> Software may never be finished (in your opinion) but the budget of any customer is finite.

The reason why software companies grow, is because businesses demands growth.

I suppose you could build a simple, small app and leave it on "maintenance" (even then, it's going to be difficult due to crumbling infra) but real world products don't work that way.

Companies want to scale, add features and expand to various verticals. They also have to compete with other companies , there is regulations, compliance and never ending list of incoming features from sales, marketing and customers.

Elon Musk famously attempted to run Twitter "lean", and look how that ended.

Unless you are able to curb the corporate greed, you will need to grow your engineering team.