---
title: People are confusing "can build" with "should own"
author: Giacomo Balli
published: 2026-06-14
url: https://BigBalli.com/blog/people-are-confusing-can-build-with-should-own
tags: AI, Engineering, Product, Leadership, Pricing
---

# People are confusing "can build" with "should own"

*By Giacomo Balli* | *Published: June 14, 2026*

A lot of people are confusing “can build” with “should own.”

The argument goes like this: AI makes software development dramatically cheaper, therefore every company will build its own software.

Maybe for software that creates competitive advantage.

Probably not for everything else.

A retailer doesn’t want to own a commerce platform. A logistics company doesn’t want to own a CRM. A manufacturer doesn’t want to become an expert in identity management, billing infrastructure, analytics pipelines, and API maintenance.

They want those things to work.

That’s the part that gets lost in the conversation. People talk about software as if the product is the code. In practice, the code is often the cheapest part.

The expensive part is everything that happens after deployment.

The integrations. The edge cases. The vendor relationships. The compliance work. The support process. The engineer who gets pulled into a weekend incident because a dependency changed and revenue stopped flowing.

I’ve noticed that operators tend to understand this immediately, while investors and technologists often underestimate it.

In a boardroom, nobody gets credit for successfully rebuilding a commodity system the market already solved. They get credit for improving margins, increasing revenue, reducing risk, or creating differentiation.

AI lowers the cost of creating software.

It does not lower the opportunity cost of owning it.

And for software outside your core expertise, ownership is usually the most expensive feature.

[Discuss on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7473474668361064448)

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**Tags:** AI, Engineering, Product, Leadership, Pricing

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