Article

Service as a Software: The Startup Trap That Looks Like SaaS but Scales Like Consulting

Rich Foreman · Startup Folsom Free Intermediate

When half your revenue comes from one customer's custom asks, the real risk is not the roadmap slipping, it is quietly becoming a dev shop wearing a software costume. This piece names that trap plainly and gives you a litmus test: if you added 100 customers tomorrow, would software handle them or would people? That is the question to hold up against every custom feature that big customer requests.

  • Scalability comes from repeatability, so treat manual, one-off custom work as temporary learning, not the business model.
  • Use a simple test on each ask: would this still be handled by the product if you had 100 customers, or only by human effort for this one?
  • Revenue concentrated in a single customer's bespoke needs can look like traction while quietly locking you into a services business.
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The question it answers

  1. How do I know if this enterprise deal is a real repeatable market or a one-off custom project that will trap me?

Read with it

  1. Before you say yes to the custom features nobody else wants, this essay makes you sit with the real risk: one account that pays... Startup Patterns (Medium) Essay The One Big Customer Trap Sam McAfee
  2. When the big customer's wishlist lands on your desk, this gives you a hard gate instead of a gut call: build the custom feature... SaaStr Article · 6 min read One Simple Rule on When to Build a Custom Feature Jason Lemkin
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