Every week, requests come in from people who want to build something. A new fintech idea, a marketplace, an app they have been thinking about for years. It would be easy, and profitable in the short term, to say yes to all of it. We do not. Some of the most important decisions I make as CEO are not about what to build, they are about which projects we agree to take on in the first place. Saying yes to the wrong client too often is one of the fastest ways to quietly ruin a good company.
The idea matters less than people think
Founders often assume we are evaluating whether their idea is good enough. That is rarely the real question. Most ideas that reach us are reasonable. What I am actually paying attention to is whether the person bringing the idea understands what building it will actually take, in time, in money, and in patience. A founder who has thought through their users, their budget, and their timeline honestly is a founder we can build something real with. A founder chasing a trend with no clear answer for who the customer is, that is a harder conversation, and sometimes it means we are not the right fit yet.
We are careful with anything touching people's money
Abango has built extensively in fintech and crypto, and that comes with a responsibility I take personally. Before we agree to build anything that touches a customer's money or personal data, we ask hard questions about compliance, about how the founder plans to handle security, about whether the business model actually makes sense or is quietly hoping the numbers will work themselves out later. If a founder cannot answer those questions honestly, or gets defensive when we ask, that tells me something important about how the business itself will be run once real users and real money are involved.
"Our name is on everything we build. That is not a small thing to hand over to a project we have not properly vetted."
Budget honesty is a bigger green flag than a big budget
I have turned down bigger budgets from founders who were vague about scope, and taken on smaller, tighter budgets from founders who were completely honest about what they could afford and what they needed to cut to get there. A client who respects the true cost of good engineering, and communicates clearly when things need to change, is worth far more to us long term than a client with deep pockets and unrealistic expectations. Respect for the work goes both ways, and we can feel it from the very first conversation.
Saying no is sometimes the most respectful answer we can give
It is never comfortable turning down work, especially early in a relationship when everyone is excited. But taking on a project we are not confident we can deliver well, or one that is not ready for serious engineering yet, does nobody any favours. It wastes the founder's money and our team's time, and it usually ends with a product neither side is proud of. I would rather have an honest conversation upfront, sometimes pointing a founder toward a smaller first step, than take the fee and deliver something we know is not going to hold up. Fourteen years in, that discipline is still one of the most important things I do for this company.