VeriGuard Pro
Partner: an insurance agent, who brought a channel and a market.
Renter verification and incident history for equipment-rental yards. When the partner stepped away, the software kept running and the product went on with co-founders.
Product partnerships · Rexburg, Idaho
You have the market. I'll build the product.
Finished software for people who already know an industry and its customers. Pay for the build outright, or pay less up front and share the revenue.
01
Who this is for
Software can be built faster than ever. Building it to last, and reaching the people who will buy it, are still the hard parts. If you have the buyers, I'll handle the rest.
Consultants, trainers, and advisors with clients in one industry
Operators, working or recently retired, who know where the time and money leak
People with an audience in a niche: a newsletter, podcast, community, or association
Specialists with a method worth turning into a product
The best partners have a problem their buyers already pay to solve, usually with something worse. Here is what you end up with:
A product in your marketWith your name on it, built around a problem your clients already pay to solve.
Your share of what it earnsOr all of it, if you fund the build outright.
Someone who keeps it runningHosting, updates, and support, for years, not just until launch.
02
Two ways to build it
Option A
Partnership
A smaller fee up front and a share of the revenue. For people who bring customers more than capital. We both do well only if it sells.
Option B
Straight build
One fee, and you own the product outright. For people who would rather fund the work than share it. Ongoing operation and maintenance are available.
Either way, we write the agreement before any code: ownership, responsibilities, milestones, and what happens if either of us steps away.
How partnerships work03
Quality at speed
4 moStoryTrek, first conversation to the App Store and Google Play, a month of beta included
80%Forecast running-cost reduction from redesigning how Daily Doublets handles data, before launch
28 yrsTurning business requirements into software that holds up
AI now takes much of the mechanical work out of writing software, under direction. That's why a first version takes months rather than a year. It doesn't decide what to build, what it should cost to run, who may see which data, when it's finished, or who answers when it breaks at two in the morning. Those decisions are the product, and they're what you're working with me for.
How it's built decides what it costs to run.
Before Daily Doublets launched, we worked out what it would cost to run at scale. Changing how the app stores and moves its data cut that forecast by 80%. Running cost comes straight out of the margin we share, so a decision like that is worth as much as any feature.
- Step 1ConversationThe market, the problem, and who is already paying for a worse solution.
- Step 2Validate, togetherTwo to four weeks. We shape the offer together; you bring the buyer conversations; I bring the method and the write-up.
- Step 3BuildA focused first version, shipped finished rather than as a demo.
- Step 4Run it togetherYou lead sales and customers. I lead product and operations.
04
Built with partners
StoryTrek
Partner: a creative partner, who brought the content.
iOS and Android apps with health integrations, purchases, a subscription, and offline sync. First conversation to release in four months.
Daily Doublets
Partner: a peer engineering firm.
A daily word-ladder game, the pipeline behind four graded puzzles a day, and a redesign of how it handles data that cut forecast running costs by 80% before launch.
05
Not a fit
- An idea without access to the people who would buy it
- Partnerships where only one side puts in time or money
- Products that need a large team or long enterprise sales cycles
06
Who you'd work with
I'm Matt Manley. I've been building software since 1998, and I hold an MBA and a PhD in Management Information Systems. I can go as deep on the engineering as on the business, and most of my work is translating between the two.
EngineeringSince 1998 · Novell · Wells Fargo · Health Care Insights
BusinessMBA · PhD, Management Information Systems
AlsoProfessor, BYU–Idaho
Start a conversation.
Tell me about your market. A few answers help me see whether there is a product in it.
Would rather pay up front and own it outright? The studio takes a small number of straight builds too. See one →