CUSTOM SOFTWARE — SAAS PRODUCTS
An internal tool needs more work before others will pay for it.
You built something internally that works better than anything you can buy, and then left it as an internal tool. Selling it to strangers is a different discipline from running it yourself, and the distance between the two is where most of these die. This is that work, done deliberately instead of discovered halfway.
Free · 20 minutes · no commitment
WHO THIS IS FOR
Operators who built something internally that beats what they could buy, and have started wondering.
THE PROBLEM
The gap between a tool that works for you and a product that works for strangers is mostly unglamorous: other people’s edge cases, billing, onboarding, support when it breaks at eleven at night. Underestimating that is why most internal tools stay internal, and it is a scoping problem, not a technical one.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
Impound lot · admin console
Customer companies · Wednesday
FROM BILLING, THE SETUP TRACKER AND THE SUPPORT QUEUE · 11:40 AM
Paying companies
14
Each with its own lot, staff accounts and records.
BILLING · 11:40
On a trial
3
1 stuck in setupWindsor’s trial ends Monday with storage rates still missing.
SETUP TRACKER · 11:40
Support tickets open
2
The oldest, from Hamilton, came in at 8:40.
SUPPORT QUEUE · 11:40
Billing and setup
Towing and recovery · Barrie · 23 trucks
Card declined Tuesday · payment link sent · retries Thursday
Payment failedTowing · Windsor · 6 trucks
Trial day 9 of 14 · lot map done, storage rates not entered
Stuck in setupTowing · Kitchener · 4 trucks
Trial started yesterday · first vehicle logged today at 9:20
New trialTowing · Hamilton · 11 trucks
Paying since March · 2 lots · 9 staff accounts
Paying
17 COMPANIES · 14 PAYING · 3 ON TRIAL
Support today
10:50
Barrie asked to change the card on file.
OPEN · LEAH
10:20
Windsor asked how storage rates are set. Setup call booked Friday.
ANSWERED
8:40
Hamilton: the release form prints blank on one office printer.
OPEN · LEAH
Each company sees only its own lot. Support looks in only when a company allows it, for 24 hours, and every look is logged.
What you get.
- A multi-tenant product with the isolation and permissions that actually requires.
- Billing, subscriptions and onboarding built in, not bolted on afterwards.
- The operational tooling to support customers who are not you and will not forgive what you forgive.
- An assessment of whether the market is real, before the heavy build.
How it works.
Priced against the scope, after a Diagnostic that is small on purpose. The shape of the work we can tell you now.
- THE SHAPE
- A staged build, gated on evidence, starting with whether the market is real.
- WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU
- A decision about whether you want to be in the software business, which changes what your company is.
- WHAT YOU KEEP
- The product and the code.
What this does not include.
Published because you should know before the call, not after the invoice.
- Finding your customers. Distribution is a different problem and a harder one than the software.
- Building when the right answer is that the internal tool should stay internal.
- Any guarantee that somebody will buy it. Nobody can sell you that.
QUESTIONS
We have an internal tool. Is it a product?
Maybe. The test is whether the problem is common and painful enough that others would pay, and whether you want to run a software company alongside the one you already run. The second question stops more of these than the first.
How is this different from an MVP?
An MVP tests whether anyone wants it. This builds it properly once you already know they do.
MORE UNDER CUSTOM SOFTWARE
Bring us one bad week.
Book a pilot call. Tell us where the week goes wrong, and we’ll tell you what an Operations Diagnostic would map and measure.
The first paid step has a clear scope and an end date, and the pilot after it is one workflow — not a platform, and not an open-ended retainer.
Free · 20 minutes · no commitment