Own Your Work

Here's a concept that changes how you think about every dollar you spend on software.

When you pay for a SaaS subscription, that payment is an operating expense. It hits your income statement and vanishes. At the end of the year, or five, or ten, you have nothing to show for it. No asset. Just receipts.

When you build custom software, the development costs can be listed as an intangible asset on your balance sheet. Under accounting standard ASC 350-40, the money you invest in building software becomes property. Like a building. Like equipment. Like inventory. Try putting your CRM subscription on your balance sheet. Your accountant will laugh so hard they'll need a moment.

Why does this matter?

Because when you sell your business, buyers pay a multiple of your earnings, and a business with proprietary software they can't copy consistently sells for higher multiples than an identical business running on rented tools, which means the difference between owning your software and renting it can be millions of dollars on the exact same revenue.

Why? Because the buyer isn't just buying a revenue stream. They're buying an asset. Custom software that would cost hundreds of thousands to rebuild from scratch. Workflows that can't be copied. A system that keeps working after the sale closes.

Warren Buffett spent $44 billion to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad. Not because trains are exciting. Because you can't replicate rail infrastructure. He bought the tracks instead of renting access to them. Everybody called him boring for buying a railroad. He's worth over $140 billion. Boring works.

That's the choice you're making with your software. Every month you rent, you're paying for access to tracks someone else owns. Every dollar you invest in building, you're laying your own.

Nicholas Carr named this problem back in 2006. He called it digital sharecropping. Building your business on platforms you don't own, like sharecroppers who worked land owned by others. They did all the work. The landowner made the rules. And at any moment, the rules could change.

Your software vendor can raise prices. They did. 16.4% in one month this year. They can shut down overnight. They can lock you out of your own data. It already happened to thousands of businesses in 2025.

Or you can own what you build.

Think about that. Every dollar you've spent on software subscriptions over the last five years. Add it up. Now imagine if that same money had gone into building something you own. Something that sits on your balance sheet. Something that makes your business more valuable when you sell it. Something that nobody can take away from you by raising the price or shutting down.

That's not a fantasy. That's a choice you can make right now. The cost of building custom software dropped so far that it competes with what you're already spending on rent. Except this time, you keep what you pay for.