Build vs. Buy

Anybody can build anything. The real question is whether you even should.

Fast-growing companies are great at closing deals, hiring ahead of the curve, and shipping product. Building the internal systems that keep pace is a different kind of problem.

The gap can compound quietly. Institutional knowledge spreads across too many tools. Answers exist somewhere, in a Google Drive folder, a Slack thread, a call recording from six months ago, but finding them requires knowing where to look. New hires spend weeks absorbing context before they can contribute. Tenured team members work late pulling data from five different places to prep for a single customer call.

That is a systems problem. It just looks like a people problem from the inside.

The Build Instinct

When I found this problem at Profound, my first instinct was to build. Vectorize everything in Pinecone, RAG over it with semantic search on top. I could see the architecture clearly. Straightforward, but two to three weeks minimum before even thinking about maintenance, model updates, and keeping data in sync.

Anybody can build anything. But the real question is whether you even should.

// build vs. buy — the real cost
Option A
Build it yourself
Week 1-3Initial build
OngoingKeeping data sources in sync
OngoingDebugging bad query results
OngoingHandling model updates
OngoingIterating as requirements change
True cost
Weeks to build. Months to maintain.
vs
Option B
Buy the right tool
Hour 1Test and evaluate
Day 1Connect data sources
Day 2Ship to team
True cost
Days to ship. Time freed for the next problem.

The Decision Framework

The cost of building is rarely just the build. It is the maintenance, the model updates, the data sync issues, the edge cases you did not anticipate. Every hour spent maintaining something you built is an hour not spent on the next problem.

The cost of buying is giving up control. You are dependent on someone else’s roadmap, someone else’s uptime, someone else’s pricing decisions. But if the tool does what you need, that tradeoff is almost always worth it.

The question I ask now: is the thing I am about to build a core differentiator for the company, or is it infrastructure that someone else has already solved? If it is the latter, buy it and move on. Buying time back is what lets you move on to the next problem.

When to Build

Build when:

  • The problem is unique to your company and no existing tool fits
  • You need deep integration with proprietary systems
  • The solution is a core differentiator, not infrastructure
  • You have the team to maintain it long-term

When to Buy

Buy when:

  • The problem is well-understood and tools exist
  • Speed to value matters more than customization
  • The tool is already maintained by a dedicated team
  • Your engineering time is better spent elsewhere

The best GTM Engineers are not the ones who build the most. They are the ones who know when not to build.