What should you ask a software studio before you sign anything?
Seven questions that expose scoping, ownership, and accountability, which is where budgets actually blow up.
Most software projects do not fail in the code. They fail in the contract.
That is not a figure of speech. McKinsey attributes roughly half of all cost overruns not to engineering difficulty but to failures of strategy, stakeholder management, and securing the right talent. Those are the things you can only test before the work starts, by asking who owns the plan and who will actually do the work.
So here are seven questions worth asking any studio, including us, before money changes hands. The answers matter less than the shape of them. A studio that has done this before will answer in specifics. A studio that has not will answer in adjectives.
What exactly ships in the first milestone, and what does it cost?
Not the whole project. The first milestone. A studio that cannot describe one shippable chunk of work with a price on it does not yet understand your project, and neither do you.
This is the single best defense against the 45 percent problem. A quoted price for a vague scope is a prediction, not a promise. A quoted price for a defined deliverable is something you can hold someone to.
How we do it: we map the project into fixed milestones with clear pricing before the build starts, so you know what ships and when. Our contact form asks for a rough budget range instead of publishing rates, with options from under $10k to $100k+, because the honest answer to "what does it cost" depends on what you want built.
Who writes the code, and will I ever talk to them?
Ask for names. Ask whether the person in the sales call is the person in the repository. Ask what happens between your feedback and the code change, and how many people sit in that gap.
This is not a trust exercise. Securing the right talent is one of the two dimensions McKinsey blames for about half of all cost overruns. Hand-offs are where scope quietly changes shape.
How we do it: you work directly with Alec from start to finish. No account managers, no hand-offs. He has a decade of experience shipping products end to end and works as a staff-level software engineer.
Who owns the code the day after launch?
Paying for software is not the same as owning it. The U.S. Copyright Office explains that a commissioned work only counts as a work made for hire if it falls into one of nine enumerated categories and the parties expressly agree in a signed written instrument. Computer software is not one of those nine categories.
So without an explicit, signed IP assignment, a client may not own the code they paid a studio to write.
Ask to see the assignment language before you sign, not after launch. If the contract does not contain an express written transfer, the question is not settled by the invoice.
What happens when the scope changes?
It will change. That is not pessimism, it is the base rate.
When almost 90 percent of large IT-enabled projects run substantially over, "will this stay on budget?" stops being a rude question and becomes a baseline one. What you are really asking is procedural: when you want something that was not scoped, what happens next? Who prices it, how fast, and does the original milestone still ship on its original date? A studio with a clean answer has been through it. A studio that says scope changes are not a problem has not.
What does done mean, and how often will I see proof?
"Done" is the most expensive undefined word in software. Get it defined per milestone, in writing, in language you could show to someone who was not in the room.
Then ask about proof between milestones. Status reports are not proof. Working software is. We run regular demos until the product is live, because a demo is the only status update that cannot be spun. We are not done until it is live.
What have you shipped that you still run yourselves?
Portfolios show launches. They rarely show what happened six months later, when the thing had to keep running without a client paying for attention.
We build and run our own products for exactly that reason. Goblyn is an autonomous AI platform that plans, writes, publishes, and optimizes a full brand blog, including multi-tenant architecture, custom domains, subscriptions, and the publishing pipeline, with a feedback loop tuned for both search rankings and citations inside AI assistants. MagicTrips is an AI travel planner that is live in production and generating affiliate revenue, built on Google Places integration and programmatic SEO content produced at scale. AI-native builds are our specialty, and those are the products backing the claim.
What do you do when a project is already off the rails?
Ask this even if your project has not started. The answer tells you how a studio thinks about accountability when there is no clean slate to sell you.
We take four kinds of engagement: zero-to-one builds where you only have an idea, engineering existing mockups or specs into production software, leveling up an existing product with new features, performance work or AI capabilities, and rescue work on a stalled codebase. Our intake form asks which one you are, because "just an idea" and "existing product" are different jobs with different first milestones.
The pattern behind all seven
Every one of these questions is about the same thing: pinning down scope, ownership, and accountability before anyone opens an editor.
The downside of skipping them is not just an awkward quarter. McKinsey found that 17 percent of IT projects go so badly wrong they can threaten the survival of the company running them, with overruns of 200 percent or more. That tail exists. Contracts are how you stay out of it.
A quote is a prediction. A milestone with a price and a definition of done is a promise.
Ask us all seven. We read every inbound message and reply within two business days. Great software starts at zero. We get you to one.
- About half of all IT cost overruns trace to strategy, stakeholder management, and talent, not to engineering difficulty, so the questions that predict failure are contract questions.
- Get the first milestone defined with a deliverable, a price, and a definition of done before you sign anything.
- Software is not one of the nine work-made-for-hire categories, so without an express signed assignment you may not own code you paid for.
- Ask who writes the code and whether you will talk to them directly. Hand-offs are where scope quietly changes shape.
- Ask what a studio has shipped that it still runs itself, not just what it launched.
- Large IT projects run 45 percent over budget and 7 percent over time on average while delivering 56 percent less value than predicted, across more than 5,400 projects studied by McKinsey with the University of Oxford, meaning a quoted price is a prediction rather than a promise unless scope is pinned down.
- Substantial cost overruns occur in almost 90 percent of large IT-enabled projects.
- A commissioned work is only a work made for hire if it falls within one of nine enumerated categories, which do not include computer software, and the parties expressly agree in a signed written instrument, so a client without an explicit IP assignment may not own the code.
Is it rude to ask a studio whether the project will go over budget?
No. McKinsey's IT project optimization practice reports that substantial cost overruns occur in almost 90 percent of large IT-enabled projects, which makes it a baseline question rather than an insult. What you are really asking is how change gets priced and who decides.
Do I automatically own the code I paid a studio to write?
Not necessarily. The U.S. Copyright Office explains that a commissioned work is only a work made for hire if it falls into one of nine enumerated categories, which do not include computer software, and the parties expressly agree in a signed written instrument. Without an explicit signed IP assignment, ownership may not sit where you assume.
How does to1 Labs price and structure work?
Work is scoped into fixed milestones with pricing agreed before the build starts, so you know what ships and when. The contact form asks for a rough budget range, with options from under $10k to $100k+, instead of listing rates.