About Inhouse.Build

AI has tipped the balance in favour of building in-house over renting software on subscription.

Inhouse.Build is a newsletter about companies that choose to build AI capabilities in-house and their lessons learned.

AI has made it possible for a company to build a custom solution, at production quality, in a fraction of the time and cost it used to take. The math on buying SaaS subscriptions and outsourcing knowledge work is getting harder to defend. Quietly, without press releases, executives are making a different call: build it in-house.

This newsletter documents that shift.

Every issue features a real executive — a CEO, CIO, a COO, a CFO, a VP of Operations — at a company that decided to build instead of buy. Not a startup. Not a tech company. No AI hype. Someone running a real business who made a deliberate decision to build AI capability internally rather than hand it to a vendor.

We find out what triggered the decision. What it actually costs to build versus what they were paying before. Who pushed back internally and why. What’s working, what isn’t, and what they’d do differently.

No hype. No sponsored content. No AI company marketing dressed up as editorial.

Who reads this

CIOs, CTOs, COOs, CFOs, and CEOs who are watching the build-vs-buy question play out in their own organizations, and want to learn from the people one step ahead of them.

If you’re evaluating whether to build something in-house or buy it, this newsletter gives you real data points from real decisions.

Who Writes this

I’ve been building software through every major technology shift of the last 25 years.

The dot-com era. The move to the cloud. The subscription economy. Each wave changed how companies bought and built software — and I had a front-row seat to it all. I’ve launched products, scaled teams, and sold companies through each transition.

Now we’re in the AI wave. And I’m seeing something I didn’t expect: companies are starting to build again.

For two decades, the default was rent — buy a SaaS subscription, outsource the complexity, let someone else maintain it. AI is reversing that logic. Custom solutions that used to take months and cost millions can now be built in weeks by a small team. The economics of buying are getting harder to defend.

Through this newsletter, I talk to the CIOs, CFOs, and COOs at mid-market and enterprise companies who are making that shift — and share what they’re learning in real time.

Thanks for reading,

Shahed Khalili
parallel79.com