Fear of the unknown. Fear of feeling out of your depth, or worse, looking out of your depth. I'm sure most of us hit that wall at some point in our careers.
My first experience of this came in 2014. Fresh out of university, tasked with setting up websites for our family business, I had no idea about software development, the terminology, the process, or the costs. We needed websites built and I didn't know where to start.
That knowledge came slowly over the next 12 years. I co-founded What The Fork, a food ordering platform, and before long I was managing development teams and had a decade of hands-on experience building and shipping software. What once gave me the fear felt like second nature.
But when I launched my own consultancy, Studio SC7, déjà vu hit hard. Sitting across from new clients, I could see the same look I'd worn back in 2014 - the slight panic behind the questions, the worry about saying something wrong, the fear of being taken advantage of.
That's why I built the estimator at studiosc7.com/estimate.
It's a free tool that lets you map out a project - whether that's a website, platform, or app, and understand the likely requirements and costs before you speak to anyone. No obligation, no sales call required. Just clarity.
To me, it's more than a calculator. It's a reasoning tool. It helps you arrive at a conversation with confidence rather than anxiety. And if that conversation ends up being with me, then great. If not, that's also completely fine as long as it helps and puts people in a stronger position.
Software development in 2026 is noisy, no doubt about it. My hope is this tool provides some clarity in the noise.
