Why not just build it ourselves with AI?
It's a fair question, and one I hear more every month.
Building software was never the hard part. Owning it is. Here's what owning it looks like, and when building your own is the right call.
AI made building easy. That part is real.
Michael and I grew up in a family fab shop that's been going for almost 50 years, and now we build software for a living. So I hear this question from both sides.
A couple of years ago, building your own shop software meant hiring a developer and waiting months. Now someone in the office can describe a quote screen to AI and have one working by the end of the day. That's good news, and I'm not going to pretend it isn't.
But AI only helps with one part of software: building it. Once it's built, the rest is on you.
You're a software company now. Just without the team.
Build it yourself and you've signed up for a second job. Getting started takes a weekend. Looking after it is every week after that, and all of it lands on your desk.
A quote saves with the old material price. The floor tablet won't load. Whoever finds it comes to you, because you're the only support there is. Then you have to find the time to try to fix it, or find someone who can.
The floor wants a bigger button to clock in. The office wants another column on the job list. Your estimator wants the quote to print differently. Every one is a fair ask, and every one is now yours to weigh up, prioritise, build and test, on top of running the shop.
AI will fix the bug you describe. It won't always tell you what else it changed. Without someone checking, the fix for the quote screen breaks the invoice, and you find out from a customer.
If one person built it with AI, they're the only one who knows how it fits together. When they're off for a week, it has no one. When they leave, it has no one for good.
You'll only ever see it through your own shop
Build your own and it works exactly the way you do. That's the upside, and it's a real one.
It's also the downside. It only ever works the way you do, and you never find out what the shop down the road worked out that you didn't.
300+ shops run on Factory, and our team talks to them all the time about what's working and what isn't. When one shop finds a better way, we build it in and every shop gets it. You get things you'd never have thought to ask for, because another shop asked first.
Build your own and you get one shop's ideas. Yours.
Sometimes building your own is the right call
Here's when I'd tell a shop to build it themselves.
If the shop stops when it's down, it's not a side project. Quotes, the schedule, hours and invoices are that kind of software.
Factory has an API. A tool you build can read jobs from Factory and write back to it, so you're not keeping two lists.
Developer docs →We're a software company. We still buy our CRM.
We use the same line for our own tools. Here's one we built, and one we wouldn't.
We built our own tool for tracking what's on the product roadmap and what comes first. It's fairly simple, it barely needs looking after, and it doesn't have to be a joy to use. If it stops working for a day, the business carries on.
We could build our own. But the people who make our CRM know more about what makes a good one than we ever will, and they learn from thousands of businesses like ours. We get those ideas without having to think them up, design them, test them and look after them.
For a fab shop, quotes, the schedule, hours and invoices are the CRM. That's the part to buy.
We use AI every day. It doesn't make the calls.
Factory is built by software engineers, product managers and designers. All of us use AI as a copilot for the grunt work. It writes the code we would have written anyway, just faster.
What it doesn't do is decide what gets built, how it works, or what it's like to use on the floor. People who know shops, and talk to them, make those calls.
"AI makes a good team faster. It doesn't replace the team. We still have to know what good looks like, and what bad looks like."
Paul Lutkajtis, Founder & CEOBuilding it yourself vs Factory, row by row
Everything above, in one place.
Straight answers
It can fix the ones you describe well. Someone still has to notice the bug, explain it, check the fix didn't break something else, and get it onto every computer and tablet in the shop. That someone is you, or whoever you hand it to.
The first version often is. The cost comes after: your time on bugs and changes, every week, for as long as you use it. Most owners don't count that time until they're already spending it.
Tell us. Requests from shops are how Factory gets better, and when we build something for one shop, every shop gets it. If you need a small tool of your own in the meantime, Factory's API lets it work with Factory instead of next to it.
Yes. Your products, your pricing and the steps your jobs go through on the floor are all set up around your shop. Our team does that with you over four to six weeks. How getting set up works
Every day. Our engineers use it to write code faster. People who talk to shops decide what gets built, how it works and what it's like to use.
Tell us what you were going to build
We'll show you where it already is in Factory, and we'll be straight with you about where it isn't. If building your own is the right call for that part, we'll say so.
See if Factory fits your shop.
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