SaaS Platform or DIY: Unpacking the Build vs Buy Dilemma

Building SaaS is hard, costly and time-consuming. I have discussed the challenges in building and operating your SaaS. To learn more, please see here.

A typical startup journey looks like this: you have an idea, you validate the market, you build your initial MVP, you raise some capital. After raising the initial capital or in some cases just before, you are looking to monetize by finding a product-market fit.

Now, you can spend the next few years and use the capital on building your SaaS control plane, or you can focus on your application to build core differentiation or competitive moat and find the product-market fit to generate revenue. Doing one of them is extremely hard, trying to do both will also add significant risk to the success of your business and long-term success.