Web, mobile and custom software development.
I design, build and launch software for founders starting from an idea and for established businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets, manual processes or a product that no longer fits.
You bring the business knowledge. I handle everything technical, and I stay responsible for it once it is live.
The examples below are from John Croucher's 20+ years of delivery, before and alongside Shincro Tech.
Web applications
Full-stack products from first commit through to production.
Built the Koi ecommerce platform and award-winning interactive journalism tools for News Corp.
Mobile applications
Cross-platform and native apps that hold up in the real world, including offline-first workloads.
Festival apps with offline, sub-second ticket scanning at the gate.
SaaS products
Multi-customer products with accounts, billing, permissions and the operational side that comes with them.
Subscription products with payments, tiered access and self-service onboarding.
Custom business software
Software built around how your business actually works. No monthly platform fees, no fighting someone else's product.
Payroll and warehouse logistics for 200+ staff with biometric time tracking.
Customer portals
Giving your customers a place to see their own data, submit requests and serve themselves.
Claims tracking for a law firm, integrated directly with insurer APIs.
AI-enabled products
Targeted automation that saves real time and money, not AI for the sake of AI. Where it runs, and what data it touches, is a separate decision.
Cut product listing time from 20 minutes to 5 with AI descriptions and image processing.
Integrations
Connecting the systems your business already runs on, including the ones with difficult APIs.
Payment providers, insurer APIs, logistics and accounting systems wired together in production.
Websites with real functionality
Not brochure sites: sites that do something, with logins, data, payments or workflow behind them.
Content and commerce platforms handling live customer traffic.
WordPress plugins
Custom plugin development when your business logic does not fit an off-the-shelf plugin.
Bespoke plugins built and maintained for production sites.
Internal tools
The unglamorous software that removes hours of manual work from your team every week.
Turned multi-hour newsroom data jobs into 15-minute runs.
You do not need to be a startup, and you do not need to know the technical words for any of it.
Founders building a first version
You have the idea and you know the customer. I define what the first version needs to be, then build it and stay accountable for it.
Businesses outgrowing how they work now
Spreadsheets, manual processes, or an off-the-shelf product you are fighting every day. I build software that fits how the business actually runs.
Teams who need a senior pair of hands
You have people, but not the experience for this particular build. I take on the hard piece and hand it back documented.
Define
I work out what the first version needs to be, and what is genuinely not needed yet.
Architect
I choose the stack and structure, and explain the trade-offs in language you can act on.
Build
I build it, with you seeing progress throughout rather than at the end.
Launch and own
I put it in production and stay accountable for it, as your fractional CTO if you want that.
There are cheaper ways to get code written. What is harder to buy is the judgement about what to build, how to structure it, and what will still be standing once real people depend on it.
Product clarification
Turning what is in your head into something buildable: what the first version actually needs to do, and what it does not.
Architecture
Choosing a structure that fits the product you are building and the one you will be building in two years.
Senior technical judgement
The decisions that are cheap to make now and expensive to undo later get made by someone who has made them before.
Production readiness
Built from the start to handle real customers, real money and real failure, not just a demo.
Security and data
Authentication, permissions and privacy designed in rather than bolted on after the first incident.
Deployment and operations
Hosting, deploy pipelines, monitoring and backups, so shipping an update is routine instead of frightening.
Ongoing ownership
Someone remains accountable for the technology after launch, and helps you hire the team that eventually takes it over.
AI may help me move faster, but the architecture, quality and final result remain my responsibility.
I use AI where it genuinely speeds up the work, and I am happy to say so. What does not change is who is accountable when the product is live and something goes wrong. Tools do not carry responsibility. I do.
That is AI as a tool I use. If the question is AI inside your product, and whether your data can safely go to a third party to make it work, that is a different decision. See Private & Local AI.
If you already have a prototype, whether you built it with AI, a freelancer or an agency, you do not need to start again. See Prototype to Production, where I assess what is there and finish what matters.
If the build stalled, the agency went quiet or the system is already live and falling over, that is App Rescue: same person, same job, different starting point.
Ready to get it built?
Tell me what you need and who it is for. I will tell you honestly what it would take to build, before you commit to anything.