Build vs buy for small teams

From people who make money when you build.

We build custom software for a living, so you would expect us to say build. Most of the time we say buy. Here is how we decide, and when we change our mind.

Buy when

• The problem is generic. Email, accounting, calendars, payroll. Someone has solved this a thousand times better than you will.
• You do not yet know your own process. Off-the-shelf tools force a process on you, which is useful when you have none.
• The tool is the product. If a SaaS company exists purely for this problem, their whole team works on it. Yours would not.

Build when

• You are running the business across five tools and a WhatsApp group, and the gaps between them are where things go wrong.
• The process is the advantage. If how you do it is why customers pick you, do not flatten it into a template.
• You are paying per seat for a tool where most seats use ten percent of it.
• You have tried to buy twice and both times ended up with spreadsheets on the side.

The hybrid, which is usually the answer

Keep the generic tools. Build the thin layer that connects them and holds the logic that is yours. This is smaller, cheaper and more durable than either extreme. Most of what we ship is this.

The number to ask about

Ask what it costs per month to not have it, in hours, errors and things that fall through. If that number is smaller than the build, buy or do nothing. If it is bigger, the build pays for itself and you should know by when.

If that is your week too, thirty minutes is enough to find out.

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