Over-Building: The Tech Firm Failure

TLDR; Just because you can, doesn't mean you should

Startups face many constraints. Time, money, resource. Ingenuity is the response. Doing things that don't scale. Validating business viability.

Then the threshold is reached. Venture Capital arrives! Now, time and resource are focal constraints. Growth rates are key, not eking out an MVP. You've proven product-market fit, now you need to prove you can scale.

Scaling is totally different. Execution speed is critical. Automation trumps human intervention. Cycle times are paramount. Waiting is not an option. But this is where tech firms face their toughest challenge: build vs. buy.

I get it. You sweat blood and tears to create your tech baby. You can build anything. But your time is precious. Your focus is precious. Will spending many months building your own replica product grow business faster? Or should you focus on your core differentiator and integrate with commercial platforms?

I say the latter. Too many tech firms make the mistake of building everything; slowing core development. They fail. I don't build software. I sell it. I help fast-growing firms go further, faster.

NetSuite is a world-class commercial platform. Everything our customers need for operations. We've built a lot. And we have more to go. But we choose not to build everything; even though we could. We don't build email. We don't build databases. We don't build electronic signatures. We buy.

Don't take my word for it. Ask the fastest-growing tech firms from Deliveroo to GoPro to Snapchat when they started buying NetSuite. The truth is much earlier than you imagine. Why build a CRM when you can buy one? Why build a project tracking system when you can buy one? Why build a subscription-to-cash process when you can buy one?

Unsuccessful tech firms mistakenly think just because building some software is critical to their business, they must build all software. Don't make that error. Don't infer the general from the particular. Do what you do best and outsource the rest.