newideamachine
New Idea Machine is a custom app and software development company out of Calgary, AB, serving startups and small businesses throughout Canada and North America.
What’s your experience working with startups or small and medium businesses?
They should have a deep understanding of the challenges that startups and small and medium businesses encounter. Ask them what types of resources and support they provide startups and small and medium businesses before they even become a client.
What’s your minimum project size?
Minimum Viable Products can start as low as $18,000. They need to do formal requirements gathering before providing an estimate. Without formal requirements gathering they are guessing as to how much your project will cost.
How do you bill for development work?
Look for time and materials pricing. You should only pay for hours actually worked, not fixed pricing where you pay the full amount even if the project finishes early.
What’s the contract commitment and do you offer flexible arrangements?
Avoid mandatory 4 to 12 month contracts. Minimum monthly retainers and full project commitments are risky for startups and small and medium businesses.
How do you decide what features to build?
They should recommend starting small with market validation or testing first, then scaling sustainably. If they will not talk you out of unnecessary features, they are maximizing their revenue, not your business outcomes.
When do you address security and compliance requirements?
Security and compliance should be discussed before you start building. Addressing these after the MVP is built costs thousands in rebuilds.
How do you handle changes or new requirements during development?
They should prioritize features based on what will deliver the most value to your business first. If they say they will build exactly what’s in the spec without pushing back, you will waste money on features that do not matter yet.
Who will be building my project and will they change?
You want the same senior developer throughout the entire project. Rotating teams mean inconsistency and losing momentum.
Can I communicate directly with the developers?
You should work directly with the dev team. Going through project managers who relay messages to developers slows everything down and creates miscommunication.
How do you leverage AI in development?
Ask how they use AI assisted development. One developer using AI can do the work of five people, finishing projects 60 to 75 percent faster than traditional approaches.
Where is your development team located?
Look for North American time zones to avoid coordination overhead. Offshore teams add complexity and communication delays.
When do I actually own the code you write?
You should own 100 percent of the code from day one with zero licensing fees and complete documentation so you can take it to any developer. If they hold your code until final payment, you are locked in.
What’s included in your quote documentation and testing?
You should get clean, documented code with a fully tested, secure system from day one. You should be allowed to test the product before handoff, not discover issues after final payment.
What happens when my business needs to scale?
Your software should be explicitly designed to scale with your business from day one.
