Sounds like you
“We have an idea for a new product and no idea whether anyone wants it.”
“All our sales come from the same five customers. We need to find the sixth.”
“Everyone says we need an app. Nobody can say what it would do.”
“Our trade show booth is a table, a banner, and a bowl of mints.”
The problem
Good ideas die in meetings because nobody can see them.
An idea on a whiteboard gets argued about. An idea a customer can click, hold, or watch gets an answer. Building software got strange in the last two years: a prototype that took a team six months can now take a week, and it can also break in new and exciting ways. Somebody who has built things for twenty-five years can tell you which parts to trust.
Who it is for
What it can be
If it is odd and has a chance, I am interested.
- A prototype you can test. A clickable app or website, good enough to put in front of ten customers before anyone builds the real thing.
- A new way to sell or find customers. A lead list researched by machines, a quiz on the website, a referral program, a channel you have never tried, run for a month to see if it works.
- A new way to build the software. Sometimes an off-the-shelf tool and a few automations replace a custom build. Sometimes it is the other way around. I can tell you which, and build either.
- How it should behave. Interaction design for a screen, a form, a kiosk, or a device, so people know what to do without a manual.
- Something you can hold or walk up to. Arduino and Raspberry Pi prototypes, sensors, and interactive installations for an event or a lobby.
- Something that moves. Animation, a short video, a small game, or illustration for a launch.
Odd things I have built
I have been building strange things for a long time. A friend and I hand-coded an internet radio station, before there was software for any of it, and grew it to 80,000 listeners a month. I co-founded Luci, a visual curation tool piloted with Target and Medtronic and demoed at MinneDemo in 2014. I did two overnight website builds for Minnesota nonprofits at the Nerdery's 24-hour challenge. Today I run a knowledge graph a sales team can walk through, for Quartz Importers MN.
How it works
Tell me the idea
A 30-minute call. I tell you whether it has a chance and what the smallest test would be.
Pick the test
A fixed quote for a defined piece, or hourly when we are still exploring.
Build the small version
Just enough to answer the question. Nothing gets polished before we know it works.
Watch people use it
Then decide: build it for real, change it, or drop it and keep the money.
Questions
What does a prototype or one-off project cost?
What kinds of one-off projects do you take?
Should we build an app?
Do you build physical things, like a kiosk or an event installation?
Who owns the prototype when we are done?
What if the idea is bad?
Before you hire this, people ask
- How do I find new customers without hiring a sales team?Pick one or two channels, run each one like an experiment for a month, and keep the one that works. The usual options are asking current customers for referrals, being findable on Google and in AI assistants, partnering with a business that already has your customers, and using automated research to find and qualify leads so the few hours you have go to the best ones.
- How do I run a brainstorm that goes somewhere?Start with a sharp question, invite the people closest to the customer, get a lot of bad ideas out fast, then narrow on purpose and leave with one idea, one owner, and the smallest test of it. A brainstorm without the narrowing step is a nice afternoon that changes nothing.
- How do I test a business idea before spending money?Build the smallest version a real customer can react to, put it in front of ten of them, and watch what they do. A landing page, a clickable prototype, a sign-up form, or a one-month trial of a new sales channel usually costs a small fraction of the full build and tells you whether to keep going.
- Should my small business build an app?Usually not first. Most things a small business wants an app for, like booking, ordering, reminders, and loyalty, work as well on a mobile website or by text message for much less money. Build an app when customers use you often enough to keep it on their phone, or when you need something only an app can do, like working offline or using the camera all day.
- Can my agency bring in a senior person for one pitch?Yes, and it is common. Agencies bring in a senior freelance lead for a pitch, a launch, or a new service line when they do not want to hire for it yet. With me it is $150 an hour or a monthly seat, I can work under your agency's name, and I have done it for Minneapolis agencies since 2001.
- Do I need UX research before I build something?You need a little, almost always. Talk to five people who would use the thing, and watch three of them try a rough version, before you pay for the real build. That takes days, not months, and it catches the expensive mistakes while they are still cheap. Skip it only when you are copying something that already works for the same customers.
Send me the idea you keep coming back to.
Two lines in an email is plenty. I will tell you whether it has a chance and what the first test would cost.