Let me tell you what happens when most founders go looking for a development quote. They reach out to three or four agencies, describe their idea as clearly as they can, and wait. A week later the proposals come back - and the numbers are all over the place. One agency quotes something that seems almost reasonable. Another quotes triple that. A third sends a document so full of conditions and asterisks that it is practically unreadable. And a freelancer on one of the big platforms is offering to do the whole thing for a fraction of any agency quote, which either sounds like a great deal or a disaster waiting to happen depending on your experience level. So which number is right? The honest answer is probably none of them - at least not in the way most founders are hoping for when they ask the question. The cost to develop an app is one of the most genuinely variable things in the business world.…