The Solo Developer LLC — Willowick, Ohio
One developer.
Start to finish.
Custom software for Northeast Ohio manufacturers. The person who answers the phone is the person who wrote it.
(440) 290-9519ryan@thesolodevsoftware.com
The problem
Somewhere in your shop there's an application nobody wants to touch.
It tracks jobs, or quotes, or inventory. It was written in Access or VB6 or early WinForms, sometime around 2003. It works — mostly. It runs on one machine and you'd rather not reboot that machine. The person who wrote it doesn't work here anymore, and maybe nobody knows where the source code is.
Every year it gets a little harder to live with and a little harder to replace.
What I do
Rebuild it.
A modern web application that does what the old one did, plus the things you've been working around for a decade. Runs on your server or in your Microsoft tenant, your choice.
Connect it.
Getting systems that don't talk to each other to talk. ERP to shop floor, quoting to accounting, machines to the office.
Keep it running.
Ongoing support once it's live, at a predictable monthly rate.
How it works
A conversation.
Half an hour on the phone or at your shop. I look at what you have and tell you honestly whether it's worth replacing.
A paid assessment.
One week. I document how the current system actually works, what it would take to replace it, and what it would cost. You get a written findings document and a fixed price. If you stop here, you still own a document worth having.
The build.
Fixed price agreed before I start. No hourly meter running.
Support.
Optional monthly retainer once it's live.
What you own
The obvious question about hiring one person is what happens if that person disappears. Here's my answer.
You own the source code outright. It lives in a repository you control, under your account, not mine. I'm a collaborator you can remove.
I build on a deliberately boring stack — Microsoft .NET, SQL Server, nothing exotic — so that any competent .NET developer could pick it up. Deployment is documented well enough for a stranger to follow. When a project ends you get a handoff document, not a promise that I'll always be reachable.
If you have an IT provider, I'll walk their team through it so they can handle the day-to-day themselves.
You're not betting on me sticking around. You're hiring me one project at a time.
Who I am
I'm Ryan. I've been building software for ten years, currently as a senior engineer working on integration between transportation management systems and in-cab hardware — software that fleets depend on every day, where failures cost real money.
I take on a small number of manufacturing projects a year. That's deliberate. It means I'm not juggling twelve accounts, and it means I'm not going to take a deposit and vanish chasing something bigger.
Based in Willowick. If you're in Lake, Cuyahoga, or Geauga County, I'll come to your shop.
For IT providers
If you're an MSP or IT provider: I do the custom software piece and nothing else. No networks, no hardware, no helpdesk. I can subcontract under your name so the client stays yours, or take referrals directly with a referral fee. Your client ends up with documented software you can support.