How to validate an app idea before you spend money on code
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Read moreCan I see past work?
Written by
Contic
Read time
2 minutes
Yes, thirteen of them, and every one names the client. They run from a whistleblowing platform now owned by Diligent to a planning tool for a UK defence body. Each shows what we built and what changed afterwards. In the first chat, you can ask us anything about them.
The case studies, at a glance
| Client | What we built | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| Vault, now part of Diligent | The reporting app on iOS, Android and the web, the case manager, and encryption so even Vault can’t read reports | Through a Series A to acquisition by Diligent in May 2025, and Diligent kept us on |
| Electragram | Took the platform over mid-season, then added one guest record, WhatsApp messaging and an AI assistant | Live events kept running for hosts from Cannes to Paris Fashion Week |
| ExecSecure | Driver apps and a live map of every car on a journey, with vetting and vehicle checks | Every car visible to operations, across 112 cities in 57 countries |
| Envestors | A build partnership for founders backed by Envestors | One founder’s stalled offshore build replaced, with the first stage working in twelve days |
| Payments engineering | Payments built into telecoms, delivery, health and consumer products | One reliable view of who has paid, and nobody chasing payments by hand |
| Digital Outcomes and Specialists 7 | How public bodies buy a product from us, under Lot 1 | A compliant, pre-approved route from discovery to live service |
| Secure prototyping for the public sector | A prototype planning tool to support deployment planning, for a UK defence body | A working prototype inside strict security requirements |
| Everyone’s Invited | An AI system that strips names, dates and places from sensitive submissions | Over 50,000 submissions reviewed automatically, saving 12,500 hours of review |
| Pristine Condition | An offline app whose AI lifting check runs in real time on an ordinary phone camera | Usage up around 9,000%, with around 150,000 warehouse staff using it |
| The Home Help Company | Digital scheduling, staff alerts, and billing and payroll in one click | 30 hours a month back for the CEO, 20 new staff and 200 more clients |
| Ymobile | User research and a data pipeline on Databricks for the UK’s first eSIM-only network | Real-time insight into user behaviour, on infrastructure built to scale |
| Ultra Goldfield Logistics | Branding, a customer portal and a driver app that matches drivers to nearby parcels | A working platform in three to four weeks |
| Sea Turtles Jamaica | A ticketing platform for hatchling releases and an app to track nests and turtles | A paper system replaced, and over 5,000 turtles saved to date |
The defence work is covered by a non-disclosure agreement, so that study says what it was and stops there. That’s the deal, and we keep it. Will you sign an NDA? covers how that works for you.
How to read a portfolio, ours included
Every agency’s portfolio looks good. That’s the point of a portfolio. So look past the screenshots for three things.
- A before and after. “We built an app” tells you nothing. “Adoption was under ten percent, and now 150,000 people use it” tells you the product worked.
- The hard part. Sensitive data, no signal, a platform taken over mid-season. The interesting work is in the constraint, not the colour scheme.
- Whether the client stayed. A launch is one data point. Diligent keeping the team after buying Vault is a better one.
Then ask questions the case study can’t answer. What went wrong? What would they do differently? Who actually did the work, and are they still there? A good supplier answers without flinching. Who’s actually doing the work? covers our answer to that last one.
What if nothing looks like my product?
It won’t, exactly. Very few products are close copies of each other. What carries over is the shape of the problem.
- Sensitive personal data: read Vault or Everyone’s Invited, even if you’re not in HR or a charity.
- Users somewhere awkward, like a warehouse floor or a moving car: Pristine Condition or ExecSecure.
- A team drowning in admin: The Home Help Company.
- An earlier build that stalled: Envestors or Electragram.
- A public body: DOS7 and the defence prototype.
Have you worked with companies like mine before? groups this by the kinds of organisation we work with.
Before you sign with anyone
Past work is one input. The others are how the price works, who owns the code and what happens if the supplier goes quiet. Our comparison of agencies, freelancers and fractional CTOs ends with the questions to ask any supplier, us included.
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We design, build and launch digital products at a fixed price, with a money-back guarantee after Discovery. Tell us what you have in mind.