Terrance Seto

Product: Build vs Buy?

Posted on July 1, 2014

Whether you are bootstrapped, just getting started, or established, the decision to decide whether to try to build a feature/function yourself, or integrating something existing can be quite difficult. There are opportunity costs for either direction you take. It’s good to grow your product quickly, but you’re still limited by the resources provided to you.  No doubt, there are great tools out there you can use to quickly enhance your product.  But are they good enough for what you want to accomplish, and will it fit in with exactly what you need?  Here are a few pros and cons I suggest to consider:

Build It Buy It
Slow to deploy Quick to deploy
Flexibility of features Limitations of features
Unproven functionality Proven functionality
More developer hours Less developer hours
Flexibility of design Limited design
Opportunity cost Possible high dollar cost
Ability to iterate Limited ability to iterate
Ease of a MVP Challenging MVP. Sometimes all or nothing
Downtime at helm of developers Downtime at helm of vendor
Ability to enhance features easily Feature enhancements limited by vendor’s development pace
Agile Waterfall

 

Posted in: business | Tagged: business, efficiency, product, product management, start ups
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