A few years ago, building custom software meant a team, a budget, and a year. Not anymore. Three shifts collapsed the cost of building, and each one is real.
Generative AI writes the code.
What took a developer a week now takes an afternoon with a capable model in the loop. The scaffolding, integration, and iteration that used to dominate a project are close to free, and the pace of a small, focused team has changed accordingly.
Open source covers the rest.
The components you used to license or build from scratch are now mature, free, and well documented. Most of what a firm needs already exists as parts you can assemble rather than invent.
Anyone can start.
Vibe coding put a working prototype within reach of people who are not engineers. A partner with a clear idea can get to something real in a weekend. Starting has never been easier.
Cheap to build is not cheap to run.
Getting to a demo is easy. Getting to something a firm can rely on is not. A prototype that ignores security, data governance, reliability, and change control is a liability wearing the costume of an asset. The gap between "it works on my machine" and "it works for the firm" is exactly where unmanaged projects fail.
It still takes the right skills.
Building well needs the skills to plan it, manage it, and operate it: architecture that will not collapse under real use, data handling a firm can defend, and someone accountable for it after the excitement fades. Cheap building lowers the barrier to starting, not the bar for shipping.
Build what matters, professionally.
The right move is not to build everything or to rent everything. It is to build what actually differentiates you, do it professionally, and prove it before you scale. Cheap building is a reason to be more deliberate, not less.