring at a spreadsheet trying to figure out what you actually made this month.

Phase 8 — the evidence pack: When a job wraps, everything signed contract, delivery/verification metadata, payment history, timer logs, before/after media gets bundled and hashed so it can't quietly be edited later by either side. Basically a paper trail neither party can fudge.

Phase 9 — last resort: If a client goes quiet after the reminders, you flip it to "demand notice" and it sends a few escalating warnings automatically. If they still don't respond, it compiles everything into a court-ready packet and pre-fills a small claims complaint letter for your state. You still have to file it yourself I'm not trying to practice law here but you're not starting from a blank page either.

Anyway. Still early, still building this mostly solo with AI tools since I'm not a "traditional" coder, but the loop is what I actually believe in more than any single feature. Happy to answer anything.

My father worked as a freelancer, and like most freelancers, he relied on informal agreements — a verbal understanding, maybe a text. Formal contracts cost money and take time most freelancers don't have when they just want to start the job.

So the pattern repeated: work gets done, payment gets delayed or never shows up, and there's no real way to hold anyone accountable. Freelancers lose an estimated $6B a year in the US to non-payment. It's a real problem, and nobody's built proper infrastructure for it.

What it does

Pacterms sits between "nothing" and "hiring a lawyer." It's a fast way to create a legally-binding agreement, verified over SMS, plus invoicing and payment tracking tied to that agreement. If a client stops paying, Pacterms sends escalating payment demand notices automatically — and if that doesn't work, generates a court-ready complaint you can file yourself.

Features

• SMS OTP-verified agreements

• Invoicing linked to the agreement

• Payment tracking per job

• Evidence Pack — one PDF with agreement, communication, and payment history

• Escalating payment notices when a client goes unpaid

• Self-file court documents for small claims

• Bilingual (English/Spanish)

Who it's for

Trade workers — construction, HVAC, contractors — who are especially exposed to this problem and underserved by tools built for designers and devs billing corporate clients.

Where things stand

Feature-complete, finishing SMS carrier approval and Android packaging before opening up more broadly. Built entirely with AI tools, no traditional engineering background — happy to talk about that too.