Though it doesn't invalidate the gist of your saying, malloc is a user-space function not a syscall. (Its implementation will occasionally do a syscall, such as to sbrk or vmmap.)
But it's not that simple. Startups are always measured against their competitors. So even if the 1/(1-n) shows that it is a net gain for me, it may be an overall loss if my competitors make deals that are worth significantly more for them.