My bet · said in public
A friend who sells insurance spent an afternoon poking holes in my software company. His best shot:
“I love that protecting my customers’ information is somebody else’s job.”
He meant it as an objection to ownership. I think he described the experience I sell. He doesn’t want another thing to maintain — he wants somebody competent taking care of it. Where we disagree is whether that means it shouldn’t belong to him.
Think about a mechanical watch. You don’t need it — and you love owning it. The feel. The familiarity. The fact that it’s yours. You don’t become a watchmaker. You find somebody who keeps it right.
You own the thing. You hire the care.
Nothing futuristic about that arrangement. So here’s the bet, plainly:
Business owners are about to own their software. Outright. The code, the data, the whole thing — like the building, the trucks, the name on the sign.
Cheap technology just made it possible. The watch is why they’ll want it.
I didn’t get this from a book. I watched it all year in a century-old menswear shop I do work for. A man can buy clothes anywhere — clothes are cheap now too. He goes there because somebody is responsible for his wardrobe. The fitting, the service, the person who knows him. Better experience. Better end result.
The software is not the product. Everything that surrounds it is.
Somewhere in that conversation I realized I’d been making ownership sound like homework. Here’s your code, congratulations on your enormous new responsibility. Who the hell wants that?
What I build is the opposite. A system fitted to how your business already works. Something aggravates you? You call the person who looks after it — they already know why it works that way. You’re not persuading a product committee that enough other businesses share your problem. One business has it. Yours. That’s enough.
The luxury isn’t how the screen looks. It’s how little of your day you spend fighting it.
The question that could kill me: if software gets cheap as bubble gum, why need me? And it’s headed there fast — a build that costs thousands and takes days today gets cut in half, and in half again, until it’s five hundred dollars and three hours. I’m counting on it.
Well — you might not need me to produce software. That’s different from not wanting what I provide. The monthly buys real work: hosting, backups, support, the improvements we agree to. And the owner keeps the property — the code, the records, everything another builder would need to take over. Otherwise “you own it” is just something I said to get paid.
The unproven part, left in on purpose: the twentieth customer getting the care that made the first one say yes. That’s the risk.
I’m not betting ownership becomes unavoidable. I’m betting owners will want it — all of it. The whole watch.
And sure — control comes with baggage. So does a trip to France. You go anyway. You just don’t carry your own bags.
This belongs to you.
We know how you like it.
We take care of it.