Essay · 8 min read
How to Avoid the Per-Customer Feature Trap
Kit Merker · The Startup (Kit Merker) Free Intermediate
A practical piece on the exact failure mode where each big customer gets their own custom feature and the product fragments into a pile of one-offs nobody else uses. It gives you a way to think about the lifetime cost of a demanding account, not just its contract value. Useful when you are staring at a request that only this one customer will ever touch.
- A customer who asks for many small custom things will rarely be satisfied by the core product.
- Weigh the ongoing maintenance cost of a custom feature, not just the deal it unlocks.
- Custom work for one account creates drag on every future release for everyone else.
