Your idea, built and validated. In a week.
Captain Jack turns ideas into real, working products — fast. Engineering, product, design, and strategy from one person. Validate in days, then take it all the way to a production app built to scale.
30 minutes · free
~/captains-log
Three ways to build software. Two of them hurt.
You've probably already priced these up. Here's where each one leaves you.
Agencies take months
Three rounds of discovery, a Gantt chart, and an invoice with a comma in it — before a single screen does anything. By the time it ships, the window you were chasing has moved.
Vibe coding turns to spaghetti
Prompt an AI long enough without really knowing how to code and the demo looks magic — until you try to change something and it all unravels. No structure, no one who can explain why it broke. Fast to start, impossible to keep.
No-code hits a wall
Fine until your idea gets interesting. The custom logic, the real data model, the integration that actually matters — that's exactly where the platform stops.
There's a third option
Real, robust software at full sail — from one person who also thinks like a product manager and a designer. A working product in days, built to keep, and ready to scale into a production app when the time comes. No agency timeline, no throwaway mess.
Got an idea and not much time? Captain Jack'll get on it
Founders & startups
A real product to test with users — and raise on — before the runway burns.
Small & medium businesses
A tool or site that actually fits how you work, built by someone who'll explain every choice.
Governments & public sector
Civic-grade software that makes a slow, paper-bound process feel like it belongs in this decade.
Communities
Tools that bring people together, built by someone who actually shows up in communities himself.
A better way to build — start to scale
The App Factory is how Captain Jack works: years of senior craft, judgement, and standards distilled into a way of building that moves at full speed without cutting corners. Engineering, product, and design pulling together. It's why a week of his time produces what usually takes a team a month — and why the same foundation carries you from first test to a production app.
Discovery
You get sharp on what you're actually testing and who for. One short conversation, honest scoping, no 40-page brief. You leave knowing what week one ships.
Build
Captain Jack builds the real thing — structured, production-shaped from the first commit. You see working software early and often, not a status deck.
Validate
It goes in front of real users. You watch what they do, not what they say in a survey, and the product gets adjusted based on what actually happened.
Scale
If it works, you keep building on the same foundation — straight into a production-grade app, no rewrite, no reset. If it doesn't, you found out in days for a fraction of the cost.
How Captain Jack works, in six honest principles
AI is a force multiplier for real engineering craft — not a shortcut that hands you something you can't maintain. Here's what that means in practice.
Speed & validation
You find out if an idea works by building it, not by workshopping it for a quarter. Real apps in days means you learn from real users while the idea is still hot.
Real-world goals
No abstract discovery theatre. Every decision serves something that ships and gets used. If it doesn't move you toward a working product, it doesn't happen.
Built to last
Fast doesn't mean flimsy. Everything is structured, tested where it counts, and clean enough for the next person to pick up on day one. No throwaway code, no mess to inherit.
Scalability
The thing you validate is the thing you scale. No rewrite when traction hits — the foundation is production-ready from the first commit.
Cybersecurity
Security is part of the design, not a checklist at the end. A decade across digital identity and auth means the boring-but-critical parts are handled.
Creativity
Community tools, civic tech, sex-positive apps, blockchain. The range is the point — curiosity across domains is what makes the work good and keeps it honest.
18 yrs
Building things — 10 in software, 8 in engineering
Days
From idea to a working, usable build
20+
Production products shipped across very different domains
1
Person who covers what usually takes a team
The work — and how fast it shipped
A marketing site in an afternoon. A health calculator in a day. An events platform in three. Real products across very different worlds — that range is the point.
This very site — a fast, distinctive marketing build, made in the App Factory. Dark, bold, and shipped in an afternoon.
SexyAgenda
LiveA sex-positive events platform — discovery, listings, and community tools done with taste, not shock value.
An honest, citation-backed calculator for per-encounter STI risk across 21 countries. Educational, not preachy.
AI Event Crawler
LiveThe engine behind SexyAgenda's listings — it renders JS-heavy sites with a real browser, then uses AI to read, normalise, and fact-check events into clean data.
Tonomy ID
In progressA self-sovereign identity wallet with auto-form completion — your data and logins, owned by you, not the platform.
Burner Camp Organizer
In progressA collective tool for burners to run camp organisation and events together — herding cats, minus the chaos.
Not just a tech guy.
Captain Jack has been building things his whole life. Ten years of it in commercial software, and eight before that as a mechanical engineer — so he knows what it means to design something that has to actually work in the real world, not just compile. He started even earlier: at six, writing little viruses in Visual Basic on his Dad's new Windows 95 and using them to gently extort his own family. Lifelong builder, mild menace. Some things don't change.
What makes him useful isn't just that he can build the thing. It's that he can also work out whether it's the right thing — shape the product, design how it feels, think through how it sells, and keep it secure while he's at it. Most projects need all of that, and usually need three or four people to get it. You get it from one.
He's spent years explaining hard ideas to rooms full of people, on stage at conferences and as an educator — a social person who can take something technical and make it land in plain language. The portfolio runs from civic and health tools to sex-positive community apps, and he's open about all of it. The range isn't a lack of focus. It's the point.
Software
10 years commercial
Before that
8 years mechanical eng.
Brings
Engineering · product · design
Plus
Strategy · security · education
Off the clock he contributes to community builds — including Nowhere, the regional Burning Man gathering in Spain — and still nerds out about the blockchain world at jackandtheblockstalk.com.
His blockchain chapter at jackandtheblockstalk.comFrom a one-week build to taking it all the way
Six ways people work with Captain Jack. They tend to flow into each other — most start with a fast build and end up scaling the thing that worked.
Start with a free 30-minute call
Tell Captain Jack what you're building. He'll tell you honestly whether he can help, what it'd take, and roughly what it costs — no packages, no pressure. If he's not the right person, he'll point you to someone who is.
The questions everyone asks
Often, yes — a focused, genuinely usable first version. Not every idea fits a week, and Captain Jack will tell you straight if yours doesn't. What he won't do is pad the timeline to look busy.
Real, structured, tested where it counts. The whole point is that what you validate is what you scale — straight into a production app, no rewrite when traction hits. If you ever bring in another developer, they won't wince.
A clear idea of what you're testing and who for, and a bit of your time early on. You don't need a spec or a design — that's part of what he brings. The rest gets sorted on the call.
Your call. Plenty of people keep him on to keep scaling; others take it in-house. Either way you own the work and the code, and the handover is painless.
It depends on the work, so there's no point pretending a price tag means anything yet. Book the free call, say what you need, and you'll get an honest number — not a sales funnel.
One senior person who covers engineering, product, design, strategy, and security means no handoffs, no telephone game, and no junior doing the actual work. Less overhead, more signal.
Still wondering? Ask me directly.
Book a free 30-min callGot something worth building?
Grab a free 30 minutes with Captain Jack. Bring an idea, a half-formed hunch, or a problem you're sick of — and he'll figure out if there's something worth building.
Free 30-minute consultation
A straight read on whether your idea is buildable — and worth building
A rough timeline and honest ballpark cost
Zero pitch. If he's not the right fit, he'll say so
or send a message