Straight answers to the questions founders actually ask

For a genuine custom app, an MVP in the UK usually lands between £30k and £80k, driven far more by scope and complexity than by who builds it. Cheap quotes tend to skip tests, security, and architecture, which costs you more later when it has to be rebuilt. I always give a fixed-price quote for a defined scope, so you know the cost before any work begins.

This is the real starting point, and most founders overbuild. The trick is to strip v1 down to the one workflow that proves people will pay you, ship that, learn from real users, and reinvest. I help you work out what's actually worth building before we build it, and that discovery is often the most valuable part of the whole engagement.

Buy the plumbing (auth, payments, CRM, scheduling) and build only the thing that makes you special. AI genuinely helps for fuzzy, language-shaped problems like summarisation and semantic search, but it's overkill when a simple rule would do, and a poor fit when you need an exact, predictable answer every time. Right tool, right problem.

That's 'vibe decay', and it's extremely common around 5–10k lines of code. The good news: you don't start over. The prototype proved your idea works. What has to change is security (secrets, real authentication, input validation), architecture (untangling it so changes stop breaking things), and tests (so you can move without fear). I stabilise and harden these incrementally while keeping the app running.

For most MVPs a Progressive Web App (PWA) is the smart choice: no download friction, instant updates, one codebase, far lower cost. Native is worth it when you need deep device features, top-tier performance, or App Store discovery. Start with a PWA, prove the product, and go native later if you have a concrete reason.

You don't need to read code to protect yourself. Insist on a fixed-price quote for a defined scope, ask what's NOT included (tests? security? handover docs?), confirm in writing that you own the code, and require working progress every week or two rather than a big reveal at the end. Be suspicious of anyone who quotes without asking questions about your scope, integrations, and users.

A fractional CTO is a senior technical leader who works with you part-time, giving you the strategic guidance and hands-on expertise of a full-time CTO at a fraction of the cost. It's ideal if you have revenue and users but no technical leadership, lost your technical co-founder, are raising money, or simply need someone to evaluate technical decisions and hires. If you're pre-revenue with no product yet, you probably need a contractor instead.

You can, and sometimes it works. But the cheapest quote usually excludes the invisible-but-critical work: tests, security, real architecture, documentation. It looks fine on day one and falls over by day ninety, and the rescue costs more than doing it properly would have. Cheap isn't cheap; it's deferred.

Yes. I'm based in West Molesey, Surrey, so I can meet in person across Surrey and London. I also work with clients anywhere in the world: I have a solid remote setup using shared progress boards and communication channels like Slack, so distance is never a barrier to working closely together.

That's genuinely welcome. A lot of the value I add is telling founders what NOT to build, or that an off-the-shelf tool will do the job for £40 a month. Book a free 30-minute chat and I'll give you a straight answer, no sales pitch.