When the tool doesn't exist, build the small one.

When buying is the right answer

If a product covers 80% of what you need and the remaining 20% is preference rather than economics, buy the product. Custom software has an ongoing cost that is easy to ignore at the start: it needs maintaining, it needs to keep working when a dependency changes, and it needs someone who understands it. A subscription externalises all of that.

When building wins

• Your actual competitive advantage is a process no product models, so every tool forces you to work against your own strength
• You are paying for several overlapping tools to approximate one thing, plus a person to reconcile them
• Per-seat pricing means growing the team costs more than the work it does
• The workaround has become a documented internal procedure, a reliable sign the software lost and the humans are absorbing it

Small on purpose

The failure mode in custom software is scope. A system that does one job well gets used; a platform meant to do everything gets abandoned halfway through. We build the narrowest thing that removes the actual bottleneck, put it in front of the people doing the work, and extend it only where use demands.

That also means you find out early whether it was the right call, while the amount spent is still small.

You own it

The code, the data, and the accounts are yours. Built on ordinary, widely-used technology so any competent developer can pick it up, including one who is not us. Anything else is a hostage situation dressed as a partnership.

How it starts

A free 30-minute call to understand what a system would actually have to do: which parts of your process no product supports, and what the current workaround is costing you.

Build, buy, or neither is a decision worth making after looking at it properly rather than on a first call. When the recommendation does come, it will say so plainly if the answer is something off the shelf. That answer is worth more to you than a project.

Book a free diagnostic call ↗︎

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