Custom software, finally in reach
I build the CRM, ERP, or internal tool your company actually needs: one system shaped around the way you already work, in place of the six that almost fit. Then I keep building it as the business changes.
$0
to design and build it
6–12
weeks until it’s live
$1,780/mo
median savings, net of my fee
In production today
Diagnostic
Six signs the workarounds now cost you more than the software would.
The same data gets typed into two systems every single day.
One person, one file, and the whole operation depends on both.
Your subscription list has grown faster than your headcount.
Margin and capacity questions take days and three people to answer.
New hires spend months learning the workarounds, not the work.
Your best process is an advantage no product on the market supports.
The math
One system usually absorbs five or six subscriptions you’re already paying for. Here is a representative stack of what one system replaces, per month.
Before — 6 subscriptions
per month
Excludes the couple of hours a day someone spends moving data between them.
After — 1 system
per month
Savings
$1,780
per month, while getting software that fits instead of six that don’t.
Your numbers will differ. I’ll build this exact table for your stack on the scoping call, before you commit to anything.
Selected work
Construction & contracting
Estimating, crew scheduling, change orders, and live job costing in one place. It replaced a shared drive of spreadsheets and a whiteboard nobody could see from the field.
Digital & print advertising
Pipeline, insertion orders, production schedules across print and digital, and billing, all against one client record. Account managers stopped rebuilding the same report every month.
Medical device sales training
Enrollment, curriculum delivery, proctored assessment, and automatic certificate issuance. Built around their compliance requirements rather than a generic LMS’s idea of a course.
“Two firms quoted us six figures and nine months. Connor had version one in front of our crews in five weeks, and he still answers the phone himself.”
Client names and references available on the scoping call.
Why me
I came to software from the business side of the desk: finance and deal work first, then the systems those deals ran on. Most shops arrive fluent in the engineering and learn your industry on your clock. The discovery phase you’d be paying for is a conversation I can already hold.
None of that makes me a better engineer than the shop down the street. It means we start building in week one instead of week six.
Custom software usually dies at the quote, and honestly it should. Six figures up front is a bad bet on a system nobody has used yet.
$0
No deposit, no milestone invoices, no discovery fee.
$0
Infrastructure, backups, monitoring, and security patching are mine to worry about.
$0
New workflows, new reports, new modules as you grow. Included, within a fair-use scope we agree on in writing.
The rest of the terms
The monthly number depends on what’s underneath it. Systems I’ve built run from $500 to $10,000 a month. Yours is scoped to your system, and it’s in writing before you sign anything.
So I carry the build myself. I keep ownership of the source code and license it to you for as long as we work together; that trade is what makes zero up front possible. The code sits in escrow, and it releases to you outright if I ever can’t continue.
Year one, one client
Feature requests aren’t change orders here. They’re the reason the monthly fee exists. Below: one client’s first year, release by release. Everything after week 7 came from them asking.
Week 7 · launch
Bids, jobs, crews, and change orders live for the whole company. Two legacy tools cancelled the same week.
Month 2 · requested
Field photo uploads from phones, attached to the job and visible in the office within seconds.
Month 4 · requested
Per-crew margin reporting after a foreman asked which jobs were actually making money.
Month 6 · requested
Two-way accounting sync, retiring a $140/mo integration service and a weekly export ritual.
Month 9 · requested
A client-facing portal for approvals, after they won a contract that required one.
Month 12 · requested
A second division onboarded onto the same system. No new license, no new build cost.
How it goes
The first three cost you time and nothing else. The invoice arrives once the system is live and your team is using it.
30 minutes
How the work really flows today, workarounds included. We total up what your current stack costs, together.
Cost at this step: Free
About a week
What I’d build first, what I’d deliberately leave out, the timeline, your monthly number, and the list of what it replaces.
Cost at this step: Free
6–12 weeks
Working software every week or two, not a status deck. Your team uses it early and changes it while changing is still cheap.
Cost at this step: Nothing yet
Ongoing
Hosting, support, and a steady stream of requested features. The system keeps changing shape as the business does.
Cost at this step: Flat monthly
Who you’re hiring
Gemstone Consulting Services is one person. Me on the scoping call, me writing the plan, me building it, and me answering the phone in year three. Nobody gets handed off to an account manager they’ve never met.
That is also why I work with a small number of clients at a time. The model only pays off if I’m still around to keep building years from now, so I take on work at a rate I can actually sustain.
“He learned our production workflow better than half our account managers. The system feels like it grew here instead of being bought.”
Five things that come up every time, and more to the point, who ends up holding each one once the contract is signed.
Sometimes you should, and I’ll tell you when.
They’re excellent at problems thousands of companies share. They get expensive when your advantage is a process nobody else runs.
Anything that extends the system we already built.
A fair-use scope, in writing. If something is genuinely a new system, I’ll say so and we’ll price it separately. That conversation has been rare.
The system keeps running, your data is yours, and the code releases to you.
Source-code escrow releases it outright if I can’t continue. Deliberately boring technology from there, so any competent developer can pick it up.
Nothing to build, flat monthly to run, six to twelve weeks to live.
Both numbers are in writing before you sign anything, alongside the list of what you’ll be able to cancel.
They sold you a spec, built the spec, and left.
I don’t earn anything until it’s live, and I only keep earning while it stays useful. That’s why I’m still here in year three.
That last column is the whole pitch. The risks a shop normally hands you at signing, I kept. That is why I can charge nothing up front.
Next step
30 minutes, free, no slide deck. Worst case, you leave with a clearer map of your own operation and a total of what it’s costing you.
I build for a handful of companies at a time, so I can only say yes to a few of these a quarter.