Following Agile development practices, Boltmade tackles projects in week-long sprints, each with highly targeted goals and milestones. "So clients can have lot of feedback," Murphy said, "and can guide the process to go shorter or longer."

According to Brouwers, the Boltmade team integrates seamlessly with his own. "Boltmade has been very reliable with weekly sprints and code drops, often driving the pace," said Brouwers. "Their communication has been excellent, maintaining constant communication throughout sprints, calling us into in-person meetings when necessary, and also joining SponsorsOne internal product meetings as necessary."

And here's the kicker: the client gets to decide when it's done. "We're not about throwing [code] over the wall and getting paid," said Murphy. "With most consultants, work fills the available time. It's not like that here. The customer gets to say when the project is finished," or when they're ready to take over."

At just 42, Murphy is no stranger to risks and startups. He sold his most recent venture, a social-media analytics company called PostRank, to Google in 2011. Prior to that, he and a partner launched Mindreef, which made testing tools for what ultimately became today's web services infrastructure. He sold that company in 2008 to Progress Software.

Now with Boltmade, he's leveraging those experiences to help solution providers. "What I've done is build competent engineering teams with good culture and energy to build products and take them to market. Why not build that up and take that to market?" He swears that Boltmade is for keeps.

"This one's not a flipper," Murphy said. "We're in Waterloo; this is where I call home, and this is my final 20-year vision."