Field notes
What we measured, not what we assumed.
Notes from taking internal software to a second customer. Every one carries a number read off a real system rather than an estimate, including the measurements where the result was not the one we wanted.
Single-Tenant vs Multi-Tenant: A 2026 Decision Table
One database each or one database shared? The trade-offs that actually decide it: blast radius, upgrade path, cost per customer and how different your customers really are.
Row-Level Security and the Tenant Key: The Retrofit That Costs Most
Adding an organisation column and rewriting every access policy after you have a live customer is the single most expensive change in productizing internal software. Measured on a 97-migration system.
What Forking Your Platform Costs: Measurements From Three Installs
One codebase, forked twice for two more markets. Six months later: 60 shared migration numbers, 29 carrying different content, and 11 tables out of 103 still identical. The measured cost of copying the repository.
Core vs Configuration: Four Questions to Ask Every Assumption
What is universal, what becomes a setting, what stays customer-only, and what you refuse to support. The four questions that decide whether you have a platform or twenty projects.
Founding Engineer vs Engineering Partner: 2026 Cost Breakdown
US market rates for the two hires it actually takes to platformize internal software, fully loaded, against the alternative. Sourced figures, and the case for hiring anyway.
Four Months of Production Data: What Adoption Actually Looks Like
Activity went from 828 actions to 9,689 while users went 5 to 20, and per-person effort stayed flat. Three findings from operating a system rather than shipping it.
“We’ll Just Build It With AI”: What That Costs at Customer Two
AI assistance makes the first version faster and cheaper than it has ever been. It does not touch the part that breaks when a second business signs. Measured across three installs.
Which rung is your system actually on?
Seven days, $2,500. If it is not ready to be productized, we say so and you keep the map.