The Corners You Can’t Afford to Cut

“Which corners can we safely cut?” Every founder running low on runway has asked me some version of that question.

I learned my answer on a project where cutting corners wasn’t an option. Earlier in my career I architected a Class III medical device, the FDA’s highest-risk category. If our software failed, a patient could be hurt. Every requirement traced to a test, every change went through review, and every release shipped with documented evidence that it worked.

Here’s what surprised me: the discipline didn’t slow us down. The parts that felt like overhead on day one (traceability, reviews, automated verification) were the same things that let us change the product confidently years in. I’ve watched teams without them move fast for six months and then spend a year afraid to touch their own code.

You don’t need FDA-grade process. Most of it is ceremony for an unregulated product. But three pieces carry over to any product: automated tests on the code paths that make you money, a review on every change, and a written record of why you made the big decisions. None of those are expensive. All of them are cheaper than the alternative.

So my answer to the corners question is usually this: cut scope, cut polish, cut meetings. Don’t cut the things that tell you your product still works.

What’s the corner you cut early that cost you the most later?

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