Shaun Sergay
Founded and led eGuarantee — $100m+ in bond issuances.
Partnered with global financial services providers, achieving market adoption among tier-1 REITs. Ex-PwC, postgraduate Information Systems / Accounting.
Who we are·Aeterna Systems
The house behind the table.
Sitdown is the SME arm of Aeterna — the house behind builds that run inside financial services, property, and regulated industries. A principal sits at every Sit-Down; both sign every sealed brief. The same hands, calibrated to operators.
01The posture
What you get, in the room.
Who
A principal in the room. Both signatures on your brief.
What
Working software in weeks. Not a deck. Not a prototype.
How we talk
Plain. If we don't know, we say so before you have to ask.
What stays private
Your name, your business, and what we're building. Always.
02What we promise
The four things we won't move on.
The same hands that build for financial services and regulated industries. What you get is your own sealed software — yours, on your own surface, traceable to your own words, warranted. Working software, in weeks.
We ship real software, not prototypes.
Working software
Built to be used, not demoed. If we can't ship something real in weeks, we say so before you sign — no demoware in disguise, no slides standing in for a product.
We pressure-test the build before we ship it.
Two signatures on every brief
Two of us examine every meaningful call before either of us signs. Cheaper to catch a weak spot on a Tuesday than ship a brittle thing to your team.
We tell you when we don't know.
Straight talk, not spin
If we hit a wall of any kind — technical, build-shape, anything — you hear it from us first. Before the deadline slips, before the invoice. We don't write that a thing is so when it isn't.
90 days on us.
First 90 days, no clock
After Launch, three months where the line stays open. Something breaks, we fix it. No clock running, no extra invoice.
03Leadership
Who you'd be sitting with.
A principal in the room. Both signatures on every sealed brief — applied by hand. Shaun leads the institutional conversation; Alex builds.
Alex Zarov
Developed Aeterna's Omega kernel from first principles.
Career entrepreneur, systems architect with a background in critical infrastructure, electronic music producer. Combines technical skill with creativity.
The wider team
A principal sits at every Sit-Down. The roster is deliberately tight. After Launch, Aeterna's wider team holds the continuity — facilitators, delivery, operations. Held in confidence, like our clients.
04Operating principles
How we work, in nine lines.
01
Open-ended start.
Story first, never a structured form. The story is the brief.
02
Reference-based clarification.
Show us what you love, what you hate. Reacting beats describing.
03
Constraint over enumeration.
What can't it do? Negative space shapes the positive.
04
Posture first, details later.
How a product should feel — calm, confident, fast — is a real input, not a soft one. We capture the feel before we lock the details.
05
Live generation as discovery.
We build in the room. Your reaction teaches us more than your description ever could.
06
We pressure-test the build in the room.
Every angle in the room. Every meaningful call examined before either of us signs.
07
One promise. Both sign it.
The brief carries a single promise statement — what we'll build, said plainly. Both parties sign that sentence; that's the boundary. Nothing gets moved after.
08
We tell you when we don't know.
If we hit a wall you hear it from us first. We never write that a thing is so when it isn't.
09
90 days on us.
Three months from Launch where the line stays open. Something breaks, we fix it. No clock.