On build vs buy
To build or buy, that is the question 🤔
Since I have been working as a PM, I have seen orgs take the decision between build vs buy. When do you build something on your own and when do you use plug and play products?
1. How important is the feature? Is it a low impact ancillary thing or a does it solve for a core use case? If it is something like a digital adoption platform (in product tours, hints, tooltips etc.) then buying might be the right decision. However, if it is the latter, I would prefer to build. Here’s why->
a. You don’t want to have an external dependency/single point of failure over which you have no/minimal control. Reliability issues are a common concern when buying.
b. If you buy a core part of the product it can introduce complexity. There can be so many moving parts and you don’t know changing what will impact what. No one has enough pre requisite knowledge and it can quickly turn into an absolute mess. If you build something on your own, you are aware about all the touch points. I have seen orgs do this thinking it will give them a head start but the end result turned out to be quite the opposite.
c. Building an important part of the product from the ground up which competitors are white labelling can be a major differentiator. I have seen this firsthand.
2. Buying can help you get to market quicker. You ship quicker. You can validate your hypothesis quickly and then take further decisions based on user feedback.
3. Buying can help you save on cost. It might be cheaper for you to buy than to build. Here you need to think about both short term and long term cost. Unfortunately, orgs tend to have a shortsighted view and go in favour of buying because of savings in the near future but they don’t think about the long term cost and impact.
From sending product notifications to digital adoption platforms, there are a plethora of tools available at your disposal. Let’s do a small exercise. If you are working at a startup calculate the total amount of money you pay for these external SaaS subscriptions in an year. If the amount makes your eyes bulge out, rethink whether you actually need these fancy tools. I am pretty sure you can make do without a few of them or build them natively at a fraction of the cost. My favourite example is Listmonk from Zerodha. They even open sourced it! 3rd party tools are always subscription based products and the amount you pay to them will only grow with time (as your company grows). These will rack up to create a significant bill.
So the next time you need to make a build vs buy decision, think deeply about what do you stand to loose and what do you stand to gain?