Contents
- According to Clutch's 2024 survey of custom software development costs, building a new web application from scratch typically runs $50,000 to $250,000 for a mid-complexity product.
- Stealth Labz built a deployable architecture that provides everything a new product needs except the product-specific logic.
- The savings compound as the portfolio grows:
Between $0 and $330 in external support costs, when you already own a mature shared infrastructure. That range comes from documented deployments at Stealth Labz where new product verticals were launched on an existing scaffold architecture. The first product on any infrastructure carries the full build cost. Every product after that benefits from compounding returns on the original investment.
The industry baseline
According to Clutch's 2024 survey of custom software development costs, building a new web application from scratch typically runs $50,000 to $250,000 for a mid-complexity product. Even a minimum viable product with basic features, authentication, and a deployment pipeline lands in the $10,000 to $50,000 range when outsourced to a development team. For an internal team, the cost is measured in weeks of salary before a single customer-facing feature exists.
The reason is the cold-start tax. Every new product traditionally requires: framework selection (2-3 days), environment setup (2-3 days), authentication build (5-7 days), database design (3-5 days), admin interface (7-10 days), API architecture (3-5 days), and deployment pipeline configuration (2-3 days). That is 24 to 36 days and $5,000 to $15,000 of work before any product-specific logic gets written.
How the scaffold eliminates the cold-start tax
Stealth Labz built a deployable architecture that provides everything a new product needs except the product-specific logic. When a new vertical launches, the scaffold deploys in hours. Configuration for the vertical takes 1-2 days. Vertical-specific business logic takes 3-7 days. Total timeline: 4-9 days. Total external cost: $0 to $330.
Here is the cost progression across the portfolio:
| Product Number | External Support Cost |
|---|---|
| 1st product | $7,995 |
| 4th product | $1,680 |
| 7th product | $330 |
| 8th product | $90 |
| 9th product | $0 |
By the ninth product, external support cost dropped to zero. The operator had internalized enough capability from the scaffold that no outside help was needed at all.
Cumulative savings at scale
The savings compound as the portfolio grows:
| Products Built | Cold Start Total | Scaffold Total | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ~$8,000 | ~$8,000 | None (building the scaffold) |
| 3 | ~$24,000 | ~$16,000 | 33% |
| 5 | ~$40,000 | ~$20,000 | 50% |
| 10 | ~$80,000 | ~$26,000 | 68% |
At 10 products, the scaffold approach saved an estimated $54,000 compared to cold-starting each product independently. The fastest scaffold deployment in the Stealth Labz portfolio took 5 days (a reporting platform). The cheapest took $0 in external costs.
Related: What percentage of software infrastructure transfers when you launch a new product vertical?
References
- Clutch (2024). "How Much Does It Cost to Build an App?" Survey of custom software development costs for mid-complexity products.
- Keating, M.G. (2026). "Case Study: The Scaffold." Stealth Labz. Read case study
- Keating, M.G. (2026). "The Compounding Execution Method: Complete Technical Documentation." Stealth Labz. Browse papers