Vendor Economics for Web Platform Leaders

T&M feels flexible. It is not — it aligns incentives to hours, not outcomes 1. The right structure blends a small T&M pod for discovery with outcome-priced delivery for known scope.

• Define the outcome in the CMS itself (a shippable template, a launched market).
• Price against a small number of measurable acceptance criteria.
• Reserve 15% for change orders; anything less is a fiction.

1type Outcome = {
2  id: string;
3  acceptance: AcceptanceCriterion[];
4  price: number;
5  changeReserve: number; // 0.15 * price
6};