A software studio in Ottawa, building for businesses anywhere.
We're small on purpose. The people who scope your project are the people who build it, which means nothing gets lost in a handover and you never explain your business twice.
Most business software is bought. The good stuff is built.
Every growing business reaches the same point: the tools that got it here start getting in the way. The spreadsheet has too many owners. The CRM doesn't quite fit. Someone is retyping the same order into three places, and everyone has quietly agreed that's just how it is.
Techbird exists for that moment. We build the software that fits the business you actually run, and we're just as willing to tell you when the answer is a two-week automation instead of a six-month platform.
We're based in Ottawa, Ontario. Our clients are in Canada, the US, Europe and beyond. The work is remote-first by design, so where you are matters far less than whether the problem is worth solving.
Gill
Techbird was founded by Gill, who holds a Master's in Engineering and an MBA, both from the University of Ottawa.
That combination is the reason projects here get scoped the way they do. The engineering side asks whether something can be built well and maintained cheaply. The business side asks whether it should be built at all, and what it's actually worth to the company paying for it. Most software goes wrong when only one of those questions gets asked.
Engineers and MBAs, across Canada
Techbird is a team of engineers and MBA graduates based in Ottawa and other cities across Canada. Everyone working on your project has either built systems for a living or run the business side of one.
- Engineering and MBA backgrounds on every project
- Based in Ottawa, with team members across Canada
- The people who scope your work also build it
- Remote-first, so we deliver worldwide without friction
MBAs work out what's worth building. Engineers make it real.
Most software fails long before anyone writes code. It fails in the decision about what to build, made quickly, by whoever was most confident in the meeting. So we split the work in two, and we do the thinking first.
Before a line of code
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01
Research the market
We look at what your customers actually do, what your competitors have already shipped, and where the money moves in your sector. Before we recommend anything, we want evidence rather than the loudest opinion in the room.
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02
Explore every option
Buy it, build it, automate around it, or leave it alone. Each route gets costed honestly, including the one where you don't hire us. Ruling out the expensive answers early is worth more than any feature we could add later.
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03
Design the strategy
Then we set the shape of it: what gets built first, what it should return, what we're deliberately not doing yet, and the numbers that will tell us whether it worked. You approve a plan, not a hunch.
From idea to live
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04
Turn the plan into architecture
Our engineers take the approved strategy and decide how it actually stands up: the data model, the integrations, the security, and the parts that have to survive ten times your current volume.
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05
Build it in the open
Short cycles, each ending in software you can log into and use. No six-week silences, no status reports claiming something is sixty percent done. If an assumption from the strategy turns out to be wrong, we find out while it's still cheap to change.
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06
Take it live, then keep it alive
We deploy it, watch how it behaves with real users on real data, and keep improving it. The numbers we agreed in step three are the ones we measure it against.
Strategy that can actually be built. Software that pays for itself.
An MBA without engineers produces a plan nobody can ship. Engineers without a strategy produce something impressive that solves the wrong problem. Keeping both in the same room, on the same project, is the whole point of how Techbird is put together.
Six things we hold to.
These aren't values on a wall. They're the reasons projects here tend to finish.
Understand before building
We spend real time with the people doing the work. The best feature is often the one we talked you out of.
Smallest version first
Ship something useful early, learn from it, then extend. Big-bang launches hide problems until they're expensive.
You own everything
Code, data, accounts and documentation are yours. No lock-in, no hostage situation, no surprises if you move on.
Boring technology
We choose well-supported tools over fashionable ones, so your software is still maintainable years from now.
Plain language
You'll never need a translator in a meeting with us. If we can't explain it simply, we don't understand it well enough yet.
Visible progress
You see working software throughout the project, not a status report claiming it's 60% done.
What a project actually looks like.
Four stages, each with a clear output you can see and sign off on. No black boxes, no month-long silences.
Understand
We learn how the business works, what's getting in the way and what outcome matters.
Design
We simplify the idea, map the experience and define what actually needs to be built.
Build
We develop, test and refine the product with regular visibility throughout the project.
Improve
Launch isn't the finish line. We can continue improving the software as the business evolves.
Who we work best with
- Businesses with a real process that has outgrown its tools
- Owners and operators who can make a decision in the room
- Teams willing to give us access to the people doing the work
- Founders with an idea and a genuine first customer in mind
- Companies that want to own what gets built
When we'll say no
- When an existing product already does the job well
- When the process is still changing weekly, because software would freeze it too early
- When the real problem is organisational, not technical
- When the budget and the ambition can't be reconciled honestly
Telling you this early costs us a project occasionally. It has never cost us a relationship.
Let's find out if we're a fit.
Thirty minutes, a straight answer, and a clear next step whether or not you work with us.