Frequently Asked Questions
You bring the idea, we bring the engineering. You do not need to know what sensor to use, how to design a PCB, or what stack makes sense for your app. That is our job. What you do need is a clear concept of what you want to build and why. Hermes will help you articulate it, and our engineers will build it.
Existing competition is not a dealbreaker. It is a signal there is a market. What matters is whether your version does something meaningfully different. Hermes will ask you about that early in the conversation.
Sometimes you do not until someone with the right experience looks at it honestly. That is what the intake conversation is for. If it is buildable we will tell you what it costs. If it is not we will tell you that too, and usually there is a simpler path to the same outcome.
Depends heavily on complexity. A hardware prototype using off the shelf components typically starts around $10,000. Something requiring a custom PCB or enclosure runs $15,000 to $20,000 or more. Hermes will surface those signals early and your quote will reflect them.
Simple utility apps start around $5,000 to $8,000. A software MVP with auth, a backend, and app store submission runs $25,000 to $35,000. Something with significant AI integration sits above that. Every quote comes with an honest range, not a number designed to get you in the door.
Before anything gets built we go deep on your idea. Technical research, stack decisions, look and feel, edge cases, and a documented plan you approve in writing before a single line of code gets written or a single component gets ordered. That work takes real time and it is what separates a project that ships clean from one that falls apart at week four. Discovery fees range from $500 to $4,000 depending on complexity. It credits toward your project if you move forward. Bring a detailed mock or AI-assisted documentation that is already dialed in, and discovery can run as little as a single 8-hour day.
Simple apps run one to two weeks of build time. Full software MVPs four to eight weeks. Hardware prototypes one to five weeks depending on whether a custom PCB is involved. Timeline starts at project kickoff, which is after discovery is complete and your deposit is paid. Not from the day you get a quote.
No. Bring whatever you have. A napkin sketch, a patent filing, a voice memo, or just the idea. More detail makes the quote more accurate but the absence of it has never stopped a good conversation.
The engineer who reviews your quote, completes your discovery, builds your project, and delivers it to you. Same person start to finish. If there is a question, a delay, or a decision to make, you hear it from the person who actually understands what is happening. No handoffs. No account managers. No offshore team you never meet.
Hermes is our intake assistant, built on Claude Sonnet 4.6 and prompt-engineered around what we can actually build and what it costs. It knows our pricing model, our rate structure, our hardware complexity signals, and our timeline ranges. It asks the right questions, surfaces the right flags, and generates a preliminary quote grounded in real numbers before your conversation ends. Every quote is reviewed by an engineer before it is confirmed.
We require one anyway. You sign before Hermes hears a word about your idea. Prefer to use your own? Upload it. We review, sign, and return it within one business day. Hermes will be ready when you come back.
Timelines are estimates, not guarantees. Hardware especially has variables outside anyone's control — components backorder, a PCB spin comes back needing a revision, a third party API behaves unexpectedly. When we see it coming we tell you immediately. Not at the end. You will always know where things stand.
Yes. A lot of hardware ideas only work with software to control or display them. We scope and quote both sides together so nothing falls through the gap between the two.
You decide if you want to move forward. If you do, a discovery fee is invoiced based on project complexity. Discovery produces a documented technical plan and a detailed mock you approve in writing. After approval, a 50% deposit kicks off the build. Final 50% on delivery.
Not necessarily. A patent protects a specific implementation, not an idea. If you have one, bring it. If you do not, our NDA covers you from the moment you sign it. Talk to a patent attorney about timing — that is their expertise, not ours.
Yes. The quote is free. The conversation is free. You are not committing to anything until you pay a discovery fee, and even then the full build does not start until you have approved the technical plan in writing.
We are not an agency. No account managers, no project managers, no offshore handoffs, no layers of overhead built into every quote. Just a senior engineer with an AI-accelerated workflow and a track record of shipping real projects. The work is the same. The structure is not.
Something real you can hold, demo, or pitch with. It may have a 3D printed enclosure and off-the-shelf hardware prototype components inside. Our job is turning your idea into a working hardware prototype. Our deliverables should help you prepare for the manufacturing conversation when you are ready for it.
The hardware prototype is a proven concept, not a production-ready design. Think of an architect's scale model. It demonstrates everything, but you would not live in it. What we deliver gives you something real to move forward with and raise money on. We built Proof, a BLE inventory scale for a restaurant, by gutting a commercial kitchen scale, fitting it with load cells, and writing the firmware and app from scratch. Works perfectly for its purpose. Scaling that to retail units is a manufacturing problem. Our documentation and spec deliverables are designed to make that handoff to a manufacturing partner as clean as possible.
We require one anyway. You sign before Hermes hears a word about your idea. Prefer to use your own? Upload it. We review, sign, and return it within one business day. Hermes will be ready when you come back.
We charge a fee and build you a thing. Your idea is yours before, during, and after. Full stop.
Your conversations are encrypted. No human ever reads your intake conversation except to prepare your quote, and even then the engineer sees a structured summary, not a transcript. Nothing is shared, sold, or used for anything else. Delete your conversation any time before your quote arrives. Request quote deletion after. Everything lives under your project name with no account required. At the end of your conversation Hermes will give you a short access code. You will need your project name and that code together to return — neither works without the other.
Tell us upfront if you are heading to a pitch, a demo day, or Shark Tank. It changes how we prioritize the build and what we document alongside it. We can stand it up for a live demo, keep it running while you are actively pitching, or hand it off entirely once you have what you need.
A working physical prototype you can hold, demo, and pitch with. It will do exactly what was scoped and approved in discovery. You receive the prototype itself, full assembly documentation, component sourcing details, firmware source code, and any relevant technical specs. Everything you need to hand it to a manufacturing partner when you are ready for that conversation.
A production-grade application. Not a demo, not a mockup, something real. You receive the full codebase, deployment credentials, technical documentation, and a handoff guide covering how it works and how to maintain it. If it has a backend or requires hosting we will have that conversation during discovery.
Every project ships with documentation appropriate to what was built. For hardware that means assembly notes, component bill of materials, firmware source, and schematic documentation. For software that means codebase, architecture notes, deployment guide, and maintenance documentation. The goal is that another engineer could pick it up and understand it without calling us.
Yes. If your software needs a server we can stand it up, get it running, and monitor it. We offer a one time launch support engagement or an ongoing monthly arrangement depending on what you need. Bring it up during discovery and we will factor it into the quote.