Jim Murphy is a solution provider who's in the business of helping other solution providers.

Boltmade, the company he founded in 2013, has already turned a profit. In just one year, the company has grown from two developers to a staff of 11, and this year Murphy expects that number to double. It has to because it's built into his business model. 

On the surface, the company might appear like just another development consultancy. But Murphy insists that Boltmade is different. "The essence of our service offering is around co-innovation," he said. "We engage on a peer level, not a client level."

The first step in doing that, Murphy said, is participation in an inception meeting. "This is where the client describes what they're thinking and gives us any documents, napkins, everything, or nothing--whatever they may have" to help get the project started.

Murphy's team performs an analysis of the overall project and divides it into phases. "It might be 6-8 weeks to do this phase, then 8-10 weeks for that phase. Maybe there's a web phase, a mobile app phase, or whatever."

While that might come off as fairly traditional, what comes next is parts with convention. He says that the next step is generally to provide the prospective client with a noncommittal, best faith estimate. "It [makes us] vulnerable, but that allows us to have accountability as we go along," and that's what makes the approach unconventional, Murphy says.

"We get shoulder to shoulder and augment your company to get past an inflection point. Because I know what it's like to have all that fear, uncertainty and doubt about a big development project."

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