July 8, 2026
July 8, 2026
Custom used to be the expensive answer. Here is what changed.
The reason building for one company used to cost more than buying for a thousand, and the specific thing that removed most of it.
The reason building for one company used to cost more than buying for a thousand, and the specific thing that removed most of it.
Kevin Bai helped build the embedded engineering function at two companies known for it. His talk this summer carried a warning for anyone thinking of doing custom work at scale, and it explains the economics better than a pricing page could.
“If you were to implement an FDE function where each FDE is building entirely from scratch, my friends, you do not have an FDE function. You have a dev shop.”
FDE is forward deployed engineering. It means the engineer works inside the client business rather than at arm’s length from it.
His warning is about what happens without shared foundations underneath that motion.
“Before you know it your P&L will eat you alive from the maintenance costs, if your engineers don’t all quit first.”
This is the real reason custom got a bad name
The building was never the expensive part. Everything after it was.
Fifty separate systems, each written from scratch, each needing to be understood by whoever inherits it. Every fix touching one client only. Every improvement paid for fifty times over. That is the model that taught a generation of owners to treat custom as a luxury, and they were right about that model.
What changes the arithmetic
The parts that are the same in every business get built once, kept in one place, and improved for everyone at the same time. What gets built per company is the part that is genuinely that company’s.
We do not start from nothing each time. We own the platform we build on. That is the whole reason this can cost a fraction of what it used to.
It is also why what we leave behind keeps standing. The foundations stay maintained so the system outlives our involvement in it.
The question underneath all of it
Why would you pay to become interchangeable with your competitor?
Buy the same product as everybody else in your industry and you inherit their constraints, their workflow, and their ceiling. You are paying every month to work more like the company you are trying to beat.
Your competitors can buy the same software as you. They cannot buy the way you work.
Kevin Bai helped build the embedded engineering function at two companies known for it. His talk this summer carried a warning for anyone thinking of doing custom work at scale, and it explains the economics better than a pricing page could.
“If you were to implement an FDE function where each FDE is building entirely from scratch, my friends, you do not have an FDE function. You have a dev shop.”
FDE is forward deployed engineering. It means the engineer works inside the client business rather than at arm’s length from it.
His warning is about what happens without shared foundations underneath that motion.
“Before you know it your P&L will eat you alive from the maintenance costs, if your engineers don’t all quit first.”
This is the real reason custom got a bad name
The building was never the expensive part. Everything after it was.
Fifty separate systems, each written from scratch, each needing to be understood by whoever inherits it. Every fix touching one client only. Every improvement paid for fifty times over. That is the model that taught a generation of owners to treat custom as a luxury, and they were right about that model.
What changes the arithmetic
The parts that are the same in every business get built once, kept in one place, and improved for everyone at the same time. What gets built per company is the part that is genuinely that company’s.
We do not start from nothing each time. We own the platform we build on. That is the whole reason this can cost a fraction of what it used to.
It is also why what we leave behind keeps standing. The foundations stay maintained so the system outlives our involvement in it.
The question underneath all of it
Why would you pay to become interchangeable with your competitor?
Buy the same product as everybody else in your industry and you inherit their constraints, their workflow, and their ceiling. You are paying every month to work more like the company you are trying to beat.
Your competitors can buy the same software as you. They cannot buy the way you work.
