One of the most common questions for any developer-focused product is whether to build or buy. At first glance, building in-house seems to offer full control and customization, at the cost of significant time, resources, and ongoing maintenance—often diverting engineers from core product innovation.
Building software distribution channel(s) is hard, costly and time-consuming. I have discussed the challenges in building and operating your Control Plane before. To learn more, please see older version here and newer version here
A typical startup journey looks like this:
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 to build an operating system for your software distribution (aka Control Plane) or or you can focus on your application to build core differentiation or competitive moat. 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.