Custom software for the work your business still does by hand.

I’m Evan Verworn, a software engineer and engineering manager in St. Catharines. I build internal tools and connect the systems that Niagara businesses and organizations already use.

How projects start My background

Fifteen years in software, including leading engineering teams at Yelp and building the client system Hypnosis Niagara uses every day.

A Canada goose standing on an office desk between a laptop and a monitor covered in yellow sticky notes, holding one sticky note in its bill and staring straight at you.

What I fix

Most growing businesses around here run on the same three things.

The spreadsheet: One workbook with fourteen tabs holds the data and rules the whole operation depends on. It’s hard to audit, and everyone is a little afraid to change it.
The systems that don't talk: Bookings, invoices, inventory, and customer records each live in a different product. Someone spends Thursday afternoons copying between them by hand.
The person who knows: One person knows how a process works, and none of it is written down or built into the software. When they’re on vacation, the work waits.

Software only fixes these if it fits the way the work is done, so I learn the process before I write any code.

What I do

Replace a critical spreadsheet with an application more than one person can understand and change safely.
Connect booking, accounting, inventory, CRM, and email systems through their APIs, so nobody copies data between them.
Clean up and migrate data, with an audit trail of what changed.
Build the intake forms, workflow tools, and reports nobody sells off the shelf.
Take over a project the last developer left unfinished or stopped supporting.
Lead a small development team part-time, or oversee an outside vendor for you.

What I don't do

Marketing websites: No brochure sites or online stores. I work on the systems you use to take bookings and send invoices.
IT support: I don’t manage devices, accounts, printers, or networks. I can introduce you to a local IT provider who does.

Start with an operations review

I don’t quote a build without seeing the work first. A blind quote has to be padded to cover what I don’t know yet, and you’d be the one paying for the padding.

$2,500On-site review and written plan

Observe the work

I spend half a day on site mapping the process from first phone call to payment, looking at the systems it runs on, and talking with the people who do the work every day.
Find what to fix

I write down where the process breaks, where people redo work by hand, and what’s at risk. Then I separate what needs software from what only needs a process change.
Get a written plan

Within one to two weeks you get priorities, recommended work, and cost and schedule ranges. The plan is yours to take to any developer. If you hire me to build it, the full $2,500 comes off the project.

An operations review in progress: a large hand-drawn process map on a sheet of paper spread across a front-desk counter, with boxes for customer request, intake, triage, scheduling, service delivery, billing and follow-up joined by arrows, plus sticky notes asking about front-desk wait time and bottlenecks. Three people's hands are around the sheet, one holding a marker, beside a notebook of next steps and a Niagara coffee mug.

After the review

Builds have a fixed price based on the review. Before work starts, we agree in writing on the scope, milestones, acceptance criteria, and how changes are handled.

Build

$12,000 to $60,000Fixed scope, 4 to 10 weeks

I design and build the system in the plan, move your data over where needed, deploy and document it, and train your staff.

Care plan

From $600 a monthComes with every build

Hosting, monitoring, backups, dependency updates, agreed response times, and a few hours of changes each month.

Fractional head of engineering

From $2,500 a monthOne or two days a week

Technical planning, architecture, delivery management, and coaching for an organization with a developer or two and nobody to lead them, or one that needs an outside vendor kept on track.

A tiered waterfall spilling down layered grey shale into a shallow pool, framed by large boulders and a steep wooded gorge in Niagara.

Who it's for

The best fit is an established Niagara business or organization with a specific systems problem and staff who can walk me through how the work gets done.

Health and wellness practices

Chiropractic, physio, massage, dental, and mental health practices, where booking, intake, records, billing, and follow-up all have to connect. I’ve already built a clinic system that’s in daily use in Niagara.

Non-profits and community organizations

Donor records in four places, grant reports put together by hand, and intake still on paper. That admin takes time away from the programs.

Tourism, hospitality, and agri-tourism

Wineries, tour operators, venues, and B&Bs are seasonal and busy, and often need booking, inventory, customer, and accounting systems to work together.

Professional services and local operators

Distributors, trades, and service businesses that have outgrown the spreadsheet they started with, or need software built around a process that already works.

When another option is better

Very small teams usually do better by improving the process or configuring a product they can buy. A new product idea needs a product studio or a startup team, and a project that needs several engineers at once needs a larger consultancy. If that’s you, I’ll say so on the first call.

Case study

Hypnosis Niagara

Hypnosis Niagara was managing its clients with a spreadsheet and a Google Doc. I replaced them with one system built around the clinic’s workflow.

What I built: A CRM with booking and billing, a client portal for content and materials, newsletters, text and phone communication, and automated reminders.
What changed: Staff set up new clients faster and spend less time on rescheduling. Reminders and routine messages go out from the system, so nobody has to keep track of individual emails.
Where it is now: The clinic uses it every day, and I host and support it.

The Hypnosis Niagara client page for a sample client: contact details, bio and session notes, the next appointment with reschedule, complete, no-show and cancel buttons, and saved payment cards on the left; a new message composer and a message history of notes, received emails, and sent SMS and email messages on the right.

Portrait of Evan Verworn smiling at the camera in glasses and a gray jacket, with flowering trees behind him.

About

Cobra Chicken Technologies is Evan Verworn, one senior engineer in St. Catharines.

I’ve spent fifteen years building software and leading engineering teams, including at Yelp. That covers technical design, project planning, hiring, delivery, and the long-term maintenance after launch. Coding is the easy part. Knowing what not to build is the part you’re paying for.

You’ll deal with me the whole way through. I do the work myself and I answer the phone, so nobody hands you off to a junior team after the sale. If a project needs skills or more hands than I have, I’ll tell you during the review.

Start with a conversation

Tell me what isn’t working, who it affects, and what you’ve tried so far. A first call takes twenty minutes, and by the end we’ll both know whether an operations review is worth it.

Email: hello@cobrachicken.tech
Phone: 236 - BIG - HONK
Where: St. Catharines. I’ll drive anywhere from Grimsby to Fort Erie.