MVP development in Manchester
A Manchester founder with a first small round has to make it last, and the city's lower costs only go so far when a local agency quotes for a full product. The first version does not need to be the full product. It needs to prove one thing to the next investor or the first paying customer, on a stack that can be built on rather than thrown away.
Our fixed-price two-week starter is built for that. We agree the one flow that proves the idea, build it properly, and hand you a working first version with a written list of what would have to change before it takes real customer money or data. If the idea needs more than two weeks, we will say so on the first call and suggest what to cut or what to build first.
Manchester's software market has two centres of gravity, a tram ride apart. MediaCityUK in Salford is home to BBC North and ITV, and to the production companies, post houses and broadcast suppliers that grew up around them. Their systems are about media and rights: asset libraries, scheduling, metadata that has to follow a programme from edit to broadcast to streaming, and the comments, votes and uploads that now come with so many shows. Anything that hosts what the public posts needs moderation designed in from the first episode, because the busiest night is usually the launch.
The other centre is online retail. Greater Manchester is home to THG, boohoo, AO and Auto Trader, and that concentration has produced a generation of engineers and smaller brands who think in conversion rates, warehouse cut-offs and peak trading. The mid-sized retailers we hear from have usually outgrown their first platform in stages, and the joins between the shop, the warehouse and the finance system are where the money leaks. Between the broadcasters and the retailers sit the city's digital agencies, building for clients across the North and London, and they often need engineering capacity for a quarter rather than another permanent seat.
Hiring here is cheaper than London but not cheap. ITJobsWatch puts the median advertised salary for a software engineer in Manchester at £75,000 over the six months to September 2026, and GCHQ, which opened its Manchester site in 2019, now competes for the same security-minded engineers. Retailers and agencies feel the squeeze most in the run-up to peak, when a build has a fixed date and a permanent hire would arrive after it.
Working with us from Manchester fits the day you already have. Four hours of every working day overlap with yours, set across your morning, so stand-up, review and decisions happen live with the engineer who writes the code. The afternoon runs on pull requests and written updates in your own Slack, GitHub and Linear, waiting for you when you get back from lunch, with runbooks and architecture notes written as the work goes.
We are the right fit for a defined build, a deadline before peak, or a quarter of extra senior capacity for an agency that has won more work than it can staff. Start with a fixed-price two-week piece and judge us on the result. For agencies, we work white-label under your name, in your repositories and your tools.
Four ways this arrives.
Every feature is marked essential. We work with you to find the one journey a user must complete for the idea to be proven or disproven, build that properly, and write the rest down as a list for after launch.
It was built with a no-code tool or over a weekend, and real users are now finding its limits. We keep what works, move the data somewhere you own, and rebuild the parts that break without taking the product offline.
A demo that works in the meeting and then has to become the product. We build it on a real database with real sign-in from the start, so the version you demo is the version you keep, not a mock-up you throw away.
You need someone to make the technical decisions and explain them in plain language. We write down every choice that is expensive to reverse, why we made it and what changing it would cost, so whoever you hire next can pick it up.
Began in 2024 as a script that turned monthly exports into charts, and grew step by step into a web app, a mobile app, a technician phone page and the one backend under all three.
Read the write-up →Asked by Manchester teams.
How do you work with teams in Manchester?+
Four hours of every working day overlap with yours, set across your Manchester morning, so stand-up and review happen live. We join your calls and work in your tools: Slack, GitHub and Linear. You talk directly to the engineer who writes the code. When you get back from lunch, the afternoon's work is waiting in pull requests, with notes on what changed and why, and runbooks written as we go.
Do you build for Manchester retailers and media companies?+
Yes. For online retailers we build the joins that decide the margin: stock that is right across the website, marketplaces and warehouse, returns that flow back into sellable stock, and order data that reconciles with the 3PL and the payment provider. For broadcasters and suppliers at MediaCityUK we build content and rights metadata services, delivery APIs for streaming partners, and audience features with moderation designed in.
How does your rate compare to hiring in Manchester?+
ITJobsWatch puts the median advertised salary for a software engineer in Manchester at around £75,000. Our published rate is $35/hour with a $5,000 minimum, or $5,400 a month for one engineer embedded in your team. There is no recruiting time and no employment overhead, and we can start within days of the first call. A fixed-price two-week piece at $2,800 lets you judge us on output first.
Can you take over a platform a Manchester agency built?+
Yes. In Manchester a retail or media platform often outlives the agency that built it, so this is familiar work. After a 30-minute call with the engineer, we read the code, run it, and write down how it actually works: architecture notes, the risky paths and what we would change first. That becomes a written plan within a week. A fixed-price two-week piece then ships the first real change.
What does the fixed-price two-week starter cover?+
A defined slice of the product, agreed in writing before we start. For an MVP it is usually the core flow, working end to end against a real database. It costs $2,800. You get something running at the end and you keep the code either way, so you can judge us on output before committing to the rest of the build.
How long does an MVP take?+
It depends on what the smallest honest version is, which is why we scope before we quote. The two-week starter usually answers the question: by the end of it one flow works, and you have a written estimate for the rest with its assumptions listed. We would rather cut scope with you than promise a date we would miss.
Why Next.js and PostgreSQL?+
Because they are boring in the right way. Both are widely known, so you can hire for them later. Postgres will carry you a long way past your first paying customers, and Next.js gives you a web app and an API in one codebase. If the product is mobile-first, we build the app in React Native on the same backend.
Will we have to rewrite it later?+
Not if we do our job. The shortcuts we take are in scope, not in structure: fewer features, plainer screens, manual steps behind the scenes. The data model, sign-in, permissions and deploys are built properly from the first week, because those are the parts that force a rewrite when they are wrong.
Who owns the code and the accounts?+
You do, from the first commit. Repositories, hosting, domains and payment accounts are created in your name, not ours. If we set something up ourselves to save time, we transfer it to you before the first invoice. An MVP you cannot take to another team is a liability, not an asset.