AI-First Transformation

How much is not going AI-first costing you?

Your team, your timeline, your numbers — what the old way costs, and what the same outcome shipped in weeks is worth. Every constant cited. All figures USD.

Value of going AI-first

—

Old-way build cost

AI-first build cost

Cost of the delay

Shipped earlier by

0 mo

1 · Your current plan

Team size

devs

Planned timeline

months

Cost / dev / month

fully loaded: salary + employer costs + overhead

AI-first delivery

months

same team, same scope, agents do the labor — pre-filled at a conservative 10× faster (measured cases run 100×+)

Advanced — smaller team on the AI-first build

Team on the AI-first build

devs

default: your full team. Our measured case ran on 1 engineer instead of 3 — the freed people ship your next product.

2 · What each month of delay costs (McKinsey)

McKinsey: a product that ships 6 months late earns ~33% less profit over five years — ≈5.5% of its profit lost per month of delay. So the price of a delayed month comes from what your product is expected to earn:

Your 5-year profit forecast

unsure? keep the default — 2× build cost, a deliberate floor

Cost of one month of delay

$/mo

= 5.5% × your forecast, or type your own

Include delay cost — recommended. Uncheck to count build cost only.

Grounded, not invented: two cited constants only — McKinsey's 5.5% per month, and the 2× profit floor. Full math and sources below; change any input and everything recomputes.

The full math — every step, from your inputs

Where these numbers come from

The defaults mirror a measured delivery, not a hope. The conservative 10× pre-fill comes from a real case: a system that had taken a 3-developer team 1.5 years was rebuilt better in 2 weeks — with 1 engineer, non-technical teammates shipping alongside, and agents doing the labor. That's 100×+ less human dev time; 10× is the floor we default to.
How the pre-filled delay cost is computed. McKinsey's model prices one month of delay at ≈5.5% of a product's five-year profit (33% ÷ 6 months) — a share of what the product will earn, not a markup on what it costs. Since earnings need an estimate, the forecast field defaults to a floor of 2× build cost (below that, the build wouldn't be approved) — replace it with your real forecast. If anything the result understates the truth: months gained at launch are peak market-window months — they compound adoption, strengthen a funding round, and free the team for the next product.
Time beats budget, by an order of magnitude. McKinsey's product-development model: a product shipping 6 months late earns ~33% less profit over five years; shipping on time but 50% over budget costs only ~4%. McKinsey, via TCGen
Cost of delay is measurable — and large. Maersk Line measured $200K+ per week of delay cost on a single queued feature — roughly $8M while it waited in line. Black Swan Farming
Intuition misses this by 50 to 1. Reinertsen's research: gut estimates of delay cost inside one team spread 50:1 — which is why this page asks for your numbers instead of asserting ours. Cost of delay · PMI
Early delivery pays twice — the share premium is permanent. Across 129 brands in 36 categories, the second entrant into a market averages only ~71% of the earlier entrant's share, and the sixth ~45% — months of earliness buy market share that later entrants never claw back. In software specifically, DORA's research finds teams with elite delivery speed are ~2× more likely to meet profitability and time-to-market goals. Order-of-entry research (Urban et al.) · DORA
Speed decides who leads the market. Across ~500 brands in 50 categories, 47% of first movers failed — the lasting winners were early leaders: fast entrants who reached scale first, taking ~3× the pioneers' share. Months of delay is how that seat is lost. Golder & Tellis

Built by Igor